by Martin Kee
He made a brief click and a whirring noise before answering. “There is a neural shunt implanted in the back of your occipital lobe. I am using that junction to transfer information into your brain by chemical hallucination.”
She had read plenty of the books Skyla stole for her, books on light, on anatomy, on the eye, but never any on the brain. The ease at which Quentin gave her answers smacked of bullshit to Gil. She had learned not to trust anyone older than a teenager, and even they were suspect.
“What’s the point of that then?” she asked, eyes narrowed. “What’s the point if I’m just asleep on a table?”
“You have suffered a concussion and a fair amount of cerebral hemorrhaging. It placed us in a difficult position: keep you awake and screaming in misery, or let you sleep. However, in sleeping there is the risk of irreversible coma and vegetative state. Therefore, we opted instead to use chemical stimulation to induce dreamlike imagery into your consciousness.”
“Who is this ‘We’ you keep referring to?” she asked.
“Myself and Lancaster Felton, of course. Master Montegut did have some input in the process. He insisted your right hand was spared even as Felton suggested a more thorough prosthesis.”
She held out both hands, each looking perfectly normal. The fingers were even still intact. The finger she had lost to infection was there as well.
“As I said, this is a dream state,” he continued. “You see yourself as you wish to be seen. If you would like, I could give you a preview of the condition your body is currently in, but I would recommend against that until the left leg has been completely protheticized.”
She gave Quentin another skeptical glance. “You made that word up.”
“I did not.”
“Did so.” She knew she was being difficult, but it was either this or run screaming from the nightmare birdman. Gil chose to be brave.
The cylindrical rings around the Physician’s eyes rotated with a click. It seemed to Gil that he was thinking. Was that frustration?
“I apologize for the dated speech. I will upload a new lexicon into your memory to help us better converse.”
She felt her body twitch, and for just that moment, there was an odd sensation of excruciating pain, but from a great distance. Her body was out across the ocean somewhere, a fishing bobber among the strange sea animals, while she stood on the beach talking to a man in a horror mask.
Words flooded her mind like floating book pages. Images, diagrams, measurements, definitions, all flew at her, sinking into her memory with almost no effort on her part.
“I apologize for the abruptness of your education,” he said. “In a conscious state you would be too distracted to learn at this pace, however.”
“It’s… okay,” she said, still blinking away afterimages.
“Do you understand now?” Quentin asked her.
She nodded slowly. “Yes, I think so. Can you tell me more of what happened… to my body?”
“You were the victim of a terrorist attack, a bomb planted by an unknown political faction. The explosion removed your left arm and leg, your left ear and part of your scalp. Fortunately, we have been able to repair most of the cosmetic damage. You are being kept in this stasis tank until you have recovered enough to move about.”
“What’s a stasis tank?” she looked out over the ocean.
“It is a device stolen from the religious factions of New Terminus. They are more common in Jesuit enclaves and within The Church itself, used primarily for recuperating generals during the early crusades.”
More information injected itself her mind and she twitched again, her brain feeling as though it were too small for her skull. She winced. “Okay, I understand.”
The pain ceased and she looked up at him. “Why did they plant a bomb?” she asked.
Quentin paused. “Unknown. I am not well versed on the political nature of this era. My duties have simply been of a medical nature for as long as I can recall. If I had any interest of knowledge on political factions and geopolitical history, that information has been erased to make room for medical and scientific knowledge.”
They walked to a jagged outcropping of sea rock and sat with the giant city wall behind them. Gil could smell the salt air, the eucalyptus, the decaying jellyfish along the coast. How could any of this not be real?
“How old are you?” she asked.
“My body is approximately one hundred years old. My installed library is much older.”
“How much older?”
Quentin paused at this question, staring out across the waves. Gil realized that he honestly didn’t know, and there was suddenly something very sad about the man. “I am not certain.”
“You’re alone, aren’t you?” she asked. “There aren’t any like you here are there?”
“Not here,” he said. “There were many like me in Master Felton’s home city of New Terminus, serving at the infirmaries and sanitariums there. But not in Rhinewall. Not yet anyway.”
“Not yet?”
The great beaked mask turned to peer at her and Gil felt all sympathy fade into a sick chill that ran down her spine.
“There may come a time for more Physicians to be instated. Without The Church holding sway, it may free up Master Felton to install more of my kind.”
“Felton made you?”
“No,” said Quentin. “His grandfather made this incarnation of me.”
“I guess that’s why you know so much,” she said. “I’ve grown up around machines, you know. They are only as reliable as their creators.”
Another small silver fish wriggled across a nearby tide pool, but before Gil could decide to act, it swam directly into a sea anemone. It wriggled once as the tentacles enveloped it, pulling it inside. She shivered.
“I am not a golem,” said Quentin. “I am not an autonomous machine.”
She looked up at him, trying to see beyond those glass eyes. “What are you then?”
“I am as human as you are, at least as close as I can be.”
Gil frowned. “Why did they do this to you?”
“The decision was mine,” said Quentin. “As it has been with every Physician in history.”
“History…” She let the word fall off. What history did she or anyone really know? Beyond the Dark Ages, there were no records of anything. If you believed priests, the world was created by God a couple thousand years ago, complete with walled cities and steam cars.
“There was a time,” said Quentin, “when information was not kept in books at all. There was a time when all information was kept in a way much like I am talking to you now.”
“You mean people remembered it?”
“Machines remembered it,” he said. “They remembered everything, from children’s books, to vast libraries of information. For a while the entire world was one enormous repository of knowledge. Anyone with the proper terminal could access the entirety of human comprehension with the press of a few buttons.”
Gil tried to imagine something like this and simply couldn’t. “There’s no way,” she said. “You’d have to build a million TalkTypers just to do something like that. Even the best difference engines can’t store that much information, not to mention the amount of heat that many engines would create. I don’t appreciate being lied to.”
“I have no reason to lie, Gillian,” he said. “These memories are as much a part of me as your memories are a part of you. It simply is.”
“What happened then?” she asked. “It all sounds so wonderful. How could it all go away?”
“It was… different,” said Quentin. “Men chose to transfer every book, every story, every fact into this vast world-memory. And when they did, it was soon available to everyone. But not everyone was happy about that. It made things too easy for the wrong people, people who would do harm. People could organize riots, attack buildings, murder others. Suddenly it became as easy for a madman to find an address as it was for a postal courier. There were no more controls. Humans did wh
at humans do: they abused it. And people became scared.”
“So that’s why it went away?”
“No,” he continued. “But it was what powerful men used as a reason to limit it. It was what politicians used as an excuse to cut off access to the information, to censor in the name of safety. When the other systems collapsed, when wars broke out, when floods and disease began to overtake the world, the machines failed. The information stored in their memories was lost as well.”
Gil looked down at her footsteps in the sand, watching the tide wash it away. “All of it…”
“Not all,” said Quentin. “Some was passed down through secret channels as the forces of superstition swept in to promise safety and stability again. Information like you are receiving now was passed through Physicians, on low channels, in an attempt to preserve it. Eventually, some of that knowledge was passed into physical books, you undoubtedly have seen by now.”
“You mean the Dark Ages?” she asked.
The great beak moved up and down as he nodded.
“How long?” she asked.
“No one really knows how long it lasted. Some think a thousand years, while others of my kind believe it to be less than a hundred—personally, I don’t see how that could be possible. Too much was lost.”
“The Church did all this?” she asked, feeling both anger and frustration bringing high color in her cheeks.
“No,” he said with what seemed like a touch of amusement. “No the global coalition of religions simply took advantage of a situation ripe for action. They restored some order in a world that was almost too toxic to live in. They constructed the cities, raised the protective domes over peoples’ heads. Religion can do great things when it is focused on serving others, rather than the other way around.”
“But they hate you. Physicians are banned in Rhinewall. Hell, you’re the first one I’ve ever even seen.”
He shrugged, an almost comically human gesture. “I would use the word ‘distrust’ before hate. The Church fears what it cannot explain away or control. My kind was created at a time when simply breathing the air could kill in seconds.”
There was another twinge of pain from a great distance and Gil looked back out across the sea. Storm clouds gathered along the horizon, dense and black, a pall of smoke rolling towards the shore. She thought about the Bowl, where she had sent Skyla, thought about the breathing mask she had so naively asked her to wear. She looked again at her dream-hands.
“Is this what you will do with me?” she asked. “Turn me into one of you?”
“Only if you choose,” he said. “It is a voluntary service, one taken with great dedication and gravity.”
“Well, yeah,” she said. “I can’t imagine anyone would volunteer to live in that without giving it plenty of thought.”
She tried to imagine him smiling behind that mask. He paused for a moment and then finally said, “I am afraid I must concentrate on some matters regarding a drop in your blood pressure. There appears to be a problem with your femoral artery. Please excuse me.”
He faded from her sight as she reached for him, suddenly terrified of being left alone. Femoral artery? What did he mean by that?
Then the images appeared in her mind, the anatomy pictures, the medical journals—all of the information zooming past as if she were flying through a hallway of pages. She understood then as another sharp twinge of pain shook her hard enough to nearly wake her.
I’m bleeding to death, Gil thought.
Chapter 38
Bollingbrook
IT WASN’T UNTIL the water hit Dona’s face that she remembered where she was. A yellow chemical lamp flickering overhead, casting dancing shadows against the damp stone walls like witches around a bonfire. A chorus of crying, wailing, and endless, incoherent chattering echoed through the halls just on the other side of thick iron doors, the voices of the insane. Realization returned and a ball of fear knotted her gut.
I’m in the Bollingbrook Sanitarium.
Dona moved to wipe the fresh tears before remembering her wrists were bound to an upright table. At its center was a large hinge, giving it the mobility to dunk the occupant into a pool of water. A large tub sat before her. Ah, yes. Now she remembered.
The pain returned in waves, ushering her back into reality, the aching, the stinging. She looked up at the man in front of her, his muscles bulging under a patchwork of scarred skin. His eyes, the only part of his face visible behind his executioner’s mask, regarded her with businesslike indifference. His breathing seemed surprisingly steady considering the beating he had just given her.
“You’re up!” Victoria said from her left, voice cheery. “I was worried we’d lost you. Gareth can get a little carried away sometimes.”
But Victoria’s face said otherwise, gazing upon Dona with that cold appraisal. She stepped up to the table and rose up on her toes, placing her mouth right against Dona’s soaked ear.
“Don’t make me do this anymore Dona, please.” The sympathy there was almost believable. “I have to give them something.”
“Then you have my permission to stop,” Dona said.
Victoria nodded to Gareth and Dona closed her eyes, envisioning her father as the blows came, impacting along her stomach. She heard her own voice crying out as the heavy hands bruised her abdomen and breasts. But her mind was off adventuring elsewhere.
This is what I get for protecting her, she thought. This is what I get for standing up for that twerp.
And yet, it was hard to regret what she had done. It felt good, doing something right for a change, doing something honest. There was a grim shortage of honesty in Dona’s life these days.
Gareth landed a punch to her gut and the wind left her lungs. They simply ceased to work for a moment as stars formed in her vision. Then her world was tipping, tipping, until water engulfed her. She screamed bubbles and emerged gasping.
“Where is she?” Victoria asked, her voice calm.
“Who?” Dona opened her eyes.
“You know who,” Victoria said. “Let’s stop playing this game. Gareth will kill you, you know? He’s very good at it, an artisan of suffering. He can make it last as long as he wants. I’ve seen him go for days at a time.”
Dona glanced at the man’s sweaty skin. Gareth cracked his knuckles with the sound of tinder.
“How would I know?” Dona asked.
“Because you and I both saw her, Dona. When I returned to the house she was gone—just you alone. I know Gareth hasn’t damaged your brain.”
Yes. Dona sensed that Gareth was capable of much more. He had only hit her in the stomach, the shoulders, the chest. In her mind she heard Skyla again from years ago: Where’d he hit you this time? Did he do it where people wouldn’t see?
Oh yes, only in the hidden places, she thought. You were right about a lot of things weren’t you, you little twerp…
“I don’t know where she went,” Dona said. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth.
“I find that hard to believe. She had to have gone in a direction.”
“You saw the closet as well as I did.”
Victoria crossed her arms. “Yes I did. Very peculiar. We even had soldiers break through the wall and they still couldn’t find a passageway, no hidden door, no crawlspace.”
Dona shrugged, but even that hurt. She could no longer feel her hands.
“You helped her escape,” Victoria accused.
“No,” Dona gasped at the pain from breathing. She was inhaling glass it seemed. “No, I didn’t.”
“But you stopped me—”
“I stopped you from torturing her.”
“You did,” Vicky smirked. “I find that very odd, but not surprising considering the notes you two have been exchanging.”
A letter emerged from Victoria’s pocket. She held it out in front of her, unfolding it to read. Dona closed her eyes, her stomach sinking.
“Dona, I am not a ghost, though I can see how it might have seemed that way. I apologize for f
rightening you. It’s sadly, the one thing I do well, and a habit I could never seem to break even in Bollingbrook….”
Victoria read the letter aloud, carefully picking apart each sentence, rereading it again, slower this time to emphasize certain points. Dona’s head felt as though it were filled with lead as she stared at the drain in the floor, hearing the real letter Skyla had written, hearing the warning to stay away, hearing the truth.
“One less enemy.” A half-smile formed on Victoria’s thin lips. “Huh. Had I guessed you two were in cahoots sooner, perhaps a more reasonable arrangement could have been made. We tried replying to her, you know. I even affixed a bit of tin to the letter like she instructed—” She held her palms up. “But no ravens. I’m starting to think your little witch friend has made a fool of all of us.”
Dona’s voice wasn’t much more than a squeak. “What do you want?”
Tiny hands touched her chin, lifting her face. Her blue eyes met Dona’s.
“We want the girl,” Victoria said.
“We?”
A smile formed on Victoria’s lips. “By ‘we’ I mean my employers, the archbishop. But right now, in this room, I am representing a much larger entity.”
“The Church?”
“Among others,” Vicky said. Something in her eyes pleaded. “Tell me, Dona. What would you do in my position? My best friend is found guilty of cavorting with an enemy of The Church. I find a letter that clearly points to her involvement, and still you won’t tell me where she is.” She stood on her tippy toes again. “Listen to me, Dona. The archbishop wanted to be here, but I talked him out of it. Trust me. It could have been much, much worse. Just tell us what we want to know. Please.”
“I don’t know!” Dona said, her voice breaking into a cough. She tasted blood in her mouth. “I don’t know.”
She closed her eyes, bracing for more pain. But it didn’t come. A welcome ache flooded her arms as the chains came undone. The weight on her weakened legs was almost too much to bear and Dona collapsed into Gareth’s arms. He held her gently, almost lovingly. It was too much contact, too comforting, and something broke. She wept in her assailant’s embrace.