Too, Too Solid Flesh

by Nick O'Donohoe

  Capek said brightly, “I’m glad that we work together again. What do you wish to learn?”

  “About biochemical brain matrices,” Hamlet said tonelessly, “and what they do.”

  Capek laughed kindly. “You seem discouraged, young friend. Perhaps you’ve already learned what they can’t do, eh?” He ticked off ideas on his fingers. “They can’t force people or animals into actions. They can’t change an organism’s feelings, or synthesize ideas, or solve problems.” He looked wistful. “Maybe someday we’ll change that, eh? If not me, since I’m old already, maybe you.”

  Horatio turned to ask Claire to shut off the simula and was stunned: tears were coursing down her face.

  The lesson was brief; Hamlet quickly learned all he could understand about biomatrix chemistry, and he had nothing to talk about with this old man who, despite Hamlet’s love of him, had never met Hamlet. Quite soon Capek said, “Perhaps, young man, you should be going.”

  “Yes,” Hamlet said quietly. “I’d better go. Thank you for—for letting me see you. And talk to you.” His shoulders were sagging. He turned to Doctor Mulvaney and knew instantly what she felt. “I’m sorry. Did you work with him?”

  “For a long time.” She blinked several times, but did not cry again. “He was a good teacher—and a good man.”

  Horatio said, “I have a question, Doctor.” She turned to him, and he went on, “If we put on Hamlet with a lab setting, would a matrix work best as the poison dropped in a king’s ear? Would he die rapidly enough?”

  Her left hand, drifting, touched her ear. She pulled it down rapidly. “Some of them would work, certainly. If he were asleep—isn’t he asleep in the play?—some of these could work through his Eustachian tube and he’d, well, wake up but never regain control. He’d be dead by morning.” She wrung her hands, which looked strangely melodramatic for the lab setting. “They were the chemicals we looked for in Dr. Capek when he died.”

  Horatio said, “What did you find?”

  Hamlet said, “‘We?’”

  She said quickly, “The police would hardly know what to look for among the labchems; most of the chems aren’t even public knowledge. All of the FirstTeks did part of the autopsy: the ChemTeks, the BioTeks, even the SimTeks—”

  “And who supervised?” Hamlet asked.

  She looked startled again, washing one hand over the other. “Security. And the new HeadTek, Doctor Goode. Everything went through his files. He and Security reviewed the entire process.”

  Horatio said, “And now anyone can Access it.”

  “Oh, no. It’s secure. The police only have a summary. We all felt that was the right decision.”

  Hamlet was staring ahead, unseeing. “Was it the chemical he was working with that killed him?”

  “Yes. A dematrix, a slow one. In this lab it neutralizes matrix spills, but in others—what’s wrong?”

  Hamlet looked ill. “He died of that?”

  She rubbed her hands together, washing something imaginary off them. “He’d scratched his ear. His gloves were dry by the time I found him—”

  “You found him?”

  “In the morning. I was the first in.” She added with a little pride, “I often am.”

  Hamlet touched her again. “I’m sorry you found him.”

  She pulled her hand back and began washing again. “It was understandable. He was tired, he itched—” She burst out, “It was completely understandable. It could happen to any of us.” She looked down at her hands and held still.

  Hamlet broke the silence. “If we put on a production set in a lab, will you come?”

  “If I’m able to.” She was still looking at her hands, though she probably meant her work schedule.

  * * * * *

  On the way out, Hamlet took his medallion back but set the crab-leg bracelet on a different tray from the shrew earrings, which were now asleep. “So easy to set things right,” he said listlessly. “People don’t think.”

  Outside, Horatio said, “Doctor Mulvaney is in the labs, and she loved Capek. Maybe he didn’t love her. She can get and use the biochems that caused the death, and she can enter and leave the labs anytime, and she’s surrounded by the simtek she’d need to look like a pudgy man—”

  “He didn’t know me.” Hamlet scuffed at a stone.

  “It was an old simula.” Horatio awkwardly put a hand on Hamlet’s shoulder. “If it had been recent—”

  “It was him!” Hamlet spoke loudly, frightening a striped gopher away from him. “I knew him.” He looked away. “I wanted to touch him.”

  Horatio motioned to a stone bench, and they sat. “He wasn’t real, my lord.”

  Hamlet laughed joylessly, sniffling. “I keep thinking, I could load his simula into a body. It’s like I want to make him into the android, and me into—” He stopped, embarrassed to continue.

  Horatio looked at him. “Once, long ago,” he said, “there was a wooden puppet named Pinocchio. And his creator, Gepetto, loved him, but Pinocchio wanted to be—”

  “A real, live boy,” Hamlet finished. “Yes. Capek read some of it to me from a book—a paper book, with pictures. And he said he was like Gepetto, and I was his Pinocchio, and I should always remember to be good.” A rabbit nosed at Hamlet’s feet. He set it in his lap, scratching its ears. “I said I would be.”

  Horatio watched the rabbit. “Can you always do that?”

  Horatio looked down at his hands. “Is there something wrong with what I’m doing?” He set the rabbit down, tapping its flanks firmly. “Go away.” It hopped a few feet and sat, not knowing where to go.

  A loud cry, like a human screeching a birdcall, erupted from the brush nearby. It sounded angry, violent, and acutely pained.

  The animals dove for cover. Only the rabbit froze.

  Hamlet didn’t move. “What’s that?”

  Horatio was on his feet. “What in the hell was that?” He looked back at the bench. Hamlet was gone.

  Horatio felt a hand behind him and looked over his shoulder. Hamlet was standing back to back with him, a small tree limb clutched like a club in his right hand. “You don’t think this is normal.”

  The cry came again. Horatio, his mouth suddenly dry, said, “No. I don’t.”

  A naked man stumbled out of the brush that ran to either side of the path. His legs were scratched. His chest, grossly overdeveloped, was stippled with pricks from the brush. He clutched at his bird-mask, as though it pained him.

  He shut his curved beak and stared at them with round, golden eyes that peered through ruffled white feathers. His head fit awkwardly on his half-feathered neck.

  Horatio whispered, “Jesus. Where did that come from?”

  Hamlet, stepping forward and holding the stick in sight, said, “From the Cloisters.” He looked cautious but not afraid. “He’s carved on one of the columns.”

  The bird-man moved his head from side to side, peering at them. He was trying to lower his head like an eagle’s or a vulture’s, but his human neck wouldn’t let him.

  Horatio took a single step backward. “Doctor Mulvaney said that most of the imaginary synthetics were unstable.”

  Hamlet stepped back as well. “Did she mean ‘unstable’ as in ‘breaking down easily,’ or ‘unstable’ as in ‘prone to emotional disorders?’”

  The rabbit bolted suddenly for the bushes. The bird-man pounced, deftly grabbing the rabbit’s rear legs, and stood, ignoring his own gravel-scraped legs.

  He snapped his beak into the rabbit once, then threw the two halves of the beast in the bushes to either side of the path. He stared again at Horatio and Hamlet, then opened his bloody beak and cried out again.

  Horatio said, “You ask him what she meant. I’ll run.”

  Hamlet threw the stick at the bird-man. He snapped it in two with his beak and threw the halves away. It looked no more difficult than tearing the rabbit had.

  They ran.

  6

  Hamlet and Horatio sprinted back up the trail they had come
down from the fort. The bird-man followed clumsily, unable to establish a comfortable running gait.

  Hamlet looked back over his shoulder. The bird-man, lurching to one side, caught his arm and leg on a bush. He shook them free without apparent effort; even the thick branches splintered immediately.

  Runnels of blood were etched in the bird-man’s arm, but he didn’t slow down.

  Horatio gasped, “Couldn’t we take to the woods?” He waved at the low-lying brush above and below the path. “There’s more cover—”

  Hamlet pushed him forward. “And more underbrush. Are you stronger than he is?”

  Over the Hudson, an osprey cried for its prey. The bird-man answered with a cry torn from his throat. Horatio sped up. Hamlet grabbed Horatio’s arm when Horatio stumbled on the steps of Fort Tryon. He gripped Horatio’s tunic with his other arm and dragged him up three steps.

  The bird-man scrabbled in the dirt below Horatio’s leg, clumsily flapping his arms for balance. His hands were covered with blood from the rabbit. He stretched them forward and cried aloud at Horatio and Hamlet.

  Hamlet said, “Maybe we can kill him on the steps. He doesn’t know how to use his body yet. While he’s off balance we might—”

  “Die,” Horatio said flatly. Behind them, the bird-man walked precariously up, snapping his beak, clenching and unclenching his hands.

  They ran up the twisting stair to the eastern overlook. Hamlet stopped so suddenly he had to grab the flagpole for support. They were on a concrete and stone platform with no exit except the way they had come.

  Horatio fell against him. Hamlet whirled. “Could we climb down the vines?”

  Horatio stared at the eastern roadway fifty feet below. “Not unless we have to.”

  Hamlet dashed back to the central platform of the fort. He skidded to a stop, staring at the old woman who was dropping bread for passenger pigeons.

  Hamlet waved his arms at the pigeons, then at her. “Go away. Leave. Go.”

  The bread fell from her hand and rolled onto the empty plaza.

  The bird-man screamed from the stairs at the end of the plaza. A dark stain was spreading beneath his skin, just below the feathers of his neck.

  Hamlet said again, “Go!” and shoved her. She clutched her coat and ran, her spindly legs carrying her quickly through the park.

  Horatio, within fifteen feet of the bird-man, froze.

  Hamlet scooped up the bread and flung it at the bird-man. “Here. Eat. Leave us alone.”

  The bird-man’s bright eyes watched the bread roll on the concrete, but he didn’t move until a foolish pigeon landed at his feet. He snatched the squawking bird up; stray feathers stuck to the blood already on his beak. He stared alertly at Hamlet, then across at Horatio, still trapped at the entrance to the overlook.

  Horatio braced to leap sideways at the bird-man’s final lunge.

  Hamlet said, “Don’t move,” and stepped toward the bird-man.

  The bird-man swung toward him, opening and shutting his beak. Blood dripped from the point.

  Hamlet muttered, “Too far,” and stepped back. The bird-man swung hesitantly toward Horatio, then back.

  Hamlet said, “Take one step back.” He took one himself. Horatio, his eyes on the bloody beak, did the same.

  The bird-man watched them both by turns, then stepped forward—exactly between them.

  He turned back and forth, giving small cries of confusion and pain. The dark stain under his skin was spreading, and his feathers were standing up.

  “Another.” Hamlet stepped back again. The bird-man turned toward Horatio, who stepped back hastily.

  The bird-man now had to turn from side to side to see either of them. He held out his arms, pleading, and dropped to his knees.

  Horatio said, “Another,” and was ready to back onto the overlook when Hamlet said, “No. If he can’t see you, he’ll kill me.

  “Are you sure?” To Horatio, the bird-man seemed to be watching him most of the time.

  Hamlet smiled thinly. “Let’s not test it.”

  “We can’t just stay like this.”

  “Of course we can,” Hamlet said almost calmly. “Can’t you see he’s dying?”

  The bird-man curled and uncurled his bare feet as though grasping a tree limb. His fingers curled as well. His eyes looked unfocused. He turned toward Horatio, then turned toward Hamlet, then fell face down on the stones.

  Hamlet ran quickly to the body and turned it over.

  The bird-man’s eyes were open. His body twitched, and the blood spot over his jugular had spread to a plate-sized stain just under the skin.

  Hamlet cradled the dying figure, holding the blood-sodden beak away from himself until it was still.

  Horatio sidled up. “Are you crazy?”

  “He died,” Hamlet said simply. “I was holding him. I felt it.”

  “Why didn’t he kill one of us?”

  “His breath went in but not out, and he went rigid. He went all rigid. Then the air went out of him slowly.” Hamlet smoothed the feathers.

  Horatio said loudly, “Hamlet!” Hamlet jerked his head up. “Tell me why we’re not dead.”

  Hamlet set the body down gently. “The poor thing was too simple to choose between us. It’s one of the problems of Zeno; I read it in a book on classical mathematics. There, though, it was an ass and two bales of hay.”

  Horatio stepped forward cautiously. “What if he had run away from us—not straight away—and then turned around when one of us was closer to him?”

  Hamlet shook his head. “He was too simple, built solely to kill us.” Hamlet stroked the corpse’s cooling, blood-dappled chest. “He was unstable, and he died quickly. He wasn’t alive more than a few minutes, poor bird.” The bird-man’s eyes were half-lidded with their third eyelid. Hamlet’s own eyes looked far from normal.

  “If he’d lived a little longer,” Horatio said flatly, “I’d be dead.”

  Hamlet looked wonderingly, almost tenderly, at Horatio. “But you would not be all dead. Your hair and beard and fingernails would grow. The microbes in your bowels would die and yield to others: to mold, to spores, to nasty things on tiptoe. Your body would be more alive, not less—yet I would miss you, and would call you dead.”

  Horatio shuddered. “So would I. My lord, sometimes you’re very strange.”

  Hamlet, still staring at Horatio, nodded. “It’s how I was made, I think. What would you do differently?”

  “I’d let go of the body, for one thing.”

  Hamlet looked down at his hands, startled. “You’d be wrong to,” he said briskly. His hands traveled around the corpse’s skull, probing under the feathers. At the right temple he said, “You see?”

  Horatio knelt closer. “Just a scar—oh, Jesus.”

  The bird-man had a slot an inch long in front of his right ear. Protruding from it, perhaps jarred free by his collapse, was a flat red rectangle.

  “A chip.” Hamlet ran a finger around it, pulling the feathers back so that it was clearer.

  Horatio stared down at the biochip. “They told him to kill us. Doctor Mulvaney says a chip can’t do that.”

  “Doctor Mulvaney may have done it.”

  “If that chip could control actions and responses,” Horatio said slowly, “then there’s a whole new world of Tek out there.” He reached carefully for the chip—

  Hamlet knocked his hand away.

  He rubbed the stung flesh. “What were you doing?”

  Hamlet pointed. “That moisture isn’t water.”

  Horatio forgot about his hand. “Matrix.”

  “Or dematrix. What if his beak were only his first weapon, and we were meant to touch this chip when he died?”

  “That’s a weird way to kill someone.” Horatio took a piece of paper from his pocket, pulled the chip with it, and wrapped the chip twice before pocketing it.

  “So is creating a gargoyle.” Hamlet looked again at Horatio, his eyes full of hurt. “What monster would create someone for a short
life of pain as a murder weapon?”

  “I don’t know yet. What do we do now?”

  Hamlet adjusted automatically to being in charge. “We leave quickly. Someone will come for this body.”

  “We could hide.”

  Hamlet said, “We can be tracked, remember? Or I can.”

  “That’s right.” Horatio looked over his shoulder automatically. Hamlet smiled.

  He stood up. “We’ll go back, but you must do one more thing, as a policeman: have the woman who saw the attack followed. Please keep her from being hurt or killed.” He added less earnestly, “And see if anyone thinks it’s worth killing a human witness.”

  Horatio shook his head. “I’d have to get an ID on her, break free extra personnel—just take my word for it; there are a thousand reasons I can’t do it.” He suddenly shivered, though the early summer sun was hardly cold. “Let’s get out of here.”

  * * * * *

  They sat alone in a subway car. Newzak babbled happily of a bombing in Thailand, of a retrocloned manatee, of California’s state investigation of Lefties. Hamlet listened. Horatio leaned back, exhausted by their morning.

  Presently he said, “My lord?”

  Hamlet said, “You have a question.”

  “Two. Again.”

  Hamlet said, “No. You think in threes. You say you’re not a system, but sometimes I wonder.”

  “One: If Goode supervised the autopsy, that only proves that he investigated Capek’s death.”

  “As we are now.”

  “Right. But you still suspect him, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” Hamlet said. “Mulvaney also showed us how many LabTeks had the means, herself included.”

  “She did. She also showed us how a lab accident could happen, but we can forget about accidents after today. No one would try to kill us for investigating an accident.”

  Hamlet added thoughtfully, “Why not kill us at the theater?”

  “I don’t see why that’s important.”

  Hamlet patted his arm. “You need me for insight; I need you to make me human.” He smiled. “Perhaps you, and not the play, are the conscience of the king”

  “Question two: Do we know more about motive?”