Too, Too Solid Flesh

by Nick O'Donohoe

  Horatio said desperately, “They’ve lived here all their lives.”

  Hamlet watched the debris and garbage pulse between the buildings. “All their lives? God help them.”

  Another wave staggered the crowd. Again, miraculously, everyone got up. Horatio said, “We ought to hide you. Paulette’s apartment is close by.”

  Hamlet looked at him. “We could go there. If the building were strong, we might be safe.”

  “No one would blame us,” Horatio agreed.

  The next wave toppled the girl with the bloody foot, this time rolling her helplessly against the building. Hamlet wrapped his arm around her waist and set her upright beside him. “May I help you?” he said, smiling.

  Horatio stepped behind him. The young man he’d met in the bar, Brady, was struggling to carry his father. Brady’s legs were wide apart, one forward, trying to resist the surf. “We’ll make it, Dad,” he was saying over and over. “Valid data. We’ll make it. You’ll see.” Brady was drunk, and the old man was very frightened.

  Brady slipped. Horatio barely staggered as he caught and cradled Brady’s father. Hungry old men weigh less than they should; it wasn’t hard. Horatio grinned through the spray at Brady, wondering if Brady recognized him. “Let’s go. The higher the drier, right?”

  Brady laughed, embarrassed by his own drunkenness but relieved by the help. “God damn right. Higher the drier. Valid data.” He settled his father on Horatio’s shoulders and whipped off his own ragged jacket to put on his father, shouting into the wind, “The higher the drier.”

  Hamlet responded, so loudly that heads turned even in the storm, “Link arms, join hands. Hold each other tighter than love could.” They stared, and he added, “Now.”

  It was a voice accustomed to command, and the Poolsiders were accustomed to obeying. When the chain was formed, Hamlet called, “And now we’re safe.”

  They looked from face to face, realizing that they were. Horatio remembered one of the first lines Hamlet had spoken to him outside the play: “Some safe, some safe in bed, and some in bed.” Horatio said, over the girl’s head and in Hamlet’s ear, “I would t’were bedtime, Hal, and all well.”

  “Henry the Fourth. Falstaff. I’d rather hear Hal. He was a good mix for crises,” Hamlet answered. He ducked, clutching the girl as a wave crashed on them. “I’m surprised you didn’t quote The Tempest.”

  “I would have, but I know you haven’t read it.”

  “Now I have. I know why I wasn’t supposed to.” He gripped the girl’s shoulders as another wave hit. “We’ll talk tomorrow, if tomorrow comes.”

  To the rest he called, “Where is the nearest high ground?”

  “Flushing,” someone offered.

  Hamlet looked at his knees in mock confusion. “Isn’t it just?” An old joke, but it got a smile. “Where is closer high ground?”

  “We could go to a high floor,” someone suggested.

  Hamlet shook his head. “If we must—but which building do you think will last longest?”

  They looked at the battered storefronts and cracked facades. It seemed amazing that any of the buildings had lasted this long.

  Hamlet seemed calmer as the storm became worse; improvising in a crisis had always been his genius. “What about the train track?”

  Horatio struggled with his footing in a wave, and the old man on his shoulders cried out inarticulately. Horatio said, “The elevated train tracks are a century old.”

  “They lead to high ground, if we can walk on them.”

  “What if another train comes?”

  The wind whipped Hamlet’s doublet,briskly. “Then we’ll hitch a ride.”

  Horatio looked back. Waves now occasionally hid the storefronts. “We’ll have to cross the square again.”

  “I know.” Hamlet called to the others, “Hold tight again. We’re turning around.”

  The group, slowly and carefully, turned toward the square. The previous weak stragglers were now the leaders. Hamlet smiled at them. “The last shall be first. Let’s lead.”

  Horatio thought of Billy’s words before Billy faced Eric. “We need to be heroes,” Horatio said loudly and simply. He stepped forward, leaning into the waves, the old man perched firmly on his shoulders.

  They lost one in the square. A woman in her fifties or sixties, wrenched suddenly from the human chain as a wave slammed into them, rose as if flying on a surf crest. For a moment it seemed she would pop free of the waves completely. She wailed and waved her arms as the backwash took her to the end of the square and threw her against a brick wall.

  They saw her after that, but she made no more noise that carried over the wind and the rain.

  Hamlet spun around, never losing his grip on the injured girl. “Who let go of her, and why?”

  A young woman stared at him bleakly, her hair whipping back and forth across her face in the slanting spray. In her right arm she clutched the leg of a screaming, panic-stricken baby girl. “She dropped my baby,” the woman said dazedly. “Mother. I grabbed my baby.” She looked this way and that, her eyes blank. “Mother?” The child cradled in her arms began to cry.

  Hamlet said gently, “We hold on tightly to the least of life and let the greatest go. They drop from us like tears, unwillingly let go but sure to fall. Come, give me the older child; I’ll hold her tightly. Horatio?”

  “Here, my lord.” He took the injured girl’s hand while Hamlet freed himself from her handclasp. He freed the baby girl with difficulty from the woman’s grip. The baby’s clothes were soaking. Hamlet smiled at the injured girl as she slipped off the cloak he had put around her and, without a murmur, tucked it around the baby Hamlet now held.

  At the other side of the square, the refugees stumbled from the water as though it had been supporting them instead of dragging them down. Horatio set the old man down and nudged Brady alert.

  “Buy for the bump,” Brady said automatically. His eyes cleared, then filled with tears. “Oh, man. You kept him alive.” Brady dropped to his knees and hugged the old man, nearly knocking him backward into the square.

  Hamlet stood watching, looking oddly like the father in a ragged family portrait. He held a year-old baby while the woman with the newborn slumped against him. The injured girl shivered at his side.

  He stared at the stragglers leaving the water. “How many do you think we’ve saved?”

  Horatio watched them come, not believing as they kept arriving. “One hundred. Possibly one-fifty.”

  Hamlet looked around at the buildings, still lit by flashes of lightning. “And how many lived in these Pools?”

  Horatio turned his head. “Ten years ago, a million.” He blinked rapidly. “The government quit counting.”

  “Not the government, Horatio.” He held all the conviction of an experienced ruler. “States can’t say ‘aye’ or ‘nay’ unless people say ‘aye’ or ‘nay’ or nothing. Have you said nothing?”

  Horatio burst out, “I’ve been busy.” “

  The baby cried. Hamlet joggled it. “So has this one”

  The wind died. The rain slowed—slackened—stopped. People stared at each other, afraid to smile.

  Horatio said, “It’s the eye of the storm.”

  Heads turned. Horatio went on, “If we hurry, we can get on the elevated tracks before the winds rise again.”

  He was interrupted by exclamations: people, pointing up, were moved to wordlessness. One old man dropped to his knees. The sky was clear. A few faint stars hung in it.

  Horatio opened his mouth again, but Hamlet said to him, “No. Let them look and wonder, for this patch of starlight means more than an acre of heaven.”

  Horatio nodded. After a while he said, “Let’s move.”

  * * * * *

  The rain resumed before the last people reached the stairs to the railway. Horatio and Hamlet waited at the bottom, helping those who needed it.

  Brady and his father went on, waving. Horatio noticed, now that they were on land, the rich variety of
footwear among the Poolsiders: deadleather, deadtortoise, skinned muskrat, cloth. Some of their clothing smelled strongly of decay. They were wearing untreated livecloth gone dead.

  The last few of the Poolsiders moved onto the stairs. Horatio turned back to Hamlet. “The storm is coming again.”

  “It never left us.” Hamlet looked around. “All this night we have been children, struggling to escape death under the eye of Medea.”

  Horatio shuddered. “We’d better catch up with the rest.” Horatio roused the girl curled against Hamlet’s side.

  She flung an arm against Hamlet. He caught and kissed it. “Rise and walk, pretty chicken. We have far to go.”

  Another voice said, “She may. You don’t.”

  Hamlet and Horatio turned toward the stairs to the tracks. Alan Goode, in a liveseal coat, stepped down. “You’ll have to go back now.” Freddy stood quietly at his side.

  33

  Goode and Hamlet faced each other, seawater flowing and retreating at their knees. The mother of the child Hamlet held stepped toward them, but looked helplessly at the sleeping baby in her own arms.

  Hamlet spoke first. “You traced me.” Goode nodded. “I’d thought the storm might stop you. You brought no security force? How reckless.”

  “Eric Valentin, HeadSecTek, is dead.” Goode glanced at Horatio. “As I suspect you know. No one else has clearance for—” He shifted his gaze quickly to the watching Poolsiders. “This sort of thing. I didn’t want publicity.”

  “I can well imagine,” Hamlet said calmly.

  “You did well here,” Goode said, and froze Hamlet and Horatio by adding, “Perhaps our project is successful.”

  Hamlet recovered first. “We should discuss what that means, somewhere drier.”

  “Give me the child, Hamlet,” Goode said.

  Hamlet shook his head, his hair whipping in the rising wind. “There’s no safe place for her here.”

  Goode had his hand in his pocket, pointing something at Hamlet. “Surely you know I can’t trust you with an infant.”

  “Surely you know why I can’t trust you.”

  Goode looked at Freddy, then at the watching Poolsiders. “It’s unstable of you to say that. Let’s go.”

  Hamlet spoke loudly over the wind as he pulled his cloak around the baby. “If I’m unstable, will I obey?”

  Goode said, “If you disobey, you are surely unstable.”

  “And I’ll be destroyed. If I obey, I’ll also be destroyed. Tell me, what could I do to survive?” Goode made no answer. Hamlet said, “Silence is a fear of truth.”

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing. I’m sorry, Hamlet.”

  “Call me ‘my lord.’”

  “I’m sorry, my lord. Come back now.”

  A small tree fell, barely heard above the wind. Hamlet glanced at it. “I’ll go back later. I’m needed here.”

  Goode looked compassionately around him. “Much is needed here. You have a noble, ah, spirit, but your help will hardly change things.”

  “It could change one.” Hamlet held the child tighter.

  “I’ll take that child.”

  “You won’t.”

  Goode frowned. “No?”

  “Didn’t you even suspect I could say no to you?”

  Goode raised the hand in his pocket. “If I disable you, the child may be hurt.”

  Hamlet barely hesitated. “Horatio, take this child. Carry her where the mother wishes.”

  Goode said tiredly, “Horatio must return also. He at least will obey easily.”

  Horatio said, “No, Doctor.”

  Something wild a block away howled at the wind.

  Goode stepped back, swinging his hidden hand between them. “Is this some sort of rebellion?” He wasn’t afraid.

  Hamlet said simply, “Horatio is human.”

  Goode stared. Hamlet passed the baby, still in the cloak, to Horatio. “Wrap her well.” To Goode he said, “He can prove it, I’m sure. Only Capek knew.”

  Horatio said, “I have a birth file on Access. My ID is seven, four, three, five, four, seven, one—”

  Goode swayed as though buckled by the waves. “Oh, God. And I tried—” He shut up.

  Hamlet nodded. “You tried, through Claudius. And you succeeded with others. Tell me: why would I trust you with a child?” He stood straight while the sideways rain soaked his doublet through. “Take me back.”

  Goode shook his head. “I’m needed here.” Hamlet raised an eyebrow. Goode snapped, “There’s more to me than you know.”

  “Doubtless.” He glanced down at the waves. “At least one of us is needed here. Shall I return alone?”

  “Do be serious—my lord. Freddy?” Freddy stepped forward slowly. “Take Hamlet to the dematrix lab for breakdown and reconstituting.”

  “Sure, Doc.” He stretched his hand toward Hamlet, and they saw that he wore a shiny new Theater Access ring. Hamlet said softly, “How good to have a friend.”

  “Hey, you said you’d understand what I did, no matter what.” He was slouching and ashamed. “I’m sorry, man.”

  Hamlet said coldly, “Call me puppet, robot, or mannequin. Don’t call me ‘man.’ Don’t ever call me ‘man.’”

  “You may need this.” Goode passed Freddy a small box from his pocket. “You know how to use it?”

  Freddy said quickly, “Yeah, sure. Press this, right?”

  “Right. But try only to use this instead.”

  Goode handed Freddy a thin metal headband with a chip slot on one side. “With no chip in it, he’ll reiterate his last step until he arrives where you want him. Do you understand how to use this?”

  Freddy said brightly, “What do you think I am, Doc, some kinda subhuman?”

  Hamlet looked at the still-rising water and said, “Before we drown slowly, let’s go die quickly.”

  Goode said, “Freddy will not die tonight.”

  Hamlet said, “He’s dead already or he wouldn’t obey. Come, Freddy.” He took Freddy’s arm, calling to Horatio, “Take care of the child.”

  Horatio and Goode watched them leave. Goode licked his lips, though they were rain-soaked. “We should talk—”

  “Go help somebody.” Horatio climbed the railway stairs to the tracks. Somewhere ahead of him, Hamlet and Freddy were walking arm in arm, much like friends.

  34

  By morning the water in the Greenhouse Pools was receding, leaving a few buildings. Horatio and Goode returned to the Globe.

  Goode looked in on Horatio just before sunrise. Goode was filthy, exhausted from carrying children and their few belongings. He mopped his hair with a livecotton towel and said, “After you left, I took a little girl to the railway station. A young man named Brady said to thank you.”

  Horatio only looked at him.

  Goode rubbed the towel over his face. “The storm surge ran up to fifteen feet in places. The livewood on the Pool fringes may die from salt poisoning.” He paused. “Thousands died. Many people lived because you came along. It’s a good thing you went there.”

  Horatio looked at Hamlet’s empty cloak in the corner. “A good thing? My God.”

  Goode said sympathetically, “They seem real, don’t they? But they’re empty.” He spoke loudly. “Never forget that.” He turned away. “It’s not as if I’d killed a human.”

  “Not last night, no.” But Horatio’s sarcasm meant nothing in the absence of Paulette’s body and any evidence. He turned his face to the wall. “I’ll sleep awhile, then I’ll go. If you want to press charges—”

  “I don’t even want you to leave.”

  Horatio stared at him. Goode finished, “We can afford only one new android in twenty-four hours, two in emergencies. Above two, we have to petition an oversight committee.” He smiled wanly. “Individual decisions are frowned on here.”

  “I’m making one. I’m not staying.”

  “I think you are,” Goode said sharply. “Polonius is done, the new Hamlet assembling. The cast needs your guidance. Hamlet is no
w more limited, as you can imagine.”

  “I can’t imagine a limited Hamlet.”

  “Fortunately, I could.” Goode softened his voice. “Please. There’s a performance scheduled for tonight.”

  “What do you care about performances?” He asked the question that had been bothering him for some time: “What is a person like you doing here at all?”

  Goode said simply, “The play is part of the project.” He looked at the cloak, looked away. “And I enjoy it.”

  “And it never taught you a thing, did it?”

  Goode left. Horatio realized bitterly that he really was an actor. He couldn’t leave a show that needed him.

  He slept. Eventually Hamlet’s cloak dried.

  At ten a knock woke him up. “Door open.” He sat up hastily, trying to remember if he were dressed.

  Hamlet walked in.

  Horatio leaped up. “You’re alive. Oh, God—”

  Hamlet said brightly, “Well met. You must be Horatio.”

  Behind him, Goode said cheerfully, “Fresh from the lab and hungry for knowledge.”

  The last joy went out of Horatio. “We’ll talk.”

  Goode nodded and left. Hamlet took Horatio’s hand tentatively. “In taking on this flesh, I called you friend, and when I took on flesh, in flesh you were—”

  Horatio said dully, “Rehearsal’s in three hours.”

  “Then we’ll have time to talk.” He tugged at Horatio’s hand happily. “Tell me, wasn’t my predecessor—” he coughed delicately—“planning a modern dress production?”

  “We put on part of it last night. How did you know?”

  “Freddy told me so—also that he’s sick and won’t be in. Poor man, he’s upset that he killed me.” Hamlet flicked a crust of dirt off his now-dry cloak. “Did I like him?”

  “Very much.” Horatio rose tiredly. “You trusted him.”

  “How sad for him. Well, let’s visit the labs together. I don’t seem to know much about them anymore.” Hamlet draped the travel-stained cloak about himself.

  They walked in silence. Horatio was grateful for that; there was something intolerable about the new Hamlet’s presence. He understood, for the first time, what Hamlet had gone through in the play, meeting his father’s ghost.