by Beth Goobie
Muttering fervent apologies to the Goddess, Nellie took down the gauze curtain and slid it under the stack of filthy tea towels. Then she stood waiting, one hand braced against the windowsill, but the shack’s walls remained firmly in place and no further craziness swung through her head. As with most of her morning swoons this one was short-lived, but she knew what it foretold. Nights of odd dreaming were inevitably followed by days of flux. When the stars danced in her dreams, the morning air vibrated strangely, people’s brain waves changed, and it was a time of subtleties with new words suddenly appearing in the language, unfamiliar viruses surfacing and a universal slipperiness to the eye.
When she’d lived in the Interior, there had been no singing stars and no days of flux. There, nothing had been erratic and every aspect of a child’s life had been organized to the minutest detail. Family, school, religion and hobbies—it had all been as orderly as the night sky. In fact the slow overhead shift of the stars had dictated everything from the seasons, with their predictable weather patterns, festivals, and holidays, to each individual’s school, playmates, career, and breeding partners. Nellie clearly remembered charting the major constellations in class and studying the nine signs of the zodiac and their caste rules. Her star sign had been the Cat constellation, which represented one of the lowest castes, but it hadn’t meant much to her. Back then the stars had seemed irrelevant, nothing more than meaningless pinpoints of cold brilliant light, just as the blue constellation tattooed to the inside of her left wrist had held no significance, being simply the identity tattoo she’d extended like everyone else to be scanned at the security entrances to her school and apartment building, nearby stores, rec center, and library branch. All across the Interior, electronic billboards constantly flashed the message: YOUR GOVERNMENT CARES ABOUT EVERY CITIZEN. YOUR GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE AT ALL TIMES.
The Interior had held no days of flux, but Nellie remembered the constant feeling of secrets, as if another layer of meaning lay hidden behind everything she saw. As if, she thought, shivering in the shack’s early morning coolness, those secrets had somehow crept inside her and were growing there, like an innermost eighth skin. Creepy, creepy. Ooly-goolies. Muttering further incantations to the Goddess, she pulled off the man’s dress shirt she used for sleeping and dipped a grimy tea towel into the bucket of rainwater she stored in a corner. Then she gave herself a perfunctory sponge bath. A thorough morning wash had been something her mother had always insisted upon. While Nellie’s efforts could hardly be called thorough, she continued to obediently trickle handfuls of water over various parts of her body and rub herself dry every morning. Sometimes she used soap, but usually reserved it for her infrequent dips in a nearby brook. This morning she splashed water liberally here and there, then stopped to press her hands firmly against the small curve of her breasts. Eyes narrowed to slits, she considered. Had they grown since yesterday? She pressed harder, ignoring the pain. Maybe, maybe not, but one thing was certain—she was going to have to come up with a new solution for keeping them flat. Sleeping on her stomach wasn’t working, and neither was the thought-management program she’d invented after reading a newspaper article. The article had been about stress, and the small jiggling blobs on Nellie’s chest were certainly stressful, but the managing thoughts she’d directed at them hadn’t had any noticeable effect to date.
Nor had the bra she’d filched from a department store. The damn thing had stuck out of her chest like the front ends of two canoes. Well, one canoe—the bra had been so large, one of the cups had dangled ineffectually at her waist. Nellie hadn’t known anything about sizes, she’d just grabbed the closest package off the shelf. How was she supposed to know if she was a 48D or a 32A?
Muttering under her breath, she released her breasts and began to explore the hair at her crotch with curious fingers. When it had first appeared she’d tried to pull it out, thinking flux was finally taking over her body and she was about to be permanently transformed into a bear or a large hairy dog. Then she’d come across a discarded magazine full of naked women, and discovered every one of them sported a bearskin between her legs. The magazine gave no reason for the bearskin, nor did it explain why Nellie also had fur in her armpits and the magazine women didn’t, but she’d relaxed a little, realizing she wasn’t about to grow claws and fangs and start foraging for bugs in rotten logs.
She’d found other magazines since, in garbage pails and back alleys, and kept them as a reference for the changes her body was experiencing. Though she’d never seen her mother naked, Nellie could remember the electric razor she’d used to shave her legs. There were no electrical outlets in the shack, and the fine blond hairs on her own legs continued to grow. The mother she remembered had belonged to a small girl with smooth hairless skin. Day by day Nellie felt herself losing her mother more completely, through each small change in her growing body.
The one thing she continued to share with the mother she remembered was a small scar on the inside of her left wrist. Tearing open a package of oolaga candy, Nellie munched steadily as she studied the shiny pink mark on her skin. In the Interior her mother had never commented on their identity tattoos except to say “Stick out your wrist for the scanner, honey,” but the first thing she’d attended to upon their arrival in the Outbacks had been the removal of the Cat constellation tattoos. Both Nellie and her mother had been born under the sign of the Cat, and their tattoos had depicted a small crouched cat outlined in tiny blue stars. Nellie had been fond of hers, nicknaming it Starpurr, but no indigenous Outbacker sported a tattoo, and they were regarded with suspicion. Nellie’s memory of the operation that had removed her tattoo was vague, consisting of little more than a dimly lit kitchen at the back of a sparsely furnished house. She remembered perching on a creaky chair and sipping a sweet drink as a whispered conversation passed between her mother and an unfamiliar man. Money had rustled, changing hands, and then a sleepy darkness had enveloped her. Several hours later she’d woken to find her bandaged wrist throbbing painfully and her mother, wearing a similar bandage, smiling tearfully from across the room.
“We’re free, Nellie,” she’d whispered. “Now no one can tell who we are, and out here no one cares.”
When she’d removed the bandage several days later, the tattoo had been gone along with the small bump that had always sat beneath the skin on her wrist, slightly distorting the cat’s head. Though Nellie had pestered her mother, she’d never received an explanation for the removal of their tattoos or their escape from the Interior, but she knew they were somehow connected to flux and the dreams that drove Outbackers wild, tussling with their minds like a storm wind among trees. Signs of it lived in their faces, their startling tempers and wary manner, clues that revealed the way other realities kept tugging at the boundaries of this one, taunting and pulling tricks. True Outbackers walked as if the ground beneath their feet was always about to be transformed into the raging Funnerbye Sea, and they trusted nothing—not the things they were told, not the rumors they overheard, and certainly not the confidences they passed on to others. All in all, Nellie figured, she’d choose an Outbacker for a friend over someone from the Interior any day. The people you wanted to steer clear of were the ones who expected you to trust them and toss your own brain into the nearest garbage heap.
Having tallied up the new bug bites she’d gotten overnight, she tugged on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and spread the tea towel to dry. Then she tidied her nest of blankets, skewered her blond hair into a short ponytail and slid a small blue knapsack onto her back. Slipping out of the shack, she swung up the nearest doogden tree and crawled a well-known network of branches to the edge of the trees, where she dropped into ground-level foliage. Depending on the route she took through the tangled copse, she could emerge near a deserted quarry, a highway that traveled south toward the Interior, or the scrub that stretched toward Dorniver’s outskirts. Much of the area was used for bootlegging, dirt biking and romance, but in the year she’d spent living in
the shack no one had ventured into the wooded area that enclosed it. Still, she remained cautious when coming into the open, remembering the way her mother had hesitated in doorways those last few days, so tense her nostrils had flared.
Today Nellie crouched as always, scanning the surrounding scrub and sniffing. The smell of exhaust coiled thick in the air— some kind of vehicle must have recently passed—but the only sound was the rustling sunburnt grass and a scattering of siccna crickets. Crawling through the long grass, she tracked the scent of the exhaust to a set of tire marks that led to a burgundy van parked near the old quarry. Through the weaving grass, she could see several men smoking cigarettes as they set up delicate complex instruments that resembled mechanical birds, their long necks straining toward the sky. The men worked meticulously, checking and rechecking everything they did against instructions displayed on a small computer.
With a soft grunt, Nellie pressed closer to the ground. The burgundy van was sleek, a newer model that would be inconspicuous in the Interior but spoke volumes in the Outbacks. The Interior frequently dispensed officials beyond its borders to scrutinize the surrounding area, take notes and report back. When sleek unidentified vehicles were spotted cruising Dorniver, everyone laid low. Usually these officials were after someone specific, but they had the authority to apprehend anyone on a whim, and no one who disappeared into the Interior’s bureaucracy was ever heard from again.
The men’s voices were a vague murmur in the mid-morning heat, too distant to be made out clearly. Still crawling, Nellie had begun to back away when the approach of a second vehicle sent her flat to the ground. The dry earth throbbed as another van passed and pulled up beside the first. As she watched, a man got out and called to the others. Then he opened the back of the second van and crawled inside. Nellie’s stomach growled, but all thoughts of heading off in search of lunch disappeared as she saw a small child lifted from the back of the van into the arms of a waiting man. The boy was around five years old and obviously sedated. Blinking, he stood where he was placed, displaying no interest in his surroundings. Next a young girl appeared, followed by two others, until four children stood in a quiet line—three girls and one boy, all under the age of eight.
Nellie’s heart thundered and she was suddenly wired with fear. Bright rooms ... she was remembering bright rooms in the Interior, soft straps that trapped her arms and doctors and machines that brought many kinds of pain. Pain was a story. In those bright rooms of long ago, she’d learned to take pain and set a girl inside it, then give her something to do—crawl into an underground cave, mount a backyard swing and pump herself above the trees, or turn her into a free-winged bird—anything that would take that girl of pain and send her so far away, she would vanish into nothingness.
The bright rooms of the Interior, and what had taken place inside them, had faded years ago to a fuzzy blur in Nellie’s head. No matter how she struggled to remember the details she couldn’t, but now as she watched the children and the birdlike machines, she recognized the doctors of her memories—different men perhaps but the same kind of pain-makers, the same evil intent. Taking the hand of the five-year-old boy, one of the men led him to the centerpoint between the three birdlike machines and placed a wire-mesh helmet on his head. Then the man stepped back, leaving the boy alone, his eyes fixed in a dull stare, his hands relaxed and dangling as if there was no danger, as if the fear stiffening the hair on the back of Nellie’s neck had nothing to do with him, his life, its possibility.
One of the men held up a small device that emitted a series of electronic beeps, and the boy’s eyes closed. Slouched and nonchalant, the men smoked silently. Beside them the line of girls stared listlessly at the ground. Only the tall blond grass moved, swaying in the wind, whispering sweet-scented incantations to the Goddess. Without warning Nellie felt her mind buckle and give way, dropping her into a roaring darkness full of strange wild stars that pivoted around a central point. As she watched, radiant lines of energy connected and a central star blazed. At the same moment an electric current shot between the birdlike machines and the five-year-old boy stiffened, his eyes flying open, staring at something Nellie couldn’t see. A wave of iridescence passed through him and he vanished, his wire-mesh helmet thudding to the ground. One of the men started toward it, but another called out sharply, pointing to the laptop. The first man paused, waiting until the man with the laptop nodded, then moved in and picked up the helmet.
Crouched like a spitting cat, Nellie watched as one of the girls was led among the machines. Like the boy, she stood dully as the helmet was placed on her head and the man stepped back. Again the blond grass rustled, whispering between worlds; again Nellie’s mind buckled and she watched strange wild stars align as the birdlike machines hissed and another child vanished. The next girl was led into position, and the process repeated. None of the children protested—they seemed barely alive, drugged too heavily to whimper on their own behalf.
When all four children had disappeared, the men dismantled the machines and placed them in the back of the first van. Then they climbed into both vans and drove off, passing so close Nellie was certain she would be seen; but the vehicles continued on, leaving only the wavering scent of exhaust and a flattened area of grass struggling to lift itself, inch by broken inch, toward a thin blue sky.
Chapter 3
NELLIE LAY A LONG TIME beneath a bleached canopy of rustling grass, watching it ripple in the slurred rhythms of her brain. Ants crawled up the inside of her pant legs; a tiny red spider ran across her stomach. Gradually she began to stir, then sit up, feeling the oddness of her body as if she was a stranger to it, as if she’d been absent a long time and had just returned in order to relearn its meaning. Slowly the shifting pieces of her mind floated together and she was once again Nellie Kinnan, twelve years old and without a mother, and the men from the bright rooms had been here, right in front of her, wracking their evil on the bodies of innocent dull-eyed children. She remembered being that dull-eyed, she remembered the machines that had towered above her, their gleaming invasions of pain.
Getting to her feet, she followed the van tracks to the flattened area of grass where the birdlike machines had stood. With precise venom, she spat on each tire mark. Then she knelt, placing her palms on the blurred footprints the children had left at the center point between the machines. A coldness sang through her and she wanted to pull back, but forced herself to remain crouched in position, sending herself as far as she dared into the vibratory trail emitted by the children. Like a long ago thought, she could feel their passage to some distant place, their crossing abrupt and full of pain, tearing at the veils of vibrations that separated the different levels of reality. They were still alive, she could tell that much, but the vibrations they’d left in their wake throbbed with fear, and their destination was obscured. Grumbling and muttering, Nellie tossed handfuls of dirt over the place the children had stood, trying to cleanse the small vague footprints. No words could give meaning to this terror, no words could take it away.
DORNIVER WAS AN HOUR’S WALK. Moving quickly, Nellie steered clear of the main road that led to the city center, ducking into the undergrowth whenever she approached one of the shacks that dotted the area. Though she knew most of the local residents by sight, she’d never spoken to any of them. No one who’d seen her in the past sixteen months knew her name, though the Skulls had nicknamed her ‘Bunny.’ She’d read enough discarded magazines to know what that meant. “Nellie Joan Kinnan,” Nellie sang low in her throat as she approached the city’s outskirts. “Nellie Kinnan, Nellie Your-Mother-Loves-You Kinnan.”
Dorniver was a rambling sprawl that had grown out of itself like a tumor or a plague. Each building pressed against its neighbor in a vaguely menacing fashion, roads veered like quickly told stories, and the electrical system was so frequently on the blink that many residents relied on kerosene lamps and wood-burning stoves. It hadn’t taken Nellie and her mother long to learn Dorniver’s basic rule of survival: depend on
nothing and no one but yourself. Each municipal department operated within a larger system of bribery and fraud that extended throughout the Outbacks, the city’s tiny police force accepting payment from the same variety of sources as the City Hall clerks. Most of these sources could be tracked to a competing network of gangs, but some led directly to the Interior. Nellie’s first lesson in the relationship between the Outbacks and the Interior had come several days after she and her mother had arrived in Culldeen, one of the neighboring Outback cities. They’d been standing in a slow-moving checkout line at a corner store, and when they’d finally reached the till Nellie’s mother had asked, “Could you give me directions to the city housing registry, please?”
“Now what d’you want that for?” the dumpy middle-aged clerk had asked, shooting her a narrow glance. Cigarette smoke wreathed her head. Though it was mid-afternoon, she was wearing pink sponge curlers and a brilliantly flowered, short-sleeved housecoat. Fascinated, Nellie had watched the huge blankets of flesh fold and refold above her elbows.
“We’re new here,” Nellie’s mother had responded quietly. “We’re looking for an apartment to rent.”
The clerk had nodded, her eyes flicking across their bandaged wrists. “Take my advice, dearie,” she’d advised bluntly, ringing in their purchases. “Go to City Hall and you’ll be selling your soul to the devil. You’ll never get their noses out of your ass and they’ll be sniffing from a long ways off, if you take my meaning.”