by Beth Goobie
“Now,” said Deller’s mother, plunking a glass of milk in front of her. “Drink this. And while you do, Deller can tell me your name.”
Glass halfway to her lips, Nellie glanced at Deller in time to see panic grab his face. Shifting in his seat, he took on a decided wariness.
“Name?” he said carefully. “I, uh, I guess I don’t really know her name.”
“Don’t know her name?” demanded his mother, settling into an empty chair at the end of the table. This close, the scent of tobacco came off her in waves, and Nellie could see the thinking green of her eyes. “But you said she was your friend, she’d gone looking for Fen.”
“Yeah, well ...” Deller’s eyes darted toward Nellie, as if trying to read her name on her forehead. A tiny grin crept across Nellie’s mouth and she drank her milk, letting him sweat.
“A while ago,” muttered Deller. “Well ...” He stalled with a long breath. “Well, a while ago Pullo nicknamed her Bunny, and the name kind of stuck.”
Instantly his mother stiffened. “Bunny?” she roared. Surging to her feet, she leaned across the table and slapped him soundly on the face. “Is this the way I raised you to behave?” she boomed. “Running with a pack of hooligans, scaring young girls, mocking them and stealing their dignity? Is this why I gave you breath?”
Flinching back in her chair, Nellie stared at Deller’s mother in stunned amazement. Rigid, the woman stood waiting for a reply, her anger coming off her in dense tobacco-scented waves. With her short thick hair, slitted green eyes and narrow face, she sure looked like Deller. But not weasely, Nellie thought. More like the way Deller could look if he smartened up. A lot.
Across the table Deller was a headless figure, hunched between his shoulders. “No,” he mumbled.
“Ssssst,” hissed his mother, lighting a cigarette and inhaling. “You know I don’t have no call with that kind of ugliness, boy.”
“It was way before I knew her,” Deller protested to the half-eaten hamburger on his plate. “Before she went looking for Fen. Anyway, it was Pullo’s idea, not mine.”
“Last time I looked, your brain belonged to you,” snapped his mother. “Now, I’m going to give you a few minutes to apologize to this young lady and find out her decent name, while I fetch some dengleberry preserves from the basement.”
With another disgusted hiss, she pushed back her chair and strode from the room, leaving Nellie and Deller staring with enormous intensity at their plates. Somewhere nearby a door creaked, and emphatic footsteps descended a rickety staircase. Then there was only silence looming over the kitchen table and pressing down between them until it felt almost solid.
“Look,” Deller mumbled finally, still talking to his plate. “Everything I did to you ... well, you would’ve done the same to me if you could’ve.”
Nellie considered, staring at her milk glass, then nodded. “Except for the Bunny stuff,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done that.”
Some of Deller’s stiffness left him, and his head ascended slowly out of his shoulders. “It is a dumb name,” he agreed, shooting her a glance, “but we didn’t know your real one.” Again his eyes darted across her face, then away. “So, uh, what is your name, Bu–? I mean, well, what is it?”
Nellie scratched and fidgeted. A cough claimed her throat and a sniff took over her nose. “Nellie,” she whispered finally. No one had called her that since ... She wasn’t going to think about it, she wasn’t going to think about it right now.
“Hey,” said Deller in a startled voice. “You’re not crying, are you?”
“No,” Nellie lied, but he’d already launched himself from the table, disappearing through a doorway to reappear seconds later with a thick wad of toilet paper. Gratefully she accepted it and blew ferociously. A lot of gunk came out. She mopped it up carefully.
“Nellie’s a nice name,” Deller said with forced cheerfulness. “Sort of like mine, really, except for the beginning and the end.” He fidgeted, playing with his fork as footsteps began to mount the basement stairs. “I expect,” he said carefully, a very weasely look crossing his face, “next we’re going to have to tell her about your hair.”
Nellie’s eyes shot toward him in absolute panic.
“Don’t worry,” Deller said wearily. “She won’t go after you.” He paused, then added, “And I shouldn’t have done it. But I didn’t know you then. Didn’t know you were living on your own in the bush, making do. You were just some girl ... “ He trailed off as his mother entered the room, carrying a jar that caught the light in deep rich purples.
“So, Deller,” she said brusquely, setting the jar on the counter and turning toward them. “How about you introduce us properly?”
“It’s Nellie,” Deller said quickly, rising from his seat. “Her name’s Nellie. Um, could you sit down please, Mom? We’ve got something else to tell you.”
His mother’s eyes narrowed apprehensively, and she scanned his face over a long drag from her cigarette. Then she nodded and settled into the chair at the end of the table. Standing, Deller skirted the back of her chair and came to a halt behind Nellie. Instinctively Nellie ducked, lifting an arm to shield herself.
“There there,” said Deller’s mother, taking her hand and squeezing it. “You’re in my house now, and no one’s going to hurt you.”
“Mom, she’s from the Interior.” Ignoring the interruption, Deller spoke in a breathless rush. “They did an operation on her there. I, uh ... well, we sort of cut off her hair for a trick, and you can see the scars on her scalp.”
As he spoke, his hands fumbled with Nellie’s handkerchief, lifting it from her head. Instantly air and light swooped in on her scalp, exposing her secret ugliness. The worms. Closing her eyes, Nellie rocked fiercely. This wasn’t happening; she wasn’t here and no one was touching her; she was going to climb onto the swing inside her head and swing herself out of her body, up into the clouds where it was safe ...
But someone was touching her. Two hands made of more than clouds and air were gently tracing the scars on her scalp. “Oh sweet Goddess,” clucked a voice wrecked by decades of cigarettes. “Sweet blessed Goddess. You said it was you that cut her hair, Deller?”
“Yeah,” came Deller’s glum voice. “We’ll be having a talk about that later, won’t we, dear? Sweet, sweet Goddess.”
Then Nellie felt herself gathered together like a heap of loose clothing and lifted into a warm fleshy lap. The smell of tobacco and hand soap enveloped her, and a hand guided her head onto a plump shoulder. “There there,” a voice murmured, stroking the frightened bristle on her scalp. “There now, there.”
Nuzzling into the softness, Nellie shuddered and shuddered. Great cracks opened within her, cracks she hadn’t known were there, and as they opened they released waves of sadness, long raw waves of loneliness and bewilderment. How had all of this happened to her, why had her mother been taken away, leaving her alone? “There there,” soothed the voice above her head, but the cracks kept opening, the sadness passing from her body into the one that held her until it faded quietly away.
“No more tonight,” Deller’s mother murmured. “The Goddess knows I want to hear about Fen, but we’ll just give her a bath and put her to bed. She’s too worn down. Then you and me got some talking to do, don’t we, son?”
When she slid into the water’s silky warmth, Nellie began to sob helplessly and didn’t let up until Deller’s mother had finished scrubbing the lice from her scalp and left her alone to get dressed. Lying in the water, surrounded by dead floating bugs, she felt the sobs gradually die off, her grief retreating into the place she usually kept it hidden. She shouldn’t have cried like that, she thought shakily, wouldn’t have, but it had been so long since she’d been surrounded by softness and warmth. Weakness had caught her unaware. She was going to have to watch herself more closely, toughen up those crybaby cracks. Clambering out of the tub, Nellie fought off a fresh wave of tears as she reached for the voluminous nightgown Deller’s mother had draped over a cha
ir. She was so tired she was staggering, her brain a dead weight. Fumbling with the door, she opened it to find Deller’s mother waiting in the hall.
“This way,” said the woman, taking her by the hand and leading her to a small bedroom at the back of the second floor. “You just go to sleep now. Deller and I will be here in the morning, and then we’ll talk some more.”
Nellie had never snuggled into such softness. Every part of her had been scrubbed clean, her skin gave off a fresh soap scent, she’d been washed down to the soft raw hoping of her heart. Alone in the darkened room, she lay listening to the gentle thump in her chest. She’d never felt this close to it, it was as if she could take one step into her skin and there it would be—the sad-happiness that lived at the core of her being. With a sigh she turned over, nuzzling deeper into the pillow, the movement brushing the sheets and nightgown gently against her skin. And suddenly it was too much, too much kindness and goodness touching her everywhere—any more and she would break into a thousand pieces, flying every which way. So she froze, locking her body into a single position until the ache of her arm went numb beneath her, then sank into sleep.
MUTTERING AND TOSSING, Nellie kicked against the unfamiliar weight that held her down, the warmth that clutched at her and fenced her in. What was grabbing at her, why was she so hot? With an emphatic kick, she sent the weight flying and came abruptly awake. Immediately she froze, staring at the strange room, its lumpy shadowy outlines and single arrow of brilliant moonlight that sailed through a crack in the window curtains and lay in suspended flight across the floor. Turning, she saw the blankets she’d kicked off dangling from the foot of the bed. Ah yes, now she was beginning to remember. This was Deller’s house, a bedroom at the back of the second floor. His mother had tucked her into this bed just like the made-up mother in her mind had been tucking her into an imaginary bed for the past sixteen months. And this is just the same, Nellie told herself sternly. Just made-up friendliness. Once you tell them what you know about Fen, their niceness will be over and done with.
Sitting up, she felt the warmth of the bed slip away. She’d come awake as cleanly as if the arrow of moonlight had pierced her brain, but something continued to nag at her, teasing the edge of her thoughts. Stars, she’d been dreaming about stars again. A familiar slide started up in her head, tilting to the right, and the room’s molecular field came into focus, the energy of each molecule flickering quietly in the dark. And then she saw them, the hairline seams that ran the walls and ceiling, and hovered midair. Gates. Turning to her left, Nellie scanned the rest of the room and let out a gasp. In the space between the bedroom’s open door and the wall behind it, and directly in line with the arrow of moonlight that lay across the floor, lurked a shadow too deep to be shadow, a darkness that could only be an opened gate.
She could tell immediately that this gate differed from the one that had materialized in the shack. No light shone through it, and the vibrations it emitted were only slightly quicker than those given off by her home level. Tuning out of the molecular field, she crossed the room and closed the bedroom door, then faced the open gate. Hovering inches from the wall, the shadowy opening would have been easy to miss if she hadn’t known it was there. Beyond it she could see the blur that would solidify into a copycat version of her home level once she stepped through and adjusted to its vibratory rate.
Reaching toward the gate, Nellie ran her fingers along the opened seam and was relieved to feel no wave of pain coming at her, no terrified scream lighting up the inside of her head. So the gate in the Sanctuary of the Blessed Goddess had been a fluke, nothing more. Relieved, she ran her fingers along the opened seam again. Who would have left a gate standing open like this? Had the traveler been intending to return and failed? The gate obviously hadn’t been used in a while, and this presumably eliminated Deller and his mother. Anyway, wouldn’t Deller have told her if he was able to travel the levels? Nellie shrugged. Maybe, maybe not.
She picked up the hem of her nightgown and knotted it at her waist, then stepped through the gate. Immediately she adjusted to the new level’s vibratory rate and found herself standing flat up against the bedroom wall. Turning, she discovered what she’d expected—a mirror image of the room she’d just left, with the same arrow of moonlight along the floor, same furniture, and an oblivious snoring double on the bed. Directly in front of her hovered the gate that would take her back to her home level, and superimposed over it was a second one, also open and vibrating at a slightly quicker rate. Adjusting her own vibrations to meet those of the new gate, Nellie stepped through it and turned to see a scene exactly like the one that preceded it—another silent bedroom, sleeping double, and superimposed gate. The third gate led to yet another bedroom and open gate, where a fourth gate opened onto a fifth identical scenario. Rarely had Nellie traveled so many levels in sequence and she kept count, not wanting to get lost. Unfamiliar vibrations were fine for a while, but levels were like mindjoys in one respect—if you stayed in them too long, you got queasy and muddled. She always looked forward to the moment she could cross back into her home level and get the uneasy buzz out of her head.
Nothing changed. Nellie went on and on, stepping through what seemed a series of endless open gates, darkened bedrooms, and snoring doubles. Then without warning, she edged through a gate to find herself in a dark closed-in place. Adjusting her vibra-tory rate, she scanned the area but found no sign of a bedroom or her double. Cautiously she stepped forward and bumped into some kind of barrier. When she pressed her hands against it, she could sense vibrations—very faint, but readable.
The image that surfaced into her mind was sharp and unavoidable—a boy with a thin weasely face stepping through a gate into a bedroom exactly like the ones she’d just passed through, except the double sleeping on the bed belonged to him. Nellie blinked and squinted, but there was no doubt about it—the boy was obviously the same one she’d seen last night in the cubicle. Now that he was standing, she could see he was slightly shorter than Deller but had the same brown hair and green eyes, though unlike Deller’s, his were slightly slanted. Staring about himself, he muttered, “This is just like taking a morning crap. Same stuff coming out every time.”
Suddenly the air at the center of the bedroom rippled violently and a brilliant seam of light appeared, opening outward. As the boy stared, two lab-coated men stepped through the gate. Beyond them Nellie could see only a blur, but when she probed it with her mind she recognized the rapid vibratory rate of the gate that had appeared in her shack. Crying out, she shrank back. As she did, the images began to fade and she forced herself to return to them, just in time to see one of the men grab the boy, upend him over his shoulder, and duck back through the gate.
Just before he passed through the gate, the second man turned back to the bedroom and raised a handheld device. Instantly the place filled with a blinding flash and Nellie felt a scream go up as the molecular field was destroyed. Shakily she withdrew her hands from the charred wall before her. So this was how Deller’s brother had been taken. Somewhere on the other side of this charred barrier Fen was alive, trapped inside a cubicle, his every neuron wired to a machine for some incomprehensible purpose. And he was a traveler. He knew how to walk the levels as she did.
With trembling hands, Nellie traced the scars on her scalp. Once the men had taken Fen, they’d destroyed the gate and its immediate surroundings just as her shack had been destroyed. Both of these gates had led her to Fen, and both shared the same rapid vibratory rate. Nellie tasted fear, remembering the lab-coated men who’d pursued her down the hall until she’d made it back to her shack. What if the room with the cubicles was right on the other side of this wall? Would the lab-coated men be able to sense her here, as they’d sensed Fen?
Panicking, she blundered back to the previous level and shut the gate. Then she stood in the darkness, listening to the soft snory rhythm of her double’s breathing, its whispery question of sound. Why was it, she wondered shakily, that wherever she went h
er doubles were always sleeping or staring at her in stunned surprise? Except for the one in the corner store, of course, but even she hadn’t tried to follow Nellie back through the gate. Why didn’t any of them travel like she did? What made her so different, even from her own doubles?
In utter loneliness Nellie made her way through the sequence of gates, listening to the dream-breathing of each double as she closed the corresponding gate. Back in her home level she sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the arrow of moonlight that was now angled up the far wall. Was she safe here, far from the place Fen had been taken, or could the lab-coated men track her vibratory trail to this level? Maybe it would be best to steal some of Deller’s clothes and take off for the hills beyond the quarry where only rumors and wild animals lived. But she was tired, so tired, and who knew what really lived in those hills, what kinds of gates could open there?
Slipping into bed, she sank into dreams and waited for morning to find her.
Chapter 11
YOU MEAN FEN—?” Deller’s mother stopped and pressed her fingertips to her temples, as if fighting off a stab of pain. “You’re telling me my son could step... can step,” she corrected herself softly, “into other levels?”
“Yeah.” Nellie nodded emphatically, trying to dislodge the sadness she saw in the woman’s eyes. “I saw him in the vibrations the wrecked level was giving off. It was very clear.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t a dream?” Deller’s mother assessed her narrowly. “You weren’t asleep and making it up?”
Nellie stiffened indignantly. “I can tell the difference between asleep and awake,” she sniffed, and the woman nodded, then gave a long sigh.
“She can do a lot of things, Mom,” said Deller, leaning forward anxiously. “If she says it happened, I believe her.”
“I do too,” his mother said softly. “I don’t want to, but I do.”