Flux

by Beth Goobie

  “What’s the matter?” asked Deller, coming up behind her.

  “Nothing.” Slitting her eyes ominously at the figure on the bed, Nellie opened the gate to the next level. What was important was that she act as if nothing unusual was going on. Under no circumstances could Deller or his mother ever meet her knife-carrying double. Deller was already muddled enough, confusing himself with his doubles. Just imagine what he would think of her if he met that gold-brocaded freak?

  “Let’s keep moving,” she said to Deller. Immediately the figure on the bed rose to its feet and stood as if waiting. Sending it a malevolent glance, Nellie stepped through the gate. “C’mon,” she hissed at Deller. “Hurry up.”

  He followed and she sealed the gate behind them. For a moment she stood watching, but no ghostlike blur oozed through the closed seam. With a sigh of relief she glanced around the room and saw the hazy outline of her double in the gold-brocaded dress, standing beside the bed. Swallowing hard, Nellie beat back a wave of panic. How had her double gotten here so fast? There was no gate near the bed, and no other way for her to have passed so quickly from the last level to this one. Hissing, she turned toward the next gate and opened it. Without waiting for Deller, she stepped through and adjusted to the new vibratory rate. There, as she expected, she found the hazy figure of her silently waiting double. Giving it her back, Nellie watched Deller come through the gate.

  “Three more levels to go,” he said, looking around. “Why d’you think Fen came this far? What was he looking for?”

  This is just like taking a morning crap. Same stuff coming out every time, Nellie remembered. “To see if anything would change,” she shrugged. Without another glance at the hazy figure by the bed, she opened the next gate and stepped through it. At least her double wasn’t trying to make contact with Deller. If she had nothing better to do than follow them around playing mind games, then let her. Grimly Nellie progressed through the next level, Deller muttering along in her wake.

  “This is the ninth level,” he said. “It’s the next one, isn’t it?”

  Nellie nodded. As she sent her mind into the closed seam before her, she sensed nothing unusual, nothing that would indicate the presence of the lab-coated men. Taking a deep breath, she drew it open. There before her stood the black charred barrier. “C’mon,” she said to Deller, and stepped through. As she did, the hazy figure of her double appeared to her left, also facing the singed wall.

  “So this is it,” said Deller, coming up beside her and staring at the scorched space.

  “This used to be another bedroom,” said Nellie. “Exactly like all the others. It had the same gates. When they took out the bedroom, the gates went too.”

  “Level ten,” mused Deller. Stepping forward, he ran a tentative hand along the charred wall. With a gasp, he stepped back. “It feels like—”

  “Like what?” asked Nellie, surprised. She’d also pressed her hands to the barrier to get a reading on Fen. It hadn’t given her the ooly-goolies.

  “Like burnt flesh,” Deller whispered.

  Skin, came the thought, as if spoken directly into Nellie’s mind. Whirling, she stared at her double, certain the ghostlike figure hadn’t spoken aloud. Then as she watched, her double stepped forward, passing directly into the charred wall. A dense humming started up, her double vanished, and the humming cut off.

  Nellie let out an astonished cry. She’d felt the moment her double had passed into the wall as if it had happened directly to herself—a sensation like a million tiny needlepricks of sound passing through her body. And there had been no gate, she was sure of it. Her double had simply stepped through the barrier that separated this level from the next without opening a gate, without even looking for one.

  Chapter 14

  THEY WERE SITTING at the kitchen table, waiting for a car- serole to warm up in the oven. A dense silence hunched over the room, broken only by an odd pinging noise the oven made as it heated. Tilted back in his chair Deller sat with his eyes closed, running a fingertip repeatedly over the bandage on his wounded hand. Slouched opposite, Nellie watched the tense line of his jaw, the twist of his lips as thoughts surfaced onto his face. Fidgets kept jumping out all over her skin. She wanted to reach across the table and touch the soft heat of his arm; she wanted to take off pell-mell in the opposite direction.

  “You think he’s already dead?” Deller asked abruptly, opening his eyes. “Kids die in those experiments, don’t they?”

  “I dunno,” Nellie said reluctantly. “I don’t remember much about that stuff.”

  Deller watched her through the muted green of his eyes. “So you really don’t know what they did to your brain.”

  She shrugged, glancing away. “I know it somewhere inside me. I can feel it hidden, like a secret, something I’m not supposed to know. It’s like a heavy ...” Her face scrunched up as she thought. “... blob sitting in my brain. Sometimes I get blurry pictures of what happened. Doctors in lab coats. White rooms full of machines. Other kids.” A thick shudder oozed through her, and she trailed off.

  “What were they doing to the other kids?” Deller asked quickly.

  “They were in machines. They weren’t dead. I don’t remember anyone being dead.” Nellie’s eyes darted in and out of his gaze. “No blood, or anything like that.”

  “Just machines?” Deller said hopefully. “That’s the way you saw Fen, right? In a machine?”

  “Yeah, and he wasn’t dead,” Nellie said emphatically. “I didn’t see any blood, not even bruises.”

  Deller watched her steadily, checking her face for lies. She stared back, feeling the desperate need of the moment, trying to carry its weight without a fidget or cough. Finally he lowered his chair and placed his bandaged hand on the table. Peeling back one edge of the bandage, he lifted it off. Quietly Nellie sucked in her breath. The stub of his missing finger was swollen, the flesh jagged and purplish-red, straining against the stitches that held it together.

  “I hated you when this happened.” Deller stared down at his hand, shifting the remaining fingers, letting them rise and fall. “I thought, ‘What did I do to her? Why didn’t she just come down when I told her to? Why’d she have to jump me and jam my hand into the fence?’—”

  “I didn’t jam your hand into the fence!” Nellie exploded.

  “I said that’s what I thought,” Deller said carefully, without looking at her. “That’s what I made up in my head so I wouldn’t have to think about what really happened, how we were ganging up on some girl we didn’t know, who just happened to be alone... So I didn’t have to think about what might’ve happened if we’d caught you.” His face contorted briefly, and he stared intently at his hand. Lifting it into the air, he spread his fingers and looked at Nellie through the gap. “This missing finger,” he said brood-ingly, “this empty space holds what could’ve happened to you. What I might’ve done.”

  Their eyes locked and Nellie found herself staring into the raw fear of his knowing.

  “I’m glad it’s empty,” he said hoarsely. “I’m just so glad there’s nothing there.” His mouth trembled and he hesitated. “Mom and me had a long talk last night,” he said finally. “About the Skulls and magazine stuff. We looked ... at a magazine. She talked about girls, about how they need to be happy. ‘It’s important for girls to be happy,’ she said. ‘Girls have secret private things hidden inside them that have to do with the keeping of life. With the making of life and the carrying of it. It’s a sacred thing,’ she said, ‘and you can’t fool with it. When girls are happy, everything is happy. The sky is happy, the earth is happy, you can feel the dirt smiling beneath your feet. When girls are happy, you’ll be happy, son,’ she said.”

  Taking a wobbly breath, Deller tilted his chair against the wall and stared at the ceiling. “When Fen disappeared I went kind of snake, I guess. I’ve been an incredible shit, but last night my mom did me the biggest favor of my life. Maybe now I’ll finally get things right. Skulls,” he said bitterly. “Numbskulls.
”

  Nellie was shaking, deep quivery shudders. Happiness—Deller and his mother had actually sat and talked about her happiness. “It’s still bleeding,” she whispered. “Where your finger was.”

  “I was putting the bandage on real tight.” Deller grimaced. “To punish myself, I guess.”

  “Maybe now you can stop.” Nellie’s eyes darted across his, then ran away to the corners of the room. “Because you didn’t do anything to me, Deller, not really. Except cut my hair, and that’ll grow back. And this afternoon you stopped your double from hurting my double, so that sort of makes up for it, doesn’t it? Anyway, the Goddess wouldn’t want you to punish yourself. She’d want you to be happy too. She’d forgive you, I know She would.”

  “The Goddess.” Deller gave a ragged laugh. “I should’ve known She’d show up sooner or later.”

  Their eyes snuck across each other’s faces, and they gave each other tentative smiles.

  “Hungry?” asked Deller.

  “Um?” Nellie fidgeted, her nervousness running through her like a live thing. “D’you think maybe we could fix your finger first?”

  “That’s all right,” said Deller, staring at it. “I’ll put another bandage on it.”

  “No,” said Nellie gruffly. “You do it too tight.”

  Time stretched as Deller stared at the wound in his hand. Finally he rose without speaking and left the room. When he returned he was carrying a tube of ointment, a cotton swab and a box of bandages. Silently he sat down and held out his hand. As she leaned toward him, Nellie was visited with a memory of her mother standing over her, gently smearing a sharp-smelling ointment onto a scrape on her arm. Taking a careful breath, she squeezed some ointment onto the cotton swab and touched it to Deller’s wound. He hissed and she whispered an apology, then he apologized for hissing. Slowly she peeled open a bandage, her mind like a freshly washed window, singing with light. Laying the bandage over the wound, she pressed it softly into place. A long breath lifted through her. She could feel the ointment sending itself into the wound in smooth easy wishes.

  “Feels better already,” said Deller.

  Nellie patted the tube of ointment, cotton swab and bandages into a careful pile. The silence in the kitchen was so excruciating, she was almost afraid to move. Then without warning, her stomach let loose with a raging bellow.

  A thorough grin took Deller’s face. Leaning forward, he said, “I’m hungrier.”

  “Betcha,” Nellie challenged.

  “You’re on,” Deller agreed.

  THEY LEFT FOR THE meeting soon after eating, double-riding Deller’s bike through back alleys until they crossed the river and passed into the West Haven district. There, Deller locked his bike outside a corner store and gestured to Nellie to follow. As they came around the back of the building, she found herself suddenly facing a group of young toughs wearing black caps low over their eyes. Without a word Deller stepped back and they closed in, soundless beyond the thundering of her heart.

  Rigid, Nellie stood, her fingers curled and ready to scratch. What was this, why hadn’t Deller warned her, she hadn’t expected any kind of handing over, a roughing up. Behind her someone stomped his foot, and she jerked in white-hot fear. Someone else snickered.

  “That’s right, girlie,” said the man facing her. “You’d best be real scared. We’re the welcoming committee for where you’re going. You’ve got to get past us before you see them.”

  Nellie’s eyes slitted and her heart slowed its thundering, giving her thinking room. So this was just a scare tactic. Probably the best thing was to look dumb and stupid—that usually kept bullies happy. “What d’you want?” she whimpered, raising an arm protectively to her face.

  “C’mere,” said the man facing her. Dressed in jeans and a black vest, he kept running one hand across the sweaty skin of his chest. Reluctantly Nellie took a step toward him and he leered, “Take off the headgear, cutie.”

  She removed the kerchief. Off to one side she could see Deller shuffling his feet and slanting sideways glances at the group. When this was over, she was going to grab that hand of his and twist it tight as a tourniquet, she was—

  “Closer,” said Mr. Bare Chest, and she stepped dead into the reek of sweat and aftershave. As fingers prodded the quarter-inch bristle of hair on her head, she tried to keep her shoulders from crawling up her neck. “I see three,” said Mr. Bare Chest, glancing at Deller. “I thought you said four.”

  “There’s one down the back,” Deller said quickly. “I can show you.”

  With a grunt, the man grabbed Nellie’s shoulders and spun her around. The world swirled dizzily, fingers poked at the back of her head, and she was given a small shove. “Okay,” said Mr. Bare Chest. “Her brains are toast, like you said. Take her in.”

  Abruptly the circle of toughs swooped toward Nellie and howled like wild dogs. Cowering, she counted heartbeats as they backed away snickering, then took off. A deep bruised silence settled into the alley, into Nellie’s breathing, her skin. Cautious footsteps approached and she looked up to see Deller peering at her, his face pinched and anxious. She felt exhausted, a pile of dust waiting for any breeze to come along and blow her away.

  “They did that to me too,” Deller said quietly. “They do it to everyone, just so you know to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Could’ve warned me.” Shakily Nellie retied her kerchief around her head.

  “Those guys know fear,” Deller said. “It’s their specialty. It had to be real, or things would’ve gotten worse until it was. C’mon.”

  He set off toward the street and Nellie stared after him, realizing this was all she was going to get—he wasn’t about to play hero for her, offer her any blood. Slouching in his wake she kicked savagely at pebbles, jettisoning her hurt bit by bit into the gutter. After several blocks it lifted, and she noticed the crowd gathered in small groups along the sidewalk. It was the fifth day of Lulunar and though no major celebrations were scheduled, small booths dotted the streets and people remained in a festive mood. Several children ran past wearing mirrored masks, and Nellie spotted a sign outside a striped tent in a small park that advertised a mindjoy artist. Everywhere she looked shop windows displayed statues of the Goddess, and most of the cars parked along the street also sported a blue-robed figure dangling from the rear-view mirror. Stopping in front of a booth with a sky-blue covering, she pondered a large display of Goddess jewelry. What she wanted right now was a set of Goddess knuckle rings, so she could punch out that bare-chested moron behind the corner store. One knock-out Goddess punch straight between the eyes, Nellie thought moodily, to send him on a quick trip all the way to the other end of Lulunar.

  “C’mon,” hissed Deller, tugging at her sleeve. “It’s in here.”

  Jerking her arm free she scuffed grumpily after him, then halted as he turned into a restaurant. Puzzled, she stepped back and scanned the building. Shoved between a pawn shop and a secondhand furniture store, the narrow restaurant looked like a gloomy afterthought. Sagging curtains obscured the windows and a dust-covered statue of the Goddess stood on the sill. Inside, the only customers were two old men drinking coffee at opposite ends of the room.

  “Two pieces of dengleberry pie with no whipped cream, please,” Deller said to the woman at the counter. Glancing at him she nodded, but made no move toward the pie sitting in the display case. “Are there any washrooms?” Deller asked, scratching the back of his neck. Again the woman nodded, then placed two forks in a cross on the counter. This time Deller nodded and turned to Nellie. “You said you had to use the can, right?” he asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” she stammered, her mind racing to keep up. “C’mon then.” As Deller started toward the back of the restaurant, Nellie saw the old man in the right corner glance toward them, then write something in a notebook. The other man coughed, and the air blinked a horde of invisible hooded eyes. Uneasily she followed Deller down a short hallway, past a door marked ‘Women’ and another marked ‘Men’. At a third doo
r Deller stopped and knocked quietly—four short taps and three long. The door opened and a man in a black cap gave them a cursory glance.

  “Three knives to the Elfadden,” he said.

  “Eye, throat and belly,” Deller replied.

  The man beckoned them through. Descending a flight of stairs, they entered a musty basement lit by a bare bulb and piled with crates. “Through here,” said Deller, opening a door onto a second room, also crowded with crates. At the back of this room, a third door opened onto a narrow tunnel. “The Jinnet bought the businesses on this side of the block, then dug a common room off the basements for meetings,” Deller said tersely as he led the way along the tunnel. “You can get to it from several of the stores. Saves anyone noticing the traffic.”

  As they approached the door that stood at the tunnel’s far end, Nellie felt a familiar shift deep in her brain and a sudden panorama of stars erupted across the inside of her head. Singing in shrill eerie voices, they swirled without discernible alignment or pattern. Dimly she heard Deller give another coded knock and stood, waiting it out as the stars faded from her mind. When they’d cleared she found herself facing an open doorway, Deller standing beyond it, looking back at her from a crowded room. Cautiously she peered past him, the memory of the stars’ shrill voices reverberating through her brain. She’d just been given a warning, she was sure of it. Waiting for her in this large dimly lit room was some kind of flux.

  She stepped through the doorway and immediately recognized the shadowy figures that stood about, jam-packing the place. Dressed in long-suffering clothes and rundown shoes, they were Dorniver’s street vendors and factory workers, mechanics and waitresses, the odd witch and healer. Here and there she recognized a face, but the rest she understood simply by the careful hunch of their shoulders and the weasely set of their faces. There were no priests in this gathering, no factory owners or City Hall administrators. Ahead of her someone shifted, and a break in the crowd allowed her a glimpse of a podium that had been set up at the room’s far end. Behind it stood a table with several seated figures. Instantly Nellie zeroed in on them. Obviously these were the big shots. Big shots always found a way of setting themselves apart, and in this room they’d chosen to sit while everyone else stood.