Behind Tran so Phengh were bookshelves. He stood, took down a volume at random, opened it. Blank pages. He turned to Simon. “You can’t help me. I do appreciate being able to hide out here for a while, and reflect, though I suppose it would have been better in the first place if you’d left me to my own devices. The dark gods that I mentioned were no longer on my trail.” He dropped the book — thud — onto the desktop. “I think I’m in love!”
“Gods? Loves!” Simon turned, laughter wheezing now, almost obscenely. “Young man, are you aware of our health and safety policies? Are you aware of our harassment policies? They are paramount if you wish to work for us. Listen; take a temporary staff card from that box behind you. We can get your training started. I’ll give you some brochures also. They’re backordered. All the info you’ll ever need to know about working for our little resort.”
Simon faced the wall. There was an awkward silence.
“You know,” Simon said at last, almost wistfully, “I had asked for someone to be sent up from management, to welcome new employees, but they have not responded. Budgets, I suspect. Board meetings and such.”
From a box on the floor, Tran so took a badge. He placed the cord around his neck.
“So long,” Simon said.
“So long,” said Tran so. Carefully he pulled the door open, peeked out, and left. There were no crawling gods, only the broken clerk, waiting at the counter with its back to him.
“How do I get down?” Tran so asked.
“Down?” The clerk, who had been studying its logbook, looked around.
“Yes. To the boardrooms. To upper management.”
“Simon told you to see someone? Down there?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very unusual.”
“Simon says.”
“Well, if you leave here, turn right, go down the hall outside — all the way to the end. Then turn left. You’ll see an elevator. Past the washrooms. You can’t miss it. Take it all the way to the bottom.”
“An elevator?”
“That’s what we like to call lift pods around here. Nostalgia suites, you see. Part of the whole package. The jargon. You’ll get used to it.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Tran so started walking.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Welcome to the team.”
“Thanks . . . And sorry about the bell.”
“Sir, you’re going the wrong way! Elevators are to your right!”
Tran so, out in the hall, had started to trot. “I know,” he shouted, over his shoulder, “but there’s something I have to do first.”
4. THE ANCESTORS
PHISTER, L15
A steady trickle of people emerged from the smoke and slow-moving dust billows that rolled forward over the tiling. Dazed, they advanced, trancelike, towards the car. With his filthy shirt pulled up over his nose, Phister drove slowly around these refugees, in wide curves, drifting from one side of the hall to the other to avoid hitting them. Some limped, some left a trail of blood, some were so grievously wounded they should not even have been able to walk. Several sat with their backs to the wall, sleeping perhaps, too exhausted to continue. Maybe dead. Regardless of their state, all ignored him.
The air held a hint of acridity, even inhaled through the soiled fabric of his shirt. Smoke, naturally, but there was also a reek of underlying chemicals, a tangy bite at the back of his sinuses. This noxious brew was further compounded by the growing odour emanating from McCreedy’s corpse, stiffening in the passenger’s seat, where Phister had finally been able to wedge it. The old man’s body turned greyer, curling further in on itself with each passing minute. McCreedy’s cheeks were hollowed, his eyes yellow, glazed.
There was grit under the tires, grit on the walls, grit thick, hanging in the air. Unseen filtering machines hummed laboriously, sucking and blowing with little effect.
Under their patina of dust, the oncoming people were darker skinned than he, and generally taller. With black, almond-shaped eyes. And hair, of course: dark and straight. Teeth, too. Streaked and bloody and dusty, but teeth nonetheless. It was starting to seem that everyone had teeth and hair except for him and McCreedy.
Who were these people? Shades? They had continued to coalesce long after he was sure there could not possibly be more, materializing by the hundreds: families, pairs, stragglers. A father carried his child, draped limply in his arms. The child’s eyes were open but unseeing. For that matter, so were the dad’s. An elderly man, naked — as most were — had been splashed with blood or paint across his chest, streaked with white powder over his face.
Like all the others, he drifted quietly by.
Ghosts, Phister thought. These people are ghosts.
On this one, a horrid abdominal gash let slip a grey loop of intestine. Phister stared at the exposed innards in dismay as, stoic, the wounded man lifted red-rimmed eyes to peer beyond, down the hallway.
Phister almost attempted, for maybe the tenth time, a stab at communication, but that dusty dangling gizzard made useless words fail in his dry throat.
There were bizarre animals, too — the likes of which he could never have imagined (except in the recesses of his moss-fever dreams) that scurried, crawled, slithered, or swooped overhead, emerging, like their human counterparts, from the roiling smoke and dust. The beasts, however, met his eyes warily, and gave the car clearance.
They too were going in the opposite direction.
In the first desperate encounter with this unnerving parade — breathing fast, adrenaline coursing — Phister had shouted at the people to stop, to help him, help his friend. That was before he realized these hordes needed more help than he did, and that McCreedy was beyond all help.
But did these people not understand him? Could they not even see him?
Only when he heard one finally cough did he cease entertaining the uneasy idea that they all might be dead, himself included, and that he was in a new world, a necropolis, propelled there by his passenger or maybe by what the hunter had done to him.
Whatever this place was, it was certainly not home. And he told himself that he should continue, driving stubbornly onwards, deeper into the turmoil, against the flow, that turning around and driving in the same direction as the fractured humanity would be paramount to admitting time wasted, or the near-futility of his own passage, and recent decisions he had made. He remained lost. All anyone really ever sought was peace, and yesterdays that could no longer exist.
Or they were running away from something.
Perhaps the real reason he wouldn’t turn the car around was that doing so would make him feel like he was heading back into a trap. Even though this level was a different one from where Cynthia’s treacherous lair had been. Oh, there had been a mad flight — which was how all these adventures ended, it seemed — and he had driven, at top speed, arms around McCreedy, for a long time before frantically taking another lift pod. Down? Or had it been up? At least they had left their pursuers far behind.
Closing his eyes for a second, a whirl of blackness rushed over Phister like a vacuum, and he shuddered. Back there, on the level where McCreedy had died, there existed a monster composed of discarded and very unpleasant memories. This horrible beast, now threatening to rouse itself, licking its chops, opening one bloodstained eye, would not be as easily thrown off the trail as flesh and blood. Was it getting ready to stalk the car? The monster could only remain vague as long as Phister continued driving and did not turn around.
Who could have expected these silent, wounded people? These bizarre animals? Obviously fleeing a tragedy of huge proportions, one that Young Phister was, for all his illogic and inability to confront his own demons, driving straight into. From one disaster to another, Reena would have said. From the frying pan into the fire. And McCreedy? What would he have said, if he were alive?
But he wasn’t. And Reena was so far away that he would never find her again.
Phister swerved the car gently past a du
sty, vacant couple. The man had a headwound that should have stopped him in his tracks. The pair walked on.
No one tried to stop him. No one tried to warn him from going any farther. No one had even asked for his help. Could he run them down, if he was so inclined? Perhaps the refugees would not even try to step aside or meet his gaze as they disappeared, thudding under the tires or bouncing off the hood.
Wringing his sweaty hands on the steering wheel, Phister thought for another moment about McCreedy’s sudden death, and of the nightmare fugue that had followed. He looked over at the inert body, unable to truly believe that McCreedy would never again speak, never move, never insult him.
Fumbling in the pocket of his shorts, Young Phister touched the strange brown rod he had taken from Cynthia’s vest pocket. The hunter. Rubbing the textured surface with his thumb, he fervently hoped the ancient device might dispense advice or otherwise make him feel somewhat better; it did neither.
He had experienced no more visions — unless a blackout could be considered a vision — and he could not duplicate whatever it was that Cynthia had done to activate the device. There remained a tingling in his limbs, and he was fairly certain that the innocuouslooking tube was at least partially responsible for his current dizzied state of mind, and that it had lent him the superhuman abilities he had found inside himself to escape Cynthia’s grasp —
His breath came in a great, sudden rush. He pushed his foot down on the accelerator.
“Get out of the way!” he shouted, voice muffled by his shirt. “Get out of the way!”
No one listened; he continued swerving.
Phister had told Cynthia he was not interested in being a victim of the hunter’s power again, yet here he was desperate for answers that might possibly lay in that alternate place, or in that calm, resolute mind. He would put up with pain for just one more episode. At least in that other place and mind there might be escape from the knowledge of McCreedy’s death, escape from the disappearance of Crystal Max, escape from all that had happened after. From the growing reality that he would never reach home. From that bloody monster, trotting behind the car.
He shuddered again and stepped on the accelerator slightly more to gain a little distance. All he had left was his hope to one day revisit that pristine place, replace his thoughts by those in the mind he’d discovered there. He would leave crippled Young Phister behind. Leave these thoughts and doubts.
Taking his eyes off the hall to quickly study the cryptic engravings on the hunter, searching for assistance in the marks, or perhaps to learn how he had found that strength to get away from Cynthia’s gang, a loud shout, from very nearby, startled him and he instinctively braked, pulling hard on the steering wheel and swerving, looking up just in time to see what appeared to be a small, extremely white toddler, naked, standing just a few metres in front of the wheels and waving its arms frantically as it vanished beyond the hood’s line of sight.
“Shit!”
Moving sideways through the grit — McCreedy’s body lurching forward in the seat — the car came to a stop.
“Not again,” Phister muttered. “Not again . . .”
There had been no thump this time. Thankfully. No scream, no sickening sound of bones splintering under the wheels.
Young Phister, hands trembling, wondered if what he had seen was human, or even real.
“Hello?” Half rising from the driver’s seat, he called out. The word, through the fabric of his shirt, was muted but echoed down the length of the dusty corridor. Ahead, from under a rolling tongue of thin smoke that was licking at the ceiling, materialized another dusty phantom. A man, this time. And then another. Marching, stoic, expressionless.
“Hello?” Phister’s voice broke. “Hell — ”
Clambering slowly up over the lip of the hood — real, but too pale, too pale — appeared first the small white hands, the domed head, the small torso of a young boy. Phister could only watch in horror as the naked child finally managed to pull his chubby legs up and, puffing, stood on the hood of the car. But when the toddler lifted his face to grin at Phister through the windshield, Young Phister’s blood went cold: there were huge gashes on the child’s neck, in three places. Flesh hung limp and grey.
“Hi yourself,” the boy said. “We meet at last.”
“Do I, do I know you?”
“Not really.” When the boy grinned again, he showed tiny, sharp teeth. “But first let’s talk about your inability to drive this thing. You should watch out, you know. You could have killed me.” Those eyes were cold and green and now they turned towards McCreedy, slumped in the passenger seat. “What’s up with your friend?”
Phister was dry-mouthed. He could not look away from the boy though he felt strong and growing repulsion. He said quietly, “That’s McCreedy. He’s dead.”
“Funny.” The boy’s eyes flicked back towards Phister. “Me too.”
There was a long pause. Fearful of what the answer might be, Phister asked, “Am I also dead?” For the idea that he was in a world of the deceased had never gone away, bursting to fruition again with the boy’s sudden appearance and comments.
“Dead? You? What kind of dumbass question is that?” The gashes on the toddler’s neck exposed raw gristle and dull bands of slack, lifeless muscle.
“I’m not? Then what about these people? Who are they? Are they dead?”
“What’s the matter with you?”
“These others.” With one arm Phister indicated the men, who were at that moment walking past the car. “Why are you the only one who can understand me?”
“Think I’m associated with these people? Is that what you’re getting at?” The boy seemed offended. “I don’t know who they are. Maybe they speak another language. How should I know?” He motioned. “What is that thing you’re holding?”
Phister looked at the hunter. He had forgotten he was fondling it. He held it up.
“Can I see it?”
The boy came forward to lean against the windshield. On tiptoes he reached across to take the rod, which he turned over a few times before finally harrumphing. “It’s empty,” he said. “Who was in there?” Patches of the boy’s skin were discolored, giving him a mottled look. His green eyes appeared without moisture and he did not blink nor waver his gaze.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Inside that thing. Who was inside?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a sheath from the archives. It once contained a DNA pattern. No? A human’s code was in there.” The boy handed the hunter back to Phister. “Someone pretty important, too, by the looks of it. With an army of nanites, ready to roll. They were in there pretty recently, too . . . Sure you don’t know who was in it?”
“Uh, no.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I found it.”
The boy stared for a while, not blinking. “Found it?” He tried to size Phister up. “So this dead guy, in the car. Did you bring him here so he could see a doctor? To get him fixed?”
“No. I came here by, well, by accident. I’m trying to get home. To bring him home, I guess. But I can’t find my way back. What . . . Who are you?”
“An old friend of mine used to call me dead boy. You could call me that too.”
“Dead boy?”
“Do you always repeat everything people say? It’s pretty annoying. But yeah. Dead boy. ’Cause to tell the truth, I don’t know what my name was when I was alive. Now I’m part of the world around you. You can call me what you want.”
“How did you die?”
“I’m not sure. Gardening accident, maybe. Possibly murder.”
“Murder?”
The leer on the boy’s face was horrific. He had turned his head so that the gashes opened wide. Phister swallowed hard. Murder. Did the boy know what Young Phister had done to Cynthia and her cohorts? Had he been sent to make Phister answer for what had happened? But the true question was: what had really happened? Did Phister even know what he had d
one? Was there any way that carnage could have been real?
“Kidding,” the dead boy said, and he chuckled. “Boy, you look like you could use a doctor yourself . . . I think the supervisor who reanimated me knew what had happened to the kid who owned this body, and maybe even what his name had been, but it never let me access that data.”
“Reanimated?”
“Didn’t I tell you that I was dead? Are you deaf? A supervisor made me into what I am today. How else do you think dead people get up and walk around? Nanites again, just like in your little tube. We might not be the same as we once were, and we might have different agendas — ” that grin again “ — but we can reach out and touch someone.”
Phister recoiled from the pudgy hand.
“Of course, the main problem is we have to go for regular treatments to stop these damn corpses from falling apart. So now that the supervisor who sponsored me has stopped responding . . .” Seeing the expression on Phister’s face, the dead boy said, “Look. I’ll give you a crash course in reanimation. As an ex-person, I play host to an army of tiny machines that keep this body moving and working and stop it decaying too much. These tiny little machines do the bidding of, well, of the world. They’re emissaries, you might say. So basically I work for the network. Understand?”
“No.”
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: if he’s being run by a million nanites, then why don’t they do something about those big ugly cuts?”
“That’s not what I was thinking.”
“My supervisor used to call them affectations. And I guess they are. You see, I do have a little bit of free will. I like these gashes.” With one hand he slapped at the flaps of skin. “What can I say? I like the effect they have on people. Anyhow, all those little guys inside me are starting to lose the battle now that Sam has powered down. So you see why I’m here.”
“Uh . . . No. I don’t.”
“For goodness sake! You’re on the medical level; I need a lift. It’s perfect. And when we do find a doctor, we can get it to look at him too — your friend. If you want. Maybe even at you. Although it seems that now might not be the best time to become reliant upon the infrastructure, if you know what I mean.” A knowing wink.
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