Head Full of Mountains

by Head Full of Mountains (retail) (epub)

  Crospinal searched himself for reactions to this particular vision but found only the calmness dreams brought. Could he live without father? He would soon find out. He knew where food was, even some stations beyond the pen, and he knew the locations of water spigots. Food of the world, water of the walls. The controllers in their lairs watched over him. He felt assured he would be provided for, no matter how far he ventured. The pen itself, and the structures father had drawn forth, the metals and such, would be subsumed if he left, but Crospinal would be taken care of, on some level or another. Like a torch, into the darkness.

  Did he need father?

  Dull clunking sounds, getting louder, brought him from his reveries. Unpleasant noises each time one of the cabinets in front neared the solid mass ahead and was either consumed or absorbed by it. Voices, too, low and guttural, in a language Crospinal could not understand.

  For the first time since realizing that he remained within the confines of a dream, Crospinal felt twinges of doubt. With the beginnings of a frown tugging the corners of his mouth, he continued to stare until the light source on the horizon grew strong enough to etch a seam between black halves and he saw creatures—taller than father, with long thin limbs and curved backs—hauling dream cabinets up from the water as they arrived and pushing them backward onto the flat mass they stood upon, making room for the next. Their faces were primal, ugly, and though Crospinal recognized the creatures as the force behind his girlfriend’s waning love, behind decay, isolation, and illness, behind every aspect of life that made it a difficult, useless slog (stunned with a clarity so rare it left him reeling), he saw himself mirrored in the expressions, in the poses, in the animal pungency of death that wafted across the water and raised his hackles.

  This dream, thought Crospinal, should end, right about now.

  Yet gripping the rails of the cabinets so hard his knuckles popped, he continued to float closer as the voices grew louder, and the sight and meaning and stench of the awful creatures became clearer. The dream would not let him go. Broad jaws, large, bright eyes, strong muscles straining as the dripping cabinets were pulled up, one after another. They were searching them, prizing the lids off. Perhaps a dozen sealed cabinets remained before Crospinal’s would reach the creatures’ grasp—

  But now they were pointing, and jabbering, extending their hands out over the water toward him: they had seen the open cover, and Crospinal himself, sitting inside, watching like a fool as he drew nearer.

  A flash of sharp teeth, the raising of clawed hands. Gnashing, and angry shrieks: they would tear him apart, shuck him from his tricot, consume him.

  “Screw this,” said Crospinal, and he stood, pitching headlong over the side.

  Scurrying, crawling, or even flying in the environs around father’s throne (back in the days when Crospinal didn’t roam very far, and he was smaller), there were other living things—though even smaller than himself, hairier, dumber, furtive. Apparitions were extensions of father. Elementals were machines, with their own brain. Devices had an autonomy but were neither alive nor very smart. Crospinal had not left the pen, or met his girlfriend (who was in some other category altogether), and his sister, as alive as Crospinal, was already long gone.

  Father called these other creatures animals, and they had appeared on the day Crospinal and his sister were pulled up from the womb.

  Haptics identified the beast he saw most often as a rat. A mammal, like himself, but a quadruped, a muroid, commensal, existing in the mutable world without protective uniforms. There were crows, too, but these were birds, and could therefore fly, living most of their lives up by the various ceilings. On the floor, crows were wary, one eye turned toward him. Crospinal rarely saw one up close.

  Not alive, anyhow.

  On the nutrient tiles, where the trees grew, there dwelt springtails, almost too small to see, and pinworms the size of his thumbnails.

  During the year of cognitive growth, Crospinal managed to trap a living rat, a young (or at least tiny) one, using concrete ephemera and found plastics: a circular Kevlar cover, a tie rod, and lengths of optic fibre he set up on one of the catwalks spanning harmer corner, with a protein pellet as bait. Briefly, Crospinal held a struggling body in his hand. Felt the tiny heart, with only a thin layer of Dacron to separate their flesh. He held another life in contact with his own and he had looked into the tiny, black eyes that held a distorted fragment of his own experiences, fears, and desires, defining what it meant to exist in this world, until the rat screamed, and bit down, and the yellow incisors pierced clean through Crospinal’s uniform into the meat of his thumb.

  He flung the beast, to plummet over the railing—surely to certain death; the next level under the catwalks, back then anyhow, was hundreds of metres below, an abyss.

  Whirring into action, capillaries of his uniform drew blood up the sleeve. The wound was glued shut. At this juncture, the processor had to deal with soft pellets of fecal matter that he let drop. Blanched, Crospinal had nearly passed out.

  Afterwards, father, frantic, inspected the healed wound, actually touching Crospinal, one hand gripping his shoulder, the other holding up his hand, lecturing all the while about the difficulties and dangers involved in opening uniforms, and about how hard saline was to produce, and how Crospinal should drink lots of water from the spigots to maintain intake of antibiotics. Then came the barrage of first aid haptics. Surrounded by setting bones and stitching skin; hydrating an unconscious patient with IV. How to deal with the bends when oxygen was thin. The patient was a dummy, in poor shape. Crospinal had taken part in these files a dozen times already, but father urged him to pay attention, to be careful, to stay close to home.

  He took a new pair of mitts from the dispenser, grown special for him, and let them settle over his hands and bond with his existing sleeves. His thumb throbbed with every heartbeat.

  Father remained anxious and moribund for weeks. Injuries distressed him to no end. “After all we’ve been through, Crospie. After all we’ve been through. You must survive. You know that.”

  The dogs yowled, fearful of infection.

  Colder than anything Crospinal had ever encountered, an absence of warmth, a draining, the water stole his breath. He had no time to think or plan as he sank, most of his air gone, until the soles of his boots touched a flat, smooth bottom. That contact revived his senses and awareness. The pressure was startling. The neoprene of his uniform and the shield over his head would protect him for a while, but there were tears and holes that succumbed to leakage. He might last a few moments, but not long, since his outfit was fairly compromised. He had never been submerged before. Baths and idle wading took place in the pool, in the centre of the garden, which was consistently fifteen centimetres deep, barely topping the shanks of his footgear.

  During one of father’s enumerable rambling episodes, when the mix of information and nutrients and whatever else flowed from the world into his skull seemed to alter his perceptions more than usual, father had said, eyes glazed, that perhaps the most peaceful death might be death by drowning. But until this point in Crospinal’s life, at the bottom of this cold sea, the possibility of drowning had been mythology. Now, water was a fist around him. Coldness seeped into his bones. He did not think he was dying, though he certainly would not describe what he felt as a modicum of peace.

  Behind him, a tiny light appeared and began to blink. He did not turn around to see the source, but the light seemed very close, almost as if perched on his shoulder. Crospinal stood underwater, inside a murky hemisphere alive with glittering motes. On the surface, he saw the bottom of a dream cabinet, a dark rectangle against a slightly less dark background, gurgling overhead. When he moved one foot to retain his balance, dense silt clouded slowly about.

  The light, when he walked, followed him.

  More cabinets rumbled above.

  (And a remote whisper, in the voice that had spoken to Crospinal when he stepped inside the
cabinet, said a few more words, barely coherent and urgent—breach in the line—breach in the line—breach in the line—before falling silent again.)

  Then the shield gave out.

  Gulping water, he covered his mouth with one hand, but too late: he felt his lungs abruptly stop. What was the thing about drowning? Crospinal took another few difficult steps, quite sure he remained, though heavier, alive.

  Cabinets grinding through water overhead.

  If he extended his hands, pushing upward and leaping, he might have been able to breach the surface with the tips of his mitts, but he had no intention of doing so, and giving away his position. He slowly released the last air that had been trapped in his body. His processor complained. He felt no fear, no panic. This was indeed restful. Bubbles rose, flashing before his face. Liquid had rushed to fill his body, rising and cold and strong, holding him down, but had not killed him.

  The light at his shoulder blinked faster.

  (From that faraway place, the voice said something else, a list of faint numbers, strung together.)

  There was enough illumination for Crospinal to see his own limbs before him, the vinyl and neoprene grey as he walked. His hands moved like ponderous water beasts, if there were such a thing.

  Dark shapes where the lanky creatures had been toiling were just before him; Crospinal discerned a large silhouette, faintly backlit from the brighter surface. He made his way forward, in a slow-motion struggle, staying low, lungs like stones, until he could follow clumsily along the front of the structure. Dream cabinets continued to pass over him and were noisily fished out.

  He came to a corner of the construction and proceeded along the adjacent wall, running his hands over the hard, smooth material. No composite, or plastic. No metal. He recalled the feel of a fallen girder, but not where he had seen or touched it. The water in his lungs was so cold it had started to make his head throb. Still, he was not dead. The surface of the wall was slimy and might even be some form of hardened poly he had seldom encountered.

  The flashing light dimmed (as the voice said, quite clearly, into his ear: Chamber full. Cycle complete. Biostasis eight eight. Reduction. Welcome back, passenger.).

  He found an entrance to the ramp that led out of the water. He knew this entrance was what he had been looking for, just as he knew where the ramp, as he ascended, would lead.

  Lifting his dripping face clear, he blinked away the cascade, in air so much warmer it seemed dense. Pinpricks of light turned to novas in the drops before he cleared his face. He had come up behind the creatures. The air moved in, replacing chilly water in his systems, pushing it out through his mouth and nostrils in thick streams. The chestplate of his beleaguered tricot was doing something it never had before, shuddering and thumping, yet transitions were fairly easy, now that he was better prepared. He breathed again, felt his collar fizzling as it tried vainly to reactivate.

  The beasts were still toiling, oblivious to Crospinal’s presence, sliding dream cabinets back, in his direction. There were five or six of the creatures, but instead of hundreds, maybe thousands of cabinets, there was only one.

  This cabinet lay sealed before him.

  Crospinal reached out slowly and caressed the handle, letting his fingers curl over the warm, familiar shape: the handle reacted, let him tug, and the cabinet door opened—

  Burning fluid exploded from Crospinal’s mouth, his nose, even his eyes; he felt himself collapsing, going black. The light that had been at his shoulder flared. (And as he fell, the cabinet’s faint voice seemed to be screaming, trapped in some remote enclosure: Remain still. Do not panic. Remain still. Do not panic.)

  He hit the floor, deadweight, in a cascade of slow water, carried forward to crash heavily on the grille. No, not burning fluids; these were cold. As his vision blurred and ebbed, he trembled, shivering, vomiting. The massive body of water was gone. The creatures and the ebony vault were gone. Traces of icy fluid ran over him as he lay there, beached and helpless. More fluids drained from his body, trickling his skin, running inside his uniform, which gurgled, sputtered, and did its best to either assist him or chastise him, but Crospinal swooned before figuring out which, waking moments later to cough and puke some more and expel liquids until he could finally lift his face clear of the floor. Snot drained down his lips and chin, and his head was horribly sore.

  On the green carpet (which was now soaked), he curled.

  “You okay?” the controller said. “What the heck happened?”

  The last of the water ran out of the open cabinet, to the end of the grille, where it cascaded down, onto lower levels.

  “I think I’m okay.”

  The residue was much thicker than water. Viscous, a gel.

  He wiped at his mouth, pulling strings of mucus free that seemed to be coming from the sacs in his lungs. So much mucus. He retched it up and pulled it clear.

  Above him, his dream cabinet—dripping and pinging under a green light that had not been there before—yawned wide.

  The controller was checking things out.

  Crospinal could still hear the faint voice, expressing concerns.

  A small console nestled in a recess nearby, with two dark periscopes, through which the desolation outside was obscured by scratch marks, cracked thumb plates, of no use whatsoever, and a pair of very shallow holes. These were under a thick covering flap. The grip at the bottom was stunted. No controller resided here.

  On more aimless days, Crospinal had sometimes visited—as he visited all the consoles he discovered ringing the pen, outside father’s range, seven or eight of them, but his girlfriend seldom appeared at this one. Several times he’d conjured the faint perception of a thin figure in a dark uniform, with a helmet obscuring the face, who lingered afar but did not speak or approach or even manifest very clearly. Mostly nothing. Invariably, Crospinal would end up beyond harmer’s corner, or grunting and hauling up the seven ladders, to the harrier lookout—which was where his girlfriend most often appeared, where Crospinal had fallen in love, and had had his heart broken.

  But he went stumbling to this console now, as fast as his crooked legs could take him, knees flaring with agony as they popped and failed and locked, running along the gangplank, lungs bursting, thick fluid spewing from his nose and throat and crying like a baby. He fell, in his haste, and scrambled quickly back up, as if pursued. When he thrust his arms into the holes, the sleeves of his uniform nearly separated from the mitts, and inside the lining, skin scraped off both forearms.

  “Hello? Hello? For goodness sakes, I need to tell you something.” He coughed, shook his head to clear the drool. Excitement threatened to burst veins inside him. “Hello? Please! I know you told me not to call you anymore. I’m not being needy or clingy but this is important.”

  Elusive static, flickering behind his eyes. Motion he could not follow. Then the faint buzz in his knuckles, up his metacarpals, into his wrists. The hair on his body tried to stand on end, held back by spandex.

  She was coming . . .

  “Listen,” he said, before he even saw his girlfriend’s face. “I know where other people are. I’ve seen them. Other people. Real people.”

  Now a body gathered—

  But not his girlfriend. A woman, as old as father, maybe older, with high cheekbones and a thin, tight mouth. Certainly not his girlfriend. Wearing a dark uniform, and translucent helmet, some strange manifestation from within the walls of the world stood cramped with Crospinal in the recess.

  Part of the woman occupied the same physical space as Crospinal’s lower half; where overlaps occurred, his muscles hummed.

  “Who are you?” he said.

  The woman glared, her face very close to his. The image of the visor almost touched his nose. He looked into her eyes and had the feeling that she could not see him very well, if at all: they were searching, moving. Her uniform was exactly the same kind as his girlfriend wore, with a stiff hoop at the ne
ck and the array of pockets at the breast, unlike any uniform available from dispensers Crospinal knew. The helmet had a large comm link, with a pin mic, and a visible siphon.

  “Is my girlfriend there? I have to talk to her.” Coughing up another glob of mucus, but letting it dangle, because he did not want to break contact. “Get her.”

  “I can hear you,” the woman said, her tone flat. “You’re out in the bay?”

  Her hair was pulled back tight, just like his girlfriend’s had been, but then again, nothing like that. A cowl, inside the helmet, extended translucent fingers in front of her mouth. The lines of age, even sculpted in light, were pronounced, harsh, the way father’s had become. She was old. He had to assure himself that no manifestation could touch him nor harm him. Not physically, at least. The apparitions she had brought with her, as faint as those of his girlfriend, spun like figments through the small station.

  “Listen.” He tried to take a deep breath, to prepare for his speech, his prayer, but his lungs rattled, as if depths of water remained inside his body. “I don’t know who you are, but she needs to know. The dream cabinet. I’ve told her about it, I’m sure. The booth filled up. A dream like no other. Because I held the door closed, only it wasn’t water, it was thicker, and I could live in it. I could breathe it. Can you tell her that? Is she with you?”

  “A stat? You were in a stat?”

  His chest ached from all this speaking, and from drowning. He tried to slow down. “I need to see my girlfriend. One more time. Have you done something to her? I travelled across a sea—like the one my father told me about—wider than any pool could ever be. And there were creatures there. Bad ones. Not apparitions, or elementals. They were looking for something in the cabinets. And I saw my sister, Luella. She was sleeping under water, inside a filled dream cabinet.” He clenched his fists inside the holes. “One of the sealed ones. I saw her face through the visor. She looked like me, as if I’d been preserved, for years. Not living out here, with father, getting older. She had a helmet on, but the grey one, and a fresh uniform.”