Head Full of Mountains

by Head Full of Mountains (retail) (epub)

  He was dying.

  They both were. Sooner or later.

  “Dad,” he said. “My legs hurt so much.”

  Father hid, ashamed, behind his crown.

  He wanted father to suffer.

  Every so often—after prayer of thanks to the refuge, for forming, and for the food pellets, and the uniforms, for the metallic walls and the structures that had solidified around them, for the halogens—there was an escape, or entertainment haptic (though Crospinal realized, even at a young age, that father came to enjoy these events much more than he did). Over the first years, the escapes were simple, of course, primary shapes and colours, interacting benignly, with no plot, drifting among soft edges and ambient, soothing sounds. They would both ingest a few pellets, brewed special. Crospinal would lie on his stomach and sometimes even doze as he was taken into the story’s realm. Father came along, too, and Crospinal knew him within as various representations: sometimes a fuzzy glow, or a kindly animal, or more like his true form, a man, but untethered, like he must have once looked, pre-pen. Smiling with teeth whiter than possible, father recited vocabulary lessons and basic rhymes, sang comforting songs, warned about the future, and tried, so hard, to recall evidence of the past.

  By the year of cognitive leaps, the tone of the escapes changed. Other characters were introduced, with more complex roles. There was the thin giant who proselytized, rather obviously, about the dangers of microbes, and a ridiculous light screen who always wanted Crospinal to hug its virtual form.

  Though encouraged to actively participate, Crospinal felt growing frustrations at the overall unsubtle agendas, and at his lack of ability to steer the haptic’s narratives; he would like to have guided the stories in directions he wanted, toward answers and stimulation he sought, yet the majority of his reactions and questions in the stories only caused the characters to hesitate, or frown, until he relented, and chose a more appropriate response, in a fashion less challenging to father.

  After a long bout of sleepless nights (a fairly common event), father once confronted Crospinal—as he stood there, open-mouthed—saying that the clips were prepared with love, and why did Crospinal have to ruin them all the time with his disdain for everything and his bad attitude and his inability to appreciate a wholesome plot. But this particular incident happened before father discovered that one of the solution conduits feeding him from the bank was cracked, letting a trickle of enzymes come into contact with the air of the pen, and thus ferment: father felt not quite himself. When relative equilibrium had regained, apologies were profuse, the cable capped (by Crospinal’s own two hands), but as father often said, damage was done.

  The outbursts happened several times.

  When he was older, Crospinal either took part in the escapes with passivity, surrendering to the incomplete stories or stuttering narratives—telling father afterward that he had enjoyed the entertainment very much, and had learned a lesson, thank you—or skipped the shows altogether, and the preceding prayer times, returning from his perambulations less and less frequently, and for shorter amounts of time, to face father’s consternation, admonishments, and the anxieties inherent in his apparitions.

  The only entertainment worthwhile to Crospinal were the ones when father abandoned haptics altogether, drifting off into a state of longing so comforting to Crospinal that, on the prayer mat, somewhat delirious himself, he would cease rubbing his knees and close his eyes in anticipation, awaiting the story, which would spill from father’s own lips, his voice altered, as if he were somehow dreaming, stories that would sweep Crospinal away, offer him a solace that had proven impossible to retain, and which he’d tried to replace, for some time now, by sojourns to the cabinets, and by meeting, and falling in love with, his ethereal girlfriend.

  “Picture this,” was how it began. Father, lifting his face, moist-eyed already, looking as if he were being transported from the pen, once again freed of the tethers that bound him, as if he were removed from the deterioration of life that was making itself increasingly evident with each passing day, to both father and son. Crospinal, hoping to be transported also, whispered the words back to his dad in such a way that it had to be catalyst for the visions he hoped to receive.

  “I had seen the view, a world of ash, swept under the flame-red star. Endtime. I came awake, in a blue uniform, and I ran. Winds circled, tearing ash from its place, spinning into parched vortexes. I looked out a porthole. The ship had changed. I was being hunted. I could feel them, whoever they were, hunting me. This was not where I was meant to be. An event had occurred, while I slept, changing me, changing all of us, changing everything. I was looking outside, at a dead world. Sometimes I think I was born, staring out that porthole, my mind coalescing, without past or history. Yet at other times I recall the other world, a lush world, my home. With a blue sky, and cold sea, and a line of craggy mountains.”

  Crospinal squeezed his eyes shut tight, mouthing the words, best he could. Part of the ceremony, of the desire. His stomach churned. He wanted to believe in a nicer place.

  “I wasn’t always this way, son. I know the steps I’ve taken led me to this place, where I raised you, and taught you. We can bring it all back. We can achieve it.”

  Nutrients hissed back and forth in conduits. Chemicals and information he was not searching for flowed. Crospinal did not open his eyes. He tried to keep fragile frameworks in place, structures upon which to build his vision, which he painstakingly scaled to move beyond his pain and insecurities, beyond grinding days of ennui.

  “Ash gives way to moisture. Grey darkens, takes on the scent I exude, here in my pen. Ozone. A storm’s coming. With the storm, winds, but not scorching winds, nor do they carry sand, or ash, but a coolness, soothing the land. When I was a boy . . .”

  Crospinal might open his eyes at this point, to see some metal tool, or even a small, dumb machine—the purpose of which might remain a mystery to both of them, when they later inspected it—coming up through the floor, or falling from the ceiling. Sometimes the pen itself modified, subtly, pushing back against encroachment. Hard edges delineating from the face of a wall, as if pushed from the other side.

  “I woke from a nap, smiling. Basked in the breeze, a harbinger of change, of youth, of freedom. Ash is crumbling, washing away. Because it’s raining now, and not the ridiculous oily rain that drips here, in great drops, marking the tiles dark, like a blight, nor like the fountains in the garden, but drops with the power to revive, to give life. The ash is washed away. Through the skin of the soil, green shoots appear, tiny shoots with two leaves each, lifting up into the air.

  “Other plants sprout nearby. These are larger, providing shelter for new growth. Real trees. Lightning splits the sky. This is a land of growth, of health. When you sit up, lifting your eyes to see what else the lightning has brought, the rain cools your face, and your hands, upraised to the sky. Water soothes your tongue, washing dust from your skin forever. Ahead of you, there’s a forest. The ocean is at the end of the road. You can hear it. Beyond, above the trees, cleaving the line between land and sky, breaking it down so you’re free to travel between the two, and rise up, are hills, which gather to reveal the line of mountains, capturing your breath, pulling you up, to disperse you, to bring you home. . . .”

  The haptic collapsed. Pinworms had moved quicker and quicker, a writhing mass, accelerated, alongside time, spilling forth from the cage of bones. Flesh was gone altogether.

  “Osteomalacia. You’ve had this since you were born. Rickets. Before you were born, even. I knew you suffered while you gestated. I tried to supplement your diet, Crospie, tried to get additional vitamins. I tried so hard. But there’s not much for me to work with here. I did the best I could and I know it’s not good enough. But you’re alive, Crospie, you’re here with me. You’ve retained a large amount of knowledge. You’re a testimony to civilization.”

  Was father also crying? Silent, he had turned away. The conduits at the
back of his head rolled against each other and obscured his profile.

  “It’s okay,” Crospinal lied, feeling awkward (and the tinge of a growing, perverse sense of power). “I know. I mean, I figured as much. About dying, I mean. We can’t go on forever.” He tried to smile. “Nothing does, right?”

  But then came the barrage, the litany of disease: hyponatremia; anemia; effects of low oxygen. The sour skin ailments of pellagra. Bronchitis. Pneumonia susceptibility. Cancer.

  Who could smile now?

  Insistent prodding under his arm caused Crospinal to groan when he wanted only to rest, to be left alone, hopefully forever. He wanted to sort out his own memories, once and for all.

  No apparition could be responsible for this intrusion. Not much could actually poke him. Fox? Or Bear? Hadn’t they stepped out? If only he were able to open his eyes, or form words, he could make the intruder cease this affront and return to the relatively peaceful depths of slumber.

  Crospinal’s legs, as always, were sore. But there was other pain, too, not just from his knees, or wrists: his head was sore—had he fallen?—and his chest, which was unusual.

  Something large moved, far away.

  Had father died?

  The prodding relented for a moment. He could not rest any more, not the way he had been, not in oblivion.

  Yes. Father had died.

  A sharp prick, through the sleeve of his uniform, directly into his skin, and darkness rose to enclose him once more.

  Flares shot through his body, exploding along the ridges of his spine and in the crevasses between the twisted loops of his brain. Partitions had sequestered or maybe even amputated whatever was needed to understand. Some had broken down, others had a way to go. Now he came awake. Shards of light had been waiting; they eagerly stabbed his eyes.

  Prone, in a very bright place. Dried blood raked across his naked belly. Below that—

  Struggling to breathe, to control rising panic, he saw that his uniform had been uncoupled, tricot pulled wide open, chestplate split, exposing his thin white chest—

  And, from the waist down, he’d been consumed by a shiny canister.

  Pushing frantically at the plastic rim to free himself, but his arms were weak and his hands remained clenched in futile claws. The canister would not budge. Sleeves and mitts intact, thankfully. When he tried to wriggle free, his entrapped legs would not move. Not at all. He could not feel his legs. Pushing down again, with the heels of his hands, but he was trapped tight and his legs were unresponsive.

  “Please,” said a soft but insistent voice. “Stay still.”

  At his groin, mounted on a flange at the mouth of the canister, a glowing plate—symbols blinking in red—made absolutely no sense. He had never seen these indications before, nor could he tell where the voice had originated from, though it was from a localized source, like a comm, or a mouth.

  The icon twisting above where his groin should be was of a large worm, with crow’s wings, curled around a rod.

  “What are you? Come out so I can see you.” Bands of muscles tightened in his torso and back as he tried to pull out again. His legs remained numb and useless. He strained, and craned, to see what had prodded him, and spoken, but to no avail on any count. “Let me out!”

  “Take a deep breath,” the voice advised.

  From behind the canister.

  Crospinal did what the voice said. He did feel marginally better, though his compliance irritated him.

  “You need to rest.”

  From where it had been hidden, at the foot of the gleaming canister holding firm to his deadened legs, emerged a sleek, grey . . . rat. Sitting back on its haunches, peering at Crospinal with red eyes. Not much bigger than his open hand, when he’d been able to open them, but the eyes—

  No. Not a rat.

  “Get me out of this thing,” he said. “Did you open my uniform? I’m gonna die of some infection. Could you seal it, please? And get me out of here.”

  The elemental returned his stare but did not respond or assist.

  “This is shit. Clearly there’s something wrong with you. Get this thing off my legs. I can’t feel them.” Crospinal was wondering why he had thought of the elemental as a rat in the first place: the limbs were clearly fine rods of titanium, the fingers lengths of another delicate beta alloy whose name he could not recall (though the haptics about metals and plastics and composites had been nightly for over a year), and the voice came from a small comm.

  Thumbs had been designed, in an opposable manner. The face was remotely rat-like, with those red eyes and a muzzle-shaped protuberance—no doubt to accommodate the artificial neurons, which would have to be squeezed pretty tight into an elemental this small—but any similarity to a living beast ended there. For his confusion, Crospinal blamed grogginess, but was beginning to suspect that processes and patterns of his own thoughts were changing, and for the worst, now father was gone. This was clearly an elemental, with an independent personality. More sophisticated, perhaps, than Fox or Bear.

  “Can’t you talk anymore? You seem advanced but you’re not doing what I ask. What happened to my legs? And close my uniform.”

  Now the metal rat read him. Crospinal felt the pressure sweeping inside his body, nowhere near as intrusive or as blunt as those he had endured in the pen, when his caretakers checked him out, but enough to take serious and rile him. “Hey,” he said. “You should ask first. It’s just rude. What are you looking for?” Trying to sit up, to prop himself, but his arms had grown tired altogether of obeying his errant will and remained inert at his side.

  “If you keep moving,” said the elemental, “you’ll need to be sedated. You’ll tear something. I don’t want to restrain you.”

  “You already have.” Indeed, when Crospinal attempted to wrench his body free one more time, not much of anything moved, except for the surges of pain, like steel filings blooming in his guts. “Can’t you just let me out?” He suspected he might cry soon, though he really did not want to. “I can’t feel my legs.”

  “Because your legs,” said the metal rat, “are broken.”

  “What?”

  “But the bones are knitting nicely. So stop fighting.”

  Crospinal had stopped. “My legs are broken?”

  “Both femurs snapped by a large fragment, flash-hardened, spinning laterally. Two fractures on the left, one on the right. The second fracture was compound. The bone severed your femoral artery. There were other injuries—punctured intestine, mild concussion—but your fractures were the most grave.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “You don’t understand me when I talk?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Then what? Don’t get excited. You seemed—I thought you couldn’t understand, that’s all. That’s what you said. An inner lock closed. Whatever was blocking it must have shifted or moved on. I extricated you from the wreckage and dragged you clear. Lucky to be alive, as they say. Only a few minor procedures left. Soon you’ll be right as rain.”

  Rain? He frowned. With the power to revive, to give life . . . “What does rain have to do with anything?”

  “You don’t know that expression? Right as rain means you’re going to be fine. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re in the clear. The debris has been dealt with already, but I haven’t moved you yet. I was waiting for you to wake up.”

  “That’s crow shit,” said Crospinal, testing the swear word again for reaction, though there was none apparent. “You just woke me. I felt you, poking me. You weren’t waiting at all. What procedures have you done to me?”

  “You know about operations and shit like that?”

  “I’ve been in haptics.”

  “You want grisly details?”

  “I can take it.”

  “Well. Skin grafts, for one. For your burns.”

  “I’m burnt?” What he could see of his smooth
chest seemed pale and bony and ineffectual, but undamaged. How many years since he had looked upon it? A few damp hairs, flat, copper-coloured nipples, like stains. The thin strands that connected the chestplate to his lungs were intact, but stretched into a web: both halves of his tricot had been opened, like a ribcage. He did not like to see his white skin, for skin was vulnerable and weak. Where the flange of the device trapped him, there were no visible burns, either. He looked at his hands, still in their mitts, though the Dacron was further damaged. His sleeves were frayed, too. “At least close me up. I can feel germs crawling all over me.”

  “You do realize your jumpsuit is virtually non-functional? If you want to be like a passenger, you’re meant to shed every few weeks. Otherwise the toxicity—”

  “Just close it. Release me.”

  “I have to take you back to my ward.” The elemental stared. “Now you’re awake, that is. You need to be in traction for about another forty, forty five minutes, slightly longer if you insist on moving about and asking incessant questions.”

  “I find this distressing. I have questions.”

  “Trust me, you won’t get infections on my watch.”

  Crospinal lay flat, very still, looking up at the composite ceiling, which was glowing with ambients. He was in a wide corridor, about as wide as the main hall had been, which skirted opal centre, back home, where the transfer tubes ended. Other than black marks on the wall, the fairly pristine area was mature but not rigid with age. He inhaled, smelling the unpleasant tang the world exuded when recycling. “Tell me everything,” he said.

  “Will you stay calm?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Like I said: a peripheral sector of the bay was sealed and the area excised. A wall was created. Who can presume why these things happen? If you’re daft enough to dwell upon them. There’s no rules anymore. Part of the structure broke away. Things like this happen now. But there aren’t usually people involved. Passengers or runners. That’s the conundrum here. Certainly not a cripple, head full of stories, all dressed up in an old crew suit. Did you have a helmet, too?”