Head Full of Mountains

by Head Full of Mountains (retail) (epub)

  “The lost past drew closer, my memories more real. . . .

  “You were a flame in the darkness.

  “Of course, there was still paracetamol available, which might have helped, I suppose. I let it trickle into your dispenser. I was willing to sacrifice anything for you, Crospinal.

  “But I couldn’t sustain it.

  “I’ll never forget that spark in your eyes, and how, over time, that spark faded.”

  The station was absolutely quiet when Crospinal woke. For a second, he thought he was back in the pen, with father, wild-eyed and pacing, not having slept at all, but he was not able to retain this particular illusion. Ambients were dim. The metal rat was not around. Recalling his attempt to dismantle the elemental, Crospinal looked about for evidence of the carnage—tiny fragments of machinations; flakes of fractured shell; other residue—but there was none.

  He lay there, staring up at the ceiling for some time—curves of composite deposits covering a fine array of polymethyl—feeling sorry for himself. The controller watched from a corner, out of its league. Inside the canister, Crospinal was still able to move his toes. Pain was minimal. These discoveries did little to cheer him.

  “I’ve left the pen, father,” he whispered. “I’ve been in new halls and ended up with my ass in a box. I’ve been knocked out and dumped and busted up pretty good.”

  But praying was not the same without a mat, or without father, so he let his words fade. Along the farthest wall, within the narrow counter, the holes of the console were just visible under their cover, as if it might transform or otherwise offer some form of answer to a question he could not even conceive.

  What harm could there be?

  “Take me,” he told the controller, pointing.

  “I can’t.”

  “I just want to go over there. See where I’m pointing.”

  “I’m not allowed.”

  “Take me.”

  “Your heart is racing.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my heart. I’m ordering you to move me over to that counter.”

  After a brief stillness, the canister and support armature bearing Crospinal drifted closer to the console. Due to the angle of approach and his awkward position, Crospinal was only able to get one arm into a hole. With limited motion in his wrist, his fist penetrated part way. He could not find the bottom, so the hum was feeble, at best, though he felt mild energies coming up through the bones of his hand.

  “An elemental’s trapped me,” he said quietly. “I think it might have abandoned me here. Useless. I need you. Are you there?”

  But again the angry woman erupted next to him, standing so close the hairs on his head rose and every muscle in his body began to twitch. Crospinal heard the controller squawk. The woman’s face seemed right up against his own; he flinched but did not pull out.

  “I need to speak to my girlfriend. What have you done with her?”

  “You were told to stay away,” replied the woman. “You’re an abomination.”

  Crospinal’s hand was throbbing and his teeth stung. “You’ve done something to her. I know you have. She loved me.” Then, to his own shock, he said, “I’m coming. You’ll see. I’m coming to find her.”

  “You will not succeed,” she said.

  “And I’m no abomination. I’m Crospinal, father’s only son.”

  “Father?” She hissed. “You were named? Passengers are criminals and idiots. Do you know the damage he’s done?” The image flickered briefly. “He stole you, and raised you in isolation, as a monster. He mutilated you. He filled your mind with ramblings and hijacked data and nonsense about an awful past that should remain forever forgotten. You will not come any—”

  Crospinal managed to yank his fist free, for it had become somewhat stuck. His wrist tingled. His anger and frustration with the attitudes of the woman and the metal rat was tainted with a chill he could not stop from spreading. Mutilated, when he was an infant? The scars? Father had told him his arms were cut when his infant body had been freed from the placental wall; the metal rat had indicated some other, more deliberate source altogether.

  Too dark here, in the small recovery station, to see details on his skin, but he had rubbed the textures of his forearms many nights, to help him fall asleep—the texture a smooth ridge, fingers sometimes pushed right inside his sleeves, riding the tissue back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, patterns a glyph, from wrist to elbow, to lull him.

  Raised in isolation, as a monster.

  “Come, Crospie, I want to see you through my real eyes, not through loupes and accoutrements and eyes of the world. I want to look at you. Come closer.”

  Goodness knew what cocktails were being fed into father’s mind. At least, he seemed to be in a good mood. Crospinal had looked up from the sculpture he was moulding. He frowned. Next to him, a dog woke abruptly, aware of father’s agenda, and quickly became agitated, wanting Crospinal to please father, so it could doze and fade again.

  “Stand here, son, on the edge of the prayer mat. Don’t worry, I won’t touch you. I was thinking about how fast time goes by. I haven’t slept in ages. I feel as if we’ve so much work to do.”

  Crospinal rose painfully, knees popping, using a carbon rod to support his weight. He brushed static charges from his hands so they rolled down his uniform to the floor, causing the apparitions there to waver.

  “There you are. How are you today, son?”

  Crospinal shrugged.

  “Your arms?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my arms.” He did not like to stand this close to father. The ozone offgas from the gate was enough to make Crospinal’s eyes water. “It’s my legs that hurt. . . .”

  “Come closer. Unhitch your mitts. Let me see your arms. Push your sleeves up. Spandex, too. Don’t worry. Hold them out. Palms up.”

  “My arms are fine.”

  “Indulge me, Crospie. I’m an old man.”

  So he did as he was told. After some amount of struggle, Crospinal held one arm out, wrist up, sleeve bunched, so that father’s eyes, narrowing, could survey as if reading the delicate web transversing his exposed skin.

  When the instructions telling the canister to remain cohesive changed, the sides peeled away from Crospinal’s body with a low hiss; the upper portion rose and he was lowered gently to the floor by the remaining framework. All this time he had been trying to force his fingers under the waistband of the device, but the release, he knew, had not been the result of his efforts.

  Against his back, the armature angled downwards, to help him stand. Fragments of the canister drifted, piecemeal, recalled into the ceiling; the station filled with the stench of recycling.

  As his weight transferred to the soles of his feet, Crospinal knew he had changed. Not intangibly, not the way father’s death had changed him, or the way knowledge of death, or heartbreak had changed him, but physically, corporeally. Putting his hands down, he felt his thighs, where the bones ran true, from knee to hip. He was taller, straighter—

  Crospinal fell back into the support. The shaking in his body rose, uncontrollable, and he tried to move his hands over his legs again, to confirm the impossible, but was palsied with awe.

  “My legs,” he said. “My legs . . .”

  The controller did not respond.

  Levering up from the structure again, Crospinal took a step forward. Even the clench of his hand against the counter was stronger. No clicks when he straightened his leg, no popping from his knees—

  A poor-quality haptic bloomed around him and he was somewhat immersed. (Though he could still see vague outlines of the station’s furniture: the console; the counter.) From some other place, the metal rat watched him. From someplace safe.

  “You fixed my legs.”

  The elemental grunted. “That’s what I do.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because you’re
crazy. You had an episode. You recall? You became aggressive. You do not play very nicely. I won’t be sharing the same space with you again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You won’t get another chance. I was an ally. I was helping. You have no idea what you’re up against.”

  “I’m not dangerous.”

  “Let’s be philosophical about this. My curiosity overrode my ability to make a decision based on logic. I even repaired parts of your stupid costume when I couldn’t get a dispenser to show up. Changed your filters. Blocked the methylphenidate in your nerve cells, so your dopamine levels will seek equilibrium. And what thanks did I get? Please leave now. Just go.”

  “You fixed my legs . . . ?”

  The elemental remained silent for some time. Wherever it was, ambients dimmed. “Communicating with you has been exceedingly difficult,” it said. “I know you’re not to blame. I know some addled passenger taught you how to get dressed, everything, yet I’ve strained myself adapting to your primitive dialect. Your thought processes are stunted. When I called you a Neanderthal, I meant it. You’re worse than a trained monkey. I was patient and generous and even excited about my role. I thought the nightmare might end. Now I’m just disappointed. And damaged. You broke me into pieces. I don’t want to waste any more time. Leave my ward now, please. Good luck out there.”

  Crospinal had been touching his naked chest with mitts that felt smooth and cool and tingly against his skin. Pulling his uniform back into place, making sure the tendrils that fed the regulators did not get caught, folding the sides into place so the seals engaged, he marvelled at the ease with which his own limbs moved. Having decided that perhaps the missing ingredient was resolution for all that still ailed him, he asked, “Was a part of me taken out? Did father cut something out of me? You must know. You scanned me.”

  “I’m not telling you anything else. You’ve been rude and evasive and cruel. Now please leave. I won’t ask you again.”

  “Maybe I was—”

  The haptic of the metal rat collapsed, leaving Crospinal alone again, standing on his new but unsteady legs.

  INTO THE TREES

  Against the surface of a small data orb, like the ones that drifted through the abyss—hardly larger around than his head, spinning a metre or so above the old composite tiles he had paused upon—Crospinal caught a glimpse of his face. Dark, hollowed eyes returned his gaze, reflecting a distortion more than the result of the orb’s spherical surface and the halo of energy driving it. Startled, he tried to follow the orb, to recapture the sight—to make sense of what he had seen—but running had never been easy and now the act was downright unsettling: he tottered, off-balance, too high. Absence of pain was also disturbing, in a strange way, a lifelong companion vanished. His knees did not pop, nor did his bones grind together. He did not rock from side to side.

  Lurching a few clumsy strides, Crospinal stopped, breathless, to watch the data orb recede, heading abruptly toward the distant ceiling, where he lost it, drifting amongst the polymer mists and encrusted structural beams as it continued on its unknowable mission.

  He rested after the failed sprint, catching his breath, hands on his new knees. Despite his increased stature and improved posture, Crospinal felt dwarfed in these surroundings: the cathedral-sized auditorium he had been crossing humbled and reduced him to a state of insignificance: the world, though able to sustain, also seemed profoundly detached from any concerns he might have, despite what father had told him.

  Within clenched fingers, he literally felt the differences the metal rat had initiated in the shapes of his bones. Rubbing his mitts against the sagging material that had, until recently, been stretched to the limit by his gnarled patellas, he wondered if the tiny elemental truly had been benevolent, as it had claimed, operating on him with his best interests in mind, or had it done something less than helpful inside him?

  He straightened to continue, aimless and pensive, across the tiled floor of the massive chamber. Ambients were at mid-range but he could see no walls, in any direction. The tiles, large and brown under the soles of his boots, were uniform, and he could imagine the entire world, including the pen—before father arrived—once like this.

  Since leaving the recovery ward, Crospinal had come across few familiar features: no consoles or cupboards; no banks; nothing but a few flat tubes, with buried traces of plastic, and a cluster of sealed senders. No devices at all, save the vanished orb. Lots of open area.

  At least the engines thrummed, fundamental under the floor. He heard them, though not as frequently, as if they might be operating farther away, or in a different realm altogether.

  How much more than father’s cancerous body and his phalanx of apparitions had vanished with the explosion? Where was his girlfriend? Was her physical body somewhere, tethered to some remote gate? Would she live forever? So many hours he had spent with her, while she listened to his complaints and explanations, his questions and opinions. Or she’d whisper responses father would never say, abstract details that may as well have been in another, picturesque language.

  Father had told Crospinal that the world, and everything in it, was created for him and his sister.

  But that was the pen.

  Now father was dead, the pen was gone, and the world had transformed.

  Could other boys be setting out from other pens? Maybe standing at a console he might never find, calling manifestations through holes of their own?

  The world was not made for Crospinal.

  Father had been wrong.

  Or, worse, had lied.

  Plucking at his mitts until he could peel one off, tendrils popping free, Crospinal pushed up the sleeve and held the clinging insulation aside to look at the anemic skin there. The delicate scars mapped his forearm, bulging slightly, and reddened. He imagined his girlfriend, had a clear vision of her sharing a small cupboard with another boy, in another part of the world, a part Crospinal would never find. Maybe a boy who looked just like him but did not say the depressing things he said whenever she had acquiesced to appear. Maybe she was talking softly to him now, or laughing? Could she and this other boy figure out a way to make contact, skin against skin? He jammed his thumb into his bare wrist, as if to erase the marks. Unpleasant feelings were growing inside him. He did not like the direction his thoughts were taking. He tried to breathe.

  Another boy? Was this possible?

  He made a tight fist. Staring at the tendons as they moved, and the way the inflamed scars rolled over the stringy muscle beneath his skin, he fixed his sleeve and pulled his mitt back on, fastening the seams by rubbing them against each other. Feeble attempts of the Dacron tried to clean the follicles he had briefly exposed.

  Another boy might be the reason his girlfriend had told him not to call her to a console anymore. Another boy might also be the reason she was nowhere to be found, and even why he was exiled to this quiet expanse.

  Jealousy burned within the confines of his tricot. He had not known this ugly sensation before, or its name. He looked up again, toward the distant ceiling, and was surprised to witness a murder of crows passing suddenly overhead. One cried out, dipping lower, cawing, and he took this as a warning.

  Crossing over a stretch of spongy tiles, to where a series of harder, older flooring began, Crospinal mounted a gentle slope; he must have been on the slow base of a wall, an incredibly large wall, which loomed somewhere up ahead—though from where he had paused, the distant rise was nearly invisible and might even have been an illusion.

  How high could a ceiling get? The abyss, at the catwalks, and the distant girders visible over the dream cabinets, would be as lost here as he was.

  Continuing, he came across a cluster of carbon tubes so big in diameter that they rose out of sight. Had he perhaps shrunk? Upon closer investigation, the cluster revealed a neatly concealed periscope, similar to the one at the bottom of the pyramid shaft, behind the throne. There were
eyepieces and portholes in and around the pen, varied shapes and sizes, and through each the identical view, yet discovering new lenses always caused a moment of adrenaline in his veins. The familiarity, too, in such a landscape, was a rush of relief. Would he see mountains? Grabbing the handles, and pulling the eyepiece toward him, he waited a beat before putting his eye against the plastic—

  The landscape of ashes, baking under a red orb’s glow, stirred by dead winds. Shimmering, the orb was rising.

  Father had told Crospinal the world would continue without his presence. But where were the dispensers? He took a hit from his siphon. The periscope was the only device he’d found. Enough water in the reservoir for a day or so.

  When he died, who would be left to learn the truth?

  Crospinal thumped his loose hand against the eyepiece. There were no changes outside. He saw the expanse behind him, reflected in the lens, and he saw his own face, too, peering back. Any startling change he thought he’d seen previously in the orb was muted. He just seemed like Crospinal now, a little older, a little taller, a little more alone.

  He tried to clean the lens with his sleeve.

  Father’s death had not stopped the world, and Crospinal’s death, when it happened—which was inevitable—would not herald endtime either.

  There was another boy.

  Crospinal knew this now, with certainty; a punch, a cold draining.

  Somewhere in the world was another boy.

  He stared for a moment longer before releasing the handles of the periscope, which clapped back into place and sank. He had not eaten since the operation, though he suspected the elemental had taken some efforts to sustain him, or give him energy when he was unconscious. He said his own name aloud, shouting it, addressing the expanse beyond the porthole. If no one else was left to say his name, maybe then the word would fade and the other boy gain the advantage. Crospinal could not recall what the world had called him, that day in the back halls, at the perimeter of father’s range, with the dogs barking incessantly and flickering out, but it seemed important now. Had the crow been calling to him, too?