Head Full of Mountains

by Head Full of Mountains (retail) (epub)

  “You can’t talk,” he said, addressing the batches. “Right? None of you. What’s out there? A machine? A paladin?”

  One of the smaller batches made a sound, a sort of nervous whine, like his father’s dogs had done when Crospinal first began to stray.

  He stood. Now the faces moved, a flicker of interest, watching him.

  Crospinal touched his girdle, still anchored in place at his hips; then, around his neck, another vestige, his old collar. He held onto the loop of Kevlar with both hands, trying to remember enough details to form coherence. Images—his daybed; the blissful expression on his father’s face when conduits opened up to let him have his dose; Luella’s throne of light—he could not trust.

  A corpse, sprawled at the base of a dream cabinet, killed by a crew member on Crospinal’s behalf—

  That sound again, a whiff that set his heart racing.

  “Hello?”

  Could Crospinal convince himself that he was one of these graceful, silent batches, who watched him so placidly? Feeling somewhat monstrous, he took a third step, hands splayed before him, unsure if he would actually contact any of them, should they not get out of his way. Hidden, the child whimpered again—

  And a clear voice admonished: “Stop making a fucking racket!”

  Crospinal was stock-still when the man stepped as if from nowhere into the gloom. Unlike the batches—unlike himself—he was large and broad, a head taller, with hair on his scalp and face, and more down his bare chest. A strange, soft fabric had been wrapped and tied around his waist. His arms, folding, were as big around as Crospinal’s legs.

  The batches, unafraid, parted at the man’s approach. His skin, under the scrawls of hair, moving now into the light, was marked with dark symbols and glyphs. He put his hands on his hips (no girdle there) and said: “You need to rest more, and shout less.”

  He was not smiling.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Crospinal said. This was no apparition or projection. Though they shared a bond of sorts, he had not yet seen such a man.

  “You’ve been out cold a long while. You’re ill, boy. Rest.” His voice was deep, slow. “Have you had some water, or tried to eat?” He pointed with a thick finger, but Crospinal did not look where he indicated. “You need to get your strength back. Go sit down. Sit back down.”

  “I’m not thirsty.” Crospinal looked into the man’s shadowed eyes but could not read them, nor discern their colour. Eyes were blue, though once or twice in his journey, there had been green eyes, hadn’t there? He set his jaw. For most of his life there were no people at all. Except for his father. Were this man’s statements—about being unconscious, and being ill—more lies? Crospinal sure didn’t feel ill. He felt about as strong as he ever had. The passengers within had settled.

  The man’s expression lay somewhere between smug and patronizing.

  “They were scanning,” he said, “minutes ago. Looking for you, I presume. One of the cortexes, all the way out here in person, directing a small army. A paladin, you call them. On the move.” Nodding his head, he smiled now, or grimaced, showing poor teeth that looked grey in the lantern’s light. “Best remain here, with us. My friends here won’t hurt you.”

  Crospinal stepped to the side, trying to pass, but the man blocked him with a strong, open hand, flat and firm against Crospinal’s bare chest.

  “You didn’t hear me? I said don’t go out there. They’re looking for you.”

  Water here must be entirely unenhanced. The man’s teeth were rotten. And for food? What did they all eat? There were no dispensers, no amenities. Uneven hair had never been depilated—at least, not in a very long time.

  “Who are you?” Crospinal asked.

  “I used to have a name, a few lifetimes ago. I used to have hundreds of names. But none of them are any use. Not now. They’d call me a sailor where you’re from, but I’m just a man.” Extending his free arm—

  Flinching away, it took Crospinal a beat to realize he was not being reached for, and that the motion was merely to display the flesh of the man’s inner forearm: even in the gloom—despite the darker marks—Crospinal knew there was no implant, no inlay there. He saw tendons move, the definition of muscle, but no inlay.

  “You live here without tethers? Without a gate?”

  “Same as you.” The man lowered his arm and withdrew his hand from Crospinal’s chest (where flesh, newly exposed, surged with warm blood). “But I live clean. It’s not so hard, really, once you get past the worst. You adapt. Even down here. You know about this. You’ve been educated. If you can break free, leave all dependencies, you’ll be in the clear, right? Shake them off.” He stared Crospinal down. “Why are you here?”

  Crospinal did not know how to answer. He said, “My father died.”

  The man narrowed his eyes, a faint smile still on his lips. “Are you talking about a god here? Or was your father a man, like me?”

  “A man. I’m Crospinal. His son.”

  “He was probably all jacked up and fried out of his gourd. Did he raise you? Or did he catch you when you were older? How many years have you come around? I’d like to see your—”

  Crospinal jerked back from what was clearly, this time, an attempt to clutch his arm. “Don’t touch me.”

  “Shit, I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanna see. You’re an interesting guy. I bet you’ve got great stories, if you could get them straight.”

  By now, the batches had begun to shows signs of disinterest, fidgeting, with soft grunts. Some must have dispersed when he wasn’t looking; there seemed fewer. The dimming glow-sticks were lowered. One got down on haunches to inspect the skin of a grubby thigh. Another scratched at a temple.

  Crospinal stepped back again.

  “Your father was crazy. We all are. From getting here, I suppose. From too much dreaming. Maybe we were crazy when we went to sleep.” He tapped his temple. “Most of us wake up basket cases, that’s for sure. Heads filled with dope and broken memories, and we don’t know up from down. Haunted. Your father should have known that it takes more than a little surgery and a few parlour tricks to make someone like you into a son.”

  Crospinal said nothing.

  “I know what goes on. I spent time struggling out of a stat, trying to get oriented. I might even have worn a jumpsuit once, or had dispensers growing around me. Artifacts, falling from the ceiling. Controllers were happy to see me. Until a gate came along. I might have tried to continue with the mission, without ever knowing what the mission was.” He laughed again. “I was like them once. Eating pellets of cytoprotection, antiflatulents, drinking water laced with antipyretics and immunoboosts. Recycling my sweat, my piss, my shit.” He paused. “You know, I examined you—Crospinal—when you were recovering. When you were lying there, nearly dead. I learned a lot about you over the past few days.”

  Crospinal had been growing more and more tense; this last line—few days!—reverberated up his spine like a sharp wire. Looking at the faces surrounding him, suspecting ambush now, an impending attack, he saw only loose, blank expressions, disinterest. “I haven’t been down here for days,” he said. “And you don’t know anything about me.”

  “You’re wrong on both counts. I know you think you’re equal, maybe even superior to me. I know you’ve got a shitload of damage done inside that head of yours. You were better off when you lived here, with us.” Sweeping his arm to indicate the others.

  Crospinal stared. His heart was pounding so hard his body shook. “If you’re a passenger, why are you here?”

  “Because everything is bullshit. You know that.” He pointed at Crospinal’s girdle. “Look, I hate to break the news, whatever you think your name is, but you’re not even human. Did you know that?”

  At his sides, Crospinal clenched his fists. He looked at the batches again.

  The man said, “They don’t understand anything except devotion. Like little puppies. The lu
cky fucks. Know what a puppy is, Crospinal? Like you would have been, if you’d been left alone. Now sit. You’ve been standing too long. Let’s talk more after you rest. It’s the least you could do.” He came forward, almost touching Crospinal, and Crospinal had to step back again. From a few centimetres away, the strong whiff of the man’s scent was sweet and heady, and surprising appeal nearly dashed Crospinal’s resolve.

  “My friends here have been with me for a long time, since I arrived. I never tried to dress them up, though, or teach them anything. Intrusions leave me alone now. They’re loyal. They live with me. They follow me. Look: I don’t want to enrage you. I can see you’re enraged. Try to stay calm, because we have a lot to discuss. You were quite ill. I want to ask you some questions. I want to pick your addled brain. So have some food, some real food, and rest a while.” Indicating the area of the floor where Crospinal had previously sat, among the batches. Mere centimetres away, the man loomed.

  “I’m not staying here.”

  “You’ll get us killed,” he hissed. “If you head out there, you’ll get us fucking killed. Or you’ll get my friends killed. I won’t be impressed, either way.” He rubbed at his face, where the hair grew, at his jowls. Darker marks on his skin, in this dim light, moved across his skin like creatures, images of creatures, with long limbs, stalking—

  Crospinal drew in a sudden breath.

  “Just,” the man continued, right in Crospinal’s face, “as you’ll certainly get killed if you try to fight me.” Clapping Crospinal’s shoulder suddenly, his strong hand enclosing the knob of bone, a grip like metal. He pushed. “So sit the fuck back down.”

  “I don’t want to stay here.”

  “Don’t be a fool.” (Among the batches, the youngest child whimpered.) “Where would you go anyway? Run around out there until you collapse? Then do it all again? What do you mean to accomplish? What is there to get done? You have a god complex. That’s what your sailor gave you. Your father. Do you know what I mean?”

  “No.”

  “Sailors are gods, right? Paladins are gods. Men had other gods once, but they got lost along the way, like everything else.” He squinted. “All gods are selfish and vain. Gods demand worship. Gods demand prayer.”

  Crospinal tried to pull away.

  “And prayer’s a weakness. A sickness. People need to be careful about what they try to bring back.” The man’s grin exposed rotten teeth. “Light,” he shouted suddenly, raising his hands, and the ambients in the wall behind Crospinal flared: they stood, blinking in the new glare, while batches ducked and moved about, seeking cover from the light. There were dozens of them in the vicinity, some standing nearby, others reclined or sleeping, naked and filthy, on the floor. All around was littered with shreds of heaped construction materials, carbon rods, scales of raw composite. Toward the wall, heaps of feces. He could see it now, their toilet. Unrecycled waste.

  They were in a cove of sorts, opening up to a greater area that remained dark. The hub Crospinal had looked out over from the ledge opened up there, a vastness brimming with remaining night, like a weight, leaning in. Standing there, blinking, Crospinal again felt awed by the immensity of the world.

  Within the dark, several very bright moving points of light glimmered, impossible to tell at what distance. He saw no walls, no hint of higher areas. The sight was wondrous and humbling—

  The man had started laughing, breath sickly sweet. Within the cave of his mouth, a black tongue writhed. Ambients illuminated his eyes, not blue, nor green, but cataracted, and the marks over his body were not creatures at all but discoloured melanomas, crumbling dark patches of disease and dry skin. His scalp was blotchy; he scratched at it now, and there was blood. “I got some tricks,” he said when he could speak again. “And that, my friend, is how you tell us apart. I’m the real thing. Let’s see you try.”

  He circled now, pointing. “Your passenger fixed you because he thought that would make you his son. Fathers and sons haven’t existed in a million years. We like to think we’re smart, but we’re not. We’re pathetic and insane. Scrambled wrecks. It’s a blessing to leave memory behind. Now, sit. Eat. I won’t ask you again.”

  With his eyes still smarting from the light, Crospinal glanced behind himself again, saw the crude bedding, batches resting there, sitting or sleeping. Overhead was a local, lower ceiling, but arcing up, to blend into the vertical, and vanish upward. The active light from this cove faded long before the broader opening: he envisioned the bottom of the great wall, an illuminated pinhead where they had gathered, lost in the black cathedral of endtime’s night. The sailors inside him were awake again, whispering from their hiding places, warning him, but Crospinal already knew the danger.

  He walked back to the spot where he had woken, and sat.

  Somewhere out there were Clarissa and Richardson, and the machines that had repaired him. Somewhere out there—

  From the opening of a floor grille, lengths of old carbon rods grew; pierced on these, he realized now, were shreds of flesh. Food. No pellets here, no dispensers. But was this rat meat? Crow?

  Hunkering down before Crospinal, still grinning, one hand flat on the floor, the man stared. His glazed eyes glittered and Crospinal wondered if he was able to see anything at all. Two fingers at the second knuckle were lost, nubs rounded and smooth. Crospinal knew he would never be able to leave this place, not as long as this man remained alive.

  “Such a long time I’ve been here,” he said. “I’m so happy you’ve come back.”

  “How did I get here?”

  “I don’t know.” The man shrugged, dismissive. “I found you out there, and I carried you back. You were wedged between two floor plates crumpling together in some tectonic upheaval.” Demonstrating with his fingers, pushing together. “Awash with toluene. Heart beat thin, almost nonexistent. I saw them, searching. But you’re almost invisible, like me. The batches, well, they’re idiots, to be honest, when it comes to initiative. I waited for a clearing, picked you up, and carried you here.”

  Crospinal was staring at a grotesque tumour dangling between the man’s legs: wrinkled and olive-toned, it hung below the level of his garment and looked truly malignant. The man had paused but, realizing what had stricken Crospinal so, laughed again, grabbing and hefting the growth—which was loose, anchored in place by tendons. He squeezed. “Your old man never showed you his gear? Never saw him naked?” Bouncing what he held, gripping it. There was a shaft, the flesh darker and smoother than his knuckles. A hole at the tip of the shaft glistened with a drop of mucus. “Sometimes I think this is all that’s left of the old world. Maybe that’s what the sailors are searching for? Maybe this is humanity? All this talk about souls.” He released the painful-looking tumescence. “Fuck it. But a surefire way of telling us apart. You don’t have anything like this, boy, do you?”

  “No.” Something awful had happened to the man’s genitals: before the catheter had corkscrewed into Crospinal’s urethra, and the processor had bonded to his pelvis, his own penis had been as delicate as those of the batches around him.

  But the man laughed and laughed for some time, finally subsiding into chuckles. Those lingering about settled down, curling on the floor, scratching themselves, drifting off into darker areas.

  Crospinal leaned forward and snapped a carbon rod off at the base; the meat, dangling from the sharp tip, swayed. “You eat them,” he said.

  The man did not reply. His eyes glittered.

  Crospinal raised the flesh to his face, sniffed, and pulled it free. The rod had been honed to a sharp point. Between his fingers, the meat felt dry, almost like the sole of a boot. He rubbed his thumb against it, never taking his eyes from the man, and tried to bite off a gobbet, but the meat was tough, so he pushed the whole piece into his mouth, awkwardly, with a knuckle, and chewed.

  Sailors within began to sing.

  Staring at the dark ceiling, he listened to creaking from next door. The
noise had woken him. He could not recall falling asleep, yet it was 3:11. Nor could he recall the transition from sleep to lying here, awake, listening. There had been a dream, a confrontation? Details were gone now. Muffled voices. After a moment, he touched the mattress next to him, to see if his wife still lived with him, but his hand fell upon nothing but a damp sheet.

  The grace period, if it came at all, was at night, during times like this. He could not feel any tremors in his body. As if he was catching them unawares. Alerted now, they dashed back across time, and possibly space, to inflict him again. He held his hands up, watching them, but the room was too dark to see much of anything except the glowing red numerals of the clock.

  Grinding his teeth, he tried to prep for the shaking to return, listening to the floorboards creak, and for the talking, imagining the boy next door roaming the cramped apartment, from his bed to the couch, to his parents’ bed, to the dresser, and back to the couch. Were his parents even home? Who was talking? He seldom heard talking. He could visualize the furniture but had never stepped foot in the neighbour’s apartment.

  Why the fuck was the boy always awake?

  Sometimes on the stairs, when he was returning exhausted from work—forcing his limbs to continue for just a bit longer until he could shut the door and lay on his bed, close his eyes, dream he was sailing the stars already—they would encounter each other, staring until he was forced to look away.

  No one saw the shaking, except for the boy.

  Floorboards creaked.

  He had come to understand that the boy was trying to tell him something.

  About the one-way trip.

  A warning.

  Today, the last of the banks had been installed and activated. Ten thousand embryos, ready for their big chance. How often had he looked upon them, expecting the weight of potential futures, of myriad souls, to crash upon him and crush him, yet feeling very little from the innocuous tubes each time?

  And all twelve gates were active. The last of the twelve cortexes achieved max right before his shift ended. Twelve minds would watch them all as they slept, would guide them through the galaxies. A crowd of psychologists and biotechs and selected press stood at the base of the housing and took readings and notes and wondered at the implications. A milestone, to say the least. This one had been a woman from Denton, a doctor.