Gravity Wells (Short Stories Collection)

by James Alan Gardner

  "She knows already."

  "And?"

  "No 'and,' " I told him. "We're both being civilized. Sophisticated women of the world. Although it would obviously be best for all concerned if I dropped Alex immediately."

  "She's right," Roland said. "Not that I expect common sense to prevail. You still haven't mentioned why you're here."

  "Just to chat," I replied, stretching as if my shoulders were stiff and casually reaching toward my pocket. "I thought maybe I could talk to you about Alex and…"

  His hand snapped out and grabbed my wrist. He pulled it tight to his chest and dragged me closer, eye to eye. "No games, Lyra," he said, his breath hot on my face. "No casual little chats. I know."

  He held up his other hand, the one that had been covered with the towel. The towel slid down his arm to reveal a parrot squeezed between his fingers.

  "I wondered why Jerith was so possessive of his damned parrots," Roland said. "I found out. And if you ever try to eavesdrop on me, I'll know it. If you can hear my thoughts, I can hear yours. Toy with me, and I won't act civilized like Helena."

  I opened my mouth to say something, but he interrupted. "You think I'm bluffing? That I don't have the balls to play vicious?" He put his fist against my face and roughly dragged the parrot's snout along my cheek. The moment the parrot touched me, Roland's fury screamed in my ears like a howl of feedback from an amplifier; then he pulled back the parrot and the noise cut off. "Now you know it's no bluff," he said. "No one gets into my head but me."

  "The same goes for me." I tried to snatch the parrot from his hand, but he swung it back out of my reach. His grip on my wrist tightened.

  "I don't need a parrot to get into your head," he snapped. "I know exactly what women like you think. 'Creepy Roland, ugly Roland,' that's always the attitude. With a pinch of pity thrown in, just to make it hurt more."

  "I'm not—"

  He twisted my arm and jerked it down hard. "Shut up!" he screamed. "I can hear you. I can hear you trying to decide which lie will pacify me. I can hear you wonder if you should come on to me, if you can stomach giving Roland a press of the flesh, ugly Roland will be so overcome… God damn you!"

  In blind rage, he swung his fist at my jaw. I managed to block with my free arm and took the blow above my elbow. The crunching impact hurt like hell, his knuckles hammering into me deep as the bone. Then he whispered, "Oh, shit," and his grip on my other arm went slack.

  I writhed away from him. He fell over facedown and stopped moving.

  For several seconds, I kept my distance, panting and rubbing my arm. He still didn't move. Had he fainted? Or was he just faking? But why? I thought of reaching for my parrot to see what was in his mind; but if he was just faking, that would infuriate him.

  I stretched out my foot and nudged him. No response.

  Harder. Still nothing.

  At last I bent beside his body and rolled him over. The exertion hurt my bruised arm but I gritted my teeth. Roland's breathing was very shallow. There was an odd smell in the air too, a thin, metallic smell. I sniffed more closely, his body, his clothes, trying to find the source of the odor.

  It came from his fist—still clenched tightly around the parrot.

  The parrot had been crushed like a handful of grapes when Roland's punch landed on my arm. Bits of its flesh bulged out between Roland's fingers and a dark fluid spilled over his knuckles.

  I pried his fist open, using a stick to lever the fingers so I wouldn't have to touch the blood. The smell grew stronger. The parrot looked like a squeezed rag. Indentations shaped like Roland's fingers had crushed into its body.

  The parrot had died and Roland collapsed. I wondered what he'd heard in the moment of the parrot's death.

  I dragged the roadies away from "Orange Puppy" and told them to hoist Roland into his bed while I got Jerith's medical robot out of storage. The bot was decades old, scratched in places, and tarnished around the sampling mouths, but it moved easily over the rough terrain and its voice was free of static as it asked me to describe the nature of Roland's problem. Jerith obviously maintained the bot with great care…which only made sense when the closest doctor was seven light-years away.

  I considered keeping mum on the circumstances of Roland's collapse, then decided to tell the bot everything. Medi-bots are programmed for confidentiality. Besides, no matter how furious I was that Roland hit me, I didn't want him to die.

  By the time the bot and I got back to Roland's hut, a crowd of people had gathered around the bed. Teary-eyed Alex knelt on the floor, holding Roland's hands in his. Helena stood behind him, her hand patting Alex's shoulder over and over again. I was reaching for my parrot to see what was going through their minds when a roadie spotted the bot and me. He raised a fuss, making such a show of dragging us over to the bed that I didn't have a chance to touch the parrot. A moment later, Helena drove the roadies and me out of the hut, saying the "doctor" needed room to work. Yeah, right.

  I headed off to my own hut. I shared it with Violette who did makeup, but she and the other roadies went back to the main hut, so I had the place to myself. Good—peace and quiet. I took the parrot out of my pocket and set it down on the dressing table. The others weren't close enough for me to hear their thoughts distinctly. When I touched the parrot, I only picked up myself and a background mumble from everyone else in camp.

  The parrot yawned itself awake, stretched, and decided to walk around the table a bit, sniffing at the powders and perfumes Violette and I left lying about. I wondered if the little animal was hungry. I got out some bean sprouts I keep for snacking, but the parrot just snuffled at the sprouts, then lay down on top of them.

  "Probably bad for you anyway," I said. I went outside for a moment, pulled a few blades of the local grass, and laid them down under the parrot's nose. One of its antennae waved above the grass briefly, but then the parrot pointedly turned away.

  "Not good enough for you?" I asked. "Won't eat anything but Silk?"

  The parrot stared at me without blinking.

  "There must be something else you'll eat. If the Silk came here as a weapon in the war, that was only seven hundred years ago. What did your species eat before then?"

  The parrot closed its eyes and went to sleep.

  I laughed softly. "You don't care what kind of garbage your barbarian ancestors chucked down their gullets. Only modern cuisine for you. I don't blame you—I probably couldn't stomach what my ancestors ate either."

  The door opened without warning and for a few fearful moments I thought it was the Singer. No. The shirt was buttoned and it was only Alex, but Alex looking grim and worried. "Roland wants to speak to you," he said. He didn't look me in the eye.

  "Roland is awake?" I asked.

  "He's awake, but he's not…" Alex's voice trailed off and he looked down at his hands. One palm had a brown stain on it. "He's not very good, Lyra. Maybe seeing you will calm him down."

  "I don't know," I said, wondering how obvious it would be if I just picked up my parrot from the dressing table and put it into my pocket, "Seeing me might only upset him."

  "He's asking for you," Alex replied. "He says it's important. Roland, he's…Women affect him strongly, you know? That's why he writes such good songs. Women affect him. Sometimes they make him mad and sometimes he just burns himself up wanting them. Most guys…this is hard to say, Lyra, but for most guys, being with a woman is nice and all, but it's not everything. Not to live and die for. But with Roland, it is. And whatever happened between you and him before he got all keyed up…I don't know. It's just, the only thing that calms him down when he's upset is attention from a woman. Talk, I just mean talk. But you have to go see him."

  Sighing, I stood and reached toward the dressing table.

  "Don't take the parrot," he said. "That will only complicate things."

  He took me gently by the arm and guided me away from the parrot on the table, toward the door. I tried not to wince—he'd taken the arm that Roland punched and it throbbed with
pain when Alex touched me.

  Alex immediately switched his grip to my other arm. I thought, Oh, shit, but he said, "Shhh, shhh."

  As we crossed the compound I tried not to think of anything. In my head I sang that Trash and Thrash song, "Damn it, slam it, break it; I don't want your repercussions." I sang it over and over again, hoping it would fill my thoughts, drown out everything.

  At the door to Roland's hut, Alex whispered, "Songs make flimsy shields, milady. I live in songs." He closed the door between us. I was left alone in the hut with Roland, and I was trembling in cold, cold terror.

  Roland groaned, "Lyra?" I didn't answer. I desperately hoped I would faint, shut down my mind…but I wasn't the fainting type. Had it been Alex? Or was it the Singer? His shirt was buttoned. And back in my hut he'd talked like Alex, fumbling for words, shying away from unpleasantness. But he'd told me not to take the parrot, and he'd known about my sore arm, about singing that song in my head.

  "Lyra!" Roland's voice was louder. The medi-bot whirred briefly but did nothing. "Lyra!"

  "What?" My voice was hoarse.

  "Lyra?"

  "Yes. What do you want?"

  "Come here."

  I stirred myself and approached the bed. Roland's face was pale but with flushes of pink on both cheeks. "I look worse than usual, don't I?" he said with a weak smile. "I know what you're thinking."

  "I thought your parrot died."

  "Oh, yeah. It died."

  "Looked like a traumatic experience for both of you."

  He gave a small snort of a laugh. "You know that phrase 'My life flashed before my eyes'? Not a completely accurate description, but it will do. I think my entire subconscious uploaded into my consciousness for a second."

  "Instant self-knowledge," I said. "If word gets out, Caproche will be crawling with mystics."

  "I think not," he replied, closing his eyes with a shudder. "It's not an entertaining experience. I'll probably kill myself soon."

  The medi-bot whirred through a long silence.

  "You think I'm bluffing," Roland said after a while, his eyes still closed. "Pleading for attention from a beautiful woman. No. Suicide is definitely an attractive proposition."

  "Because of instant self-knowledge?"

  "Because I have the parrot's blood on my hands."

  "Come on, Roland," I said, "it's a shame you killed the poor little thing, but it was only one small animal. It's not worth—"

  "Lyra," he interrupted me. "I have the parrot's blood on my hands."

  He held up his palm for me to see, the hand he'd punched me with, the hand that had crushed the parrot. It was streaked with rusty brown stains reaching down as far as his wrist. He turned the hand slowly and stared at his palm. I could see more stains on the back of his hand, where blood had squirted between his fingers.

  "It's in their blood," he said calmly. "Whatever it is. The telepathy. And now it's in me. The bot tried to wash the blood off, but my hand won't come clean. I wish I could remember that passage from Macbeth."

  Out, out, damned spot, I thought.

  "Yes, that's the one," he agreed as if I'd spoken aloud. "I'll wait a few days to see if it wears off. But I'm not optimistic." He lifted his head and looked straight into my eyes. "Instant self-knowledge conveys a certain amount of wisdom, Lyra. Wisdom says I can't handle knowing what other people think. Let alone myself. You saw it—two minutes talking to you while I was holding the parrot, and I went berserk. Ugly. Very ugly.

  "No," he said loudly, interrupting what I was going to say. "Don't, please. You were about to forgive me for hitting you. I'm in bad shape, and you feel guilty. Don't. Just don't. It's stupid. If you want to do something, stop using the parrot. That's why I asked you here. To warn you. Just stop."

  "Okay, I'll stop."

  He shook his head sadly. "You don't mean that. Deep down, you think I'm an unstable asshole. You think I can't handle telepathy, but you can. Well, you're half right. I can't handle it. It's too bleak. A while ago, when Alex and Helena were hovering over me, wondering if I'd had a heart attack or something…they're supposedly my two best friends in the world, and you know what they were thinking? Helena was going over names of other songwriters, trying to choose a replacement for me if I died. And Alex, he was scarcely there. I don't know where his mind was, but I couldn't pick it up. Stupid me, I expected some kind of sympathy…"

  "You can't tell me Alex didn't care," I said. "I saw him, Roland. He was crying…he was truly worried."

  "That's not what the parrot was broadcasting."

  "Then maybe parrots don't broadcast everything. I saw Alex right there beside you while you were unconscious, and he was crying, holding your hands…"

  I stopped suddenly.

  "He was holding my hands?" Roland asked. "While they were still bloody?"

  I remembered the brown stain I'd seen on Alex's hand when he'd come to get me in my hut.

  "God, no," Roland murmured. "Not Alex." I shivered. "No. It's not Alex."

  Outside, hurrying across the compound, I asked myself, So what? Alex or the Singer, he was just a person who recorded songs. He might come across like a lunatic, but so did half the other acts in the music industry. And even if he was dangerous, I was no delicate flower. Back when I was getting started, I'd sung in bars filled with street scum and run by organized crime. If the going got rough, I could handle myself.

  So why was I terrified?

  No time for terror—I had to tell Helena what was going on. How she dealt with the Singer I didn't know, but she'd kept him on a leash for years. If anyone could control the situation, she could.

  Before I knocked on the door of her hut, I took a deep breath. It wouldn't be fun to confess I'd eavesdropped on her thoughts back earlier.

  "Hello," I called. "Helena?"

  "Come in…" Her voice sounded soft and uncertain. I opened the door slowly.

  She was alone, sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at her hands. They dripped with brown blood.

  "Alex was just in here," she said quietly. "He had one of those little animals, you know, the parrots? Only it was dead. Crushed. Someone had stepped on it; I could see boot treads on its body. The poor thing was all broken bones and blood, and Alex…he smeared it on my hands. Just wiped it all over…"

  Her voice trailed off.

  I shuddered.

  She looked up at me sharply. "Did you say something?"

  "Clean the blood off," I said quickly, grabbing her by the elbow and moving her toward the sink. Our camp was supposed to ration water, but I turned the hot tap on full and pushed her hands into the flow, keeping myself clear of the splash. Stringy bits of parrot meat washed down the drain, and the basin turned brown, with the blood rinsing off her fingers. Even so, her palms stayed discolored with dark stains. I poured soap onto her hands and said, "Scrub. Scrub."

  "How can you be saying two things at once?" She made no effort to use the soap. "You're saying scrub but you're also afraid I'm going to hear…" She looked at my face, and her eyes focused on my mouth. "You aren't talking," she said in surprise.

  I stared back at her for a moment, then turned off the water and quietly walked out of the hut. I really couldn't say what I was thinking or feeling at that moment; but I was sure Helena knew.

  The parrot was no longer on the dressing table in my hut, but there was an ugly wet smear on the floor. I could guess where the Singer found the parrot that he'd used on Helena. He must have come back after taking me to Roland, then ground the poor beast under his heel.

  A nasty Way to kill the little animal…but a safe one too. The Singer's boot protected him from the brain-flash that stunned Roland when the other parrot died. Even the Singer must fear instant self-knowledge.

  But why kill the parrot at all? And why wipe the blood on Helena? A prank? Or an attack? Roland said the onslaught of voices made him want to commit suicide. Did the Singer want to drive Helena mad too?

  And what about the other people in the camp?


  Out into the night again—I rushed across the compound toward the main hut. I found myself trying to move quietly, hoping the Singer wouldn't hear me…as if the sound of my footsteps mattered when my thoughts were howling with fear. Bright girl, Lyra; but it was still a comfort to be stealthy.

  The main hut was lit brightly and I could see in through the windows. Music still played, but not "Orange Puppy"—something much softer, the volume so low I couldn't identify the tune from outside the building.

  The roadies had gathered in a circle to watch something in their midst, the way onlookers might surround two people arm-wrestling at a table. A few nights ago I'd seen the same thing, when our stage manager and my roommate Violette had challenged each other to a drinking contest: rum for rum, gin for gin, beer for beer, then back to rum again. We'd all crowded around, cheering and applauding. No one cheered tonight, but it was still comforting to see them together, up to their usual antics, and I was eager to join them…until I recognized the music.

  "Ghost of the Tattered Heart." The title track.

  I stopped cold, just outside the door. No roadie on the crew would ever admit to playing Alex's music for pleasure. Call it roadie pride—playing the boss's music is sucking up. Unprofessional. Not cool.

  As I stood there, frozen with my hand stretched toward the door latch, every head in the hut turned in my direction. All of them, like puppets in a show. Each had a smear of brown parrot blood on the forehead.

  The Singer stepped out from the middle of the group. He held up his hand and waved to me. A teardrop of brown trickled down his palm and dripped off his wrist.

  I ran.

  I ran through the night, wondering if they would chase me. Ugly images danced through my mind, all the roadies possessed by demons who were exactly like the Singer, howling after me in pursuit. "Lyra, you've been watching too many late-night broadcasts," I muttered, and kept running.

  In time I had to slow to a hard-breathing trot. No one was following me, not the roadies, not the Singer. If the Singer wanted to blood me like the roadies, he didn't have to track me in the dark; he could just wait for me to return to camp. I'd go back eventually. I had no choice—Jerith's protein synthesizers made the only human-edible food on the planet.