Gravity Wells (Short Stories Collection)

by James Alan Gardner

  And when I went back, the Singer would hear my thoughts coming.

  Maybe it didn't matter, I tried to tell myself. If I got smeared with blood and started to hear people's thoughts, was that so bad?

  Yes…when the thoughts belonged to the Singer. If his voice invaded my mind again, I truly might kill myself to get away.

  Passing through a narrow gully between two hills, I heard a voice call, "Lyra?"

  I looked up to the hill on my left and saw Jerith. Sweet, unintimidating man. "Jerith!" I cried. "Jerith!" I scrambled up the hillside and wrapped my arms around his neck. Awkwardly he put one arm around me. The other was thrust deep into his pocket.

  A moment later he took his hand out of the pocket and pushed me away. "You know about the parrots."

  "Don't worry," I said. "I was mad at you for a while, but I got over it."

  "Don't lie to me."

  I took his hand and pushed it back into his pocket. Then I put my arms around his neck again, stared him straight in the eye, and said, "Jerith, I am really, truly glad to see you. Okay?"

  He looked away. "You're annoyed I don't believe you. That's all I hear."

  "Then your goddamned parrot is broken, Jerith! The stupid thing broadcasts a tiny bit of annoyance and completely ignores the relief I feel…"

  I stopped shouting, started thinking.

  "Whoa, slow down," Jerith said. "Your thoughts are all jumbling together—"

  I interrupted him. "After Roland collapsed, Alex felt sorry for him, but Roland couldn't hear it. And you can't hear how glad I am to see you. They don't broadcast good thoughts, Jerith! Little irritations come through loud and clear, but not the positive stuff."

  "Lyra, that doesn't make sense," he replied, shaking his head. "It's hard enough to believe parrots evolved the ability to broadcast thoughts. I mean, there's no evolutionary advantage to their kind of telepathy, is there? Caproche's animal life is so primitive, other species scarcely have thoughts. So don't ask me to make another leap of faith and believe parrot telepathy is selective. Evolution is strained to the breaking point as it is."

  "Then screw evolution," I said. "The little buggers didn't evolve. They were summoned from hell."

  "Come on…"

  "Don't dismiss me! The things only eat Silk, right? Silk is a weapon, Jerith, you said so yourself. Eating Silk is like dining on dynamite. If they were normal animals, they'd eat grass or something."

  Jerith sighed. "Yes, it's unusual they only eat alien plant matter. But that scarcely means they're demons."

  "Okay, they're aliens then," I said. "They're aliens brought in during the war, the same time as the Silk. Come to think of it, Alex and I found a carrying crate for them earlier in the evening. One side for Silk, the other side for the parrots. A one-two punch: a biological weapon and a psychological one."

  "What do you mean, a carrying crate?"

  I described the box Alex and I had found: one compartment lined with Silk dust, the other littered with parrot bones. It was easy to imagine the box being parachuted in and crashing down harder than expected, killing a few parrots, ing a little Silk, then getting buried later in some artillery barrage. Who knew how many other boxes were still out there?

  Of course Jerith wanted to see the box immediately, but after my flight from camp I wasn't sure where I was now, let alone how to get back to where Alex had dug up the box. "You can find it eventually," I told Jerith. "If we get out of this with our brains in one piece, I'll help you look."

  "You really think we're in danger?"

  "Remember how I worried that some weapons from the war might still be active? Well, they are. The parrots."

  "Other races studied the debris of the war before humans got to Caproche," Jerith pointed out. "If parrots are weapons, why didn't the other survey teams notice?"

  "Maybe telepathy has different wavelengths, I don't know. The other races didn't pick up anything from the parrots, but humans just happen to match the wavelength of the original targets."

  "Maybe," Jerith admitted. "Telepathic races like the Laysens say they can read some species but not others. Still, the idea that parrots might be weapons…"

  I grabbed his arm and said, "Think about it. They're all over the place, they're brightly colored, they're happy to be picked up and kept in your pocket…I bet they even looked cute to whatever species fought here. They were bioengineered to attract attention and be adopted as pets. So the troops picked them up, and suddenly they could hear what their fellow soldiers were thinking: all the angry stuff, all the bland stuff, but nothing good. Can you imagine what that would do to morale?"

  Slowly, Jerith nodded. "If they heard all the bad stuff…the anger without the friendship, the lust without the affection…in a day or two, the soldiers would forget the enemy and start shooting each other."

  "Damned right they would," I said.

  With a thoughtful expression on his face, Jerith pulled his hand from his pocket. For almost a minute he stared off into the darkness. Finally he turned back to me. "Want to coauthor a paper?"

  "I want to live to a ripe old age," I said.

  "Why wouldn't you?"

  I gave him a quick summary of what had happened back in the camp…no, to be honest, I started a quick summary, a quick clinical summary, but somehow it got away from me. The stress, the terror, everything began blubbering out in half-sentences and tears, until he was holding me in that gingerly awkward way men have when they don't know what to do, while I was apologizing for getting emotional and wishing he were taller so I could bury my face in his shirt. "I shouldn't be crying," I said over and over again. "This is really stupid." And watching myself, angry with myself, I started crying again.

  In time, the force of my outburst drained away. I pulled out of his arms, turned my back on him, and desperately wished for something to wipe my nose. Jerith offered me a handkerchief. I whirled to face him, expecting to see his hand in his pocket, using the parrot to read my thoughts; but no, he was just volunteering the handkerchief because I needed it. I smiled with chagrin, then turned away again to give my nose a good blow.

  "Sounds to me like the Singer is just being a shit," Jerith said to my back. Maybe he was trying to comfort me, maybe he was only talking to avoid an embarrassing silence. "This 'come into my realm' stuff," Jerith went on, "that's pure stage show. Popular music often dresses up in demon clothes. I mean, Paganini in the 1800s, he encouraged the public to think he'd sold his soul to the devil. And farther back, in almost every shamanistic tradition, music was associated with otherworldly—"

  "Jerith?"

  "What?"

  "Stop being an archaeologist."

  "Sorry." He was quiet for five seconds at most, then hurtled on. "My point is, you talk about the Singer as if he's some malevolent supernatural force. As if he's got some sinister master plan. I think you're overdramatizing. This stuff back at the camp…toying with people is just what the Singer always does. That's his act, isn't it, when he's onstage. He spooks people. He gets under your skin."

  I had to admit Jerith was right.

  "So what he's doing with the parrots is more of the same," Jerith went on. "Smearing people with blood…it's all theatrics. Harassing people, making them sweat."

  "If the effects of the blood are permanent—"

  "I'm not denying he's dangerous," Jerith interrupted. "I don't want him smearing blood on me; I don't want to hear everyone being hateful for the rest of my life. I'm just saying he's not some demonic evil—the Singer is an ordinary punk getting his kicks by making a mess. A petty vandal, nothing more."

  My only reply was a shrug. If Jerith wanted to believe the Singer was an ordinary punk, I wouldn't waste breath arguing. I knew better. Nothing about the Singer was ordinary.

  "The immediate question," I said, "is what do we do now?"

  "Sooner or later, we have to go back to camp," Jerith replied. "You knew that, right? But we can wait till morning if you like. It's not raining, and it won't get too cold; spend
ing the night outside won't kill us."

  The longer I went without facing the Singer, the happier I'd be. And sunlight would give me courage…a little bit, anyway. "All right," I told Jerith. "A night in the great outdoors, huddled together for warmth. But I doubt if I'll get much sleep."

  He looked at me, obviously trying to figure out if I had intended any sexual overtones. I liked that look of uncertainty. It was refreshing that someone didn't know exactly what was on my mind.

  Sleep. Not comfortable sleep—the patch of grass Jerith led me to wasn't as soft as advertised—but I did sleep, deeply and with ugly dreams.

  The dreams were broken by a voice: "Are you awake? Are you awake?" whispered over and over again, until I surfaced from confusion and opened my eyes. I closed them again immediately, appalled by the brightness around me. Even with the light red-filtered through my eyelids, it was bright enough to be painful. I tried to scrunch my eyes shut more tightly.

  "I take it the damned sun has risen," I growled. "Top of the morning to you, Jerith, but if you don't want a punch in the nose, you'll let me go back to sleep."

  "Ah, milady," whispered a voice in my ear, "yond light is not daylight; I know it, I. It is some meteor that the sun exhales to be to thee this night a torchbearer and light thee on thy way to…well, let thy destination remain unspoken."

  Chilled, I opened my eyes again. The Singer was there, kneeling beside me. "A passage from Romeo and Juliet," he said. "Their last scene together. Or more precisely, the last scene with both of them alive." He smiled.

  The sky above his head was still black, flecked with stars. Off to one side, several anti-grav platforms floated in the air, holding the huge beam-lamps we had brought for recording at night. The lights all aimed at me, as if I were a surgery patient on an operating table.

  I jerked up to a sitting position and looked around for Jerith. He was gone. The grass he'd slept on still showed the imprint of his body.

  "What did you do with him?" I asked.

  "I anointed him," the Singer said, "rather forcibly. Specifically, I tucked a pretty little parrot under his hand while he slept, then crushed hand and parrot under my heel. The pain woke him briefly, but with the lovely jumble of thoughts that rose in his mind as the parrot died…ah, well, he passed out again. I kindly instructed one of Jerith's robots to carry his body back to camp. Very cooperative machines, those robots."

  Another robot picked its way through the grass toward us, the blue lights from its eyes sweeping the ground for safe places to plant its feet. "Grab this man!" I shouted to the bot. "He wants to hurt me."

  The bot's attention remained fixed on the ground.

  "Alas, milady," said the Singer, "some petty vandal damaged its direct audio input with a laser drill. Now it can only respond to radio instructions." He drew a tiny radio transmitter from his pocket and spoke into it. "Please carry the lovely Lyra to that bunker over there." His finger pointed to a squat concrete building set into a nearby hill. Turning back to me, he said, "Worry not, milady. This machine is programmed for transporting archaeological artifacts, so it will bear you quite gently…unless you force it to exert its strength."

  I didn't have time to get away. Before I could twitch a muscle, the bot had snared my ankle with one of its steel cable tentacles. I tried one desperate yank with my leg, hoping to catch it off balance and topple it forward to the grass; but the bot was firmly planted and far too heavy for me to dislodge. Patiently, it stretched out more tentacles and I couldn't avoid them all. In a matter of seconds, I was well and truly webbed in.

  "A pity we had no tape rolling," the Singer said, gazing down on my trussed-up body. "Your struggles would have made good footage."

  "Footage for what?"

  "A song we'll be recording in just a few minutes. A ballad named "Parrot Blood Baptism." And you have a starring role."

  I assume he wanted to scare me; but I was lying wrapped in steel cable, with a robot whirring above me as it calculated how to heave me about like a sack of potatoes, and suddenly my fear hardened into anger. I met the Singer's stare and asked, "What kind of melodramatic bullshit are you trying to pull?"

  His eyes narrowed. He lifted the radio transmitter and told the robot, "Please hold for a moment." The robot whirred as the Singer turned back to me.

  "We're going to record a song," he said. "Just you and I, milady. I'm afraid our colleagues back at camp are indisposed—it seems they took poorly to telepathy. Fights broke out, a number of people locked themselves in their huts, others were grabbed by robots…suffice it to say, no one is in any condition to help us or disturb us."

  "What are we going to record?" I asked.

  "A song, milady, a real song. I cannot tell you how tired I've grown of the juvenile pap that passes for music these days. All the world adores my album…but what is that album but shallow artifice? Fog from machines. Women screaming on cue. I am reduced to a puppet, prancing amidst hackneyed symbolism, to portray a dangerous man. A sanitized danger. A packaged little danger to delight complacent adolescents who fancy themselves rebels.

  "Well…not tonight, milady. Tonight we shall have no special effects or stunt doubles. Tonight the script calls for unflinching reality."

  I snorted in derision. "So you're going to baptize me with parrot blood? Yeah, sure, that's a brilliant departure from hackneyed symbolism. I haven't seen a blood baptism since…oh, that one Lew Jackell did on 'Bad Night for a Burning.' And the Black Sabbath sequence from the latest album by Chocolate Oracle. And Oiled Heat did a blood baptism too, if I recall correctly, in that terrible little number they recorded on those mud flats…what was its name? 'Sweet Soulless Machine'?"

  The Singer put a single finger under my chin and pressed it sharply into the softness of my throat. "Milady," he said, "remember that I can hear your thoughts. You are simply trying to make me angry."

  "I'm trying to tell you, you're not as smart as you think you are," I replied. "Alex only trots you out for concerts and recording sessions; you can't know dick about the industry at large or how things really come together. You've never been to a rehearsal or a sound check…and as for creating songs, you do nothing. Roland writes the tunes and lyrics, Helena storyboards the visuals, Alex walks through it all and helps refine things till they click. Oh, sure, when the tape starts rolling you're the spark that adds the magic, there's no question you're the spark…but a spark isn't worth squat if someone doesn't chop the firewood first. And now you're going to show us how to cut a real song? I can't wait to see it."

  Half my outburst was genuine anger, half was trying to pierce him, deflate him any way I could. But he simply removed his finger from my chin and patted my cheek gently. "Through long afternoons in Roland's basement, while Alex lay on the couch and read comic books, I listened to Roland poke at his piano and I learned how songs were born. Late nights in hotel rooms, as Helena muttered to herself about camera angles and lighting effects, Alex may have slept but I didn't. And at rehearsals, who kept Alex working when he was bored and hated the thought of one more run-through? Who's held him together all these years? Who grew up while Alex stayed a child?

  "When Alex and I were young, milady, we were two souls in one body. Ah"—he smiled thinly—"your mind says, 'Split personality.' A number of psych-techs reached the same conclusion many years ago and salivated at the chance to handle such an exotic condition. They plied us with drugs, hypnotherapy, symlinks, and eventually announced Alex cured. As if I were an appendix they could casually snip off. Their efforts only drove me into hiding, down to the depths of our shared unconscious, and I grew up there, wary and sly.

  "Let me tell you," he went on, "Alex does not 'trot me out.' I come when I'm needed. The hero arriving in the nick of time. I believe Roland told you about that night at Juicy's? Alex playing the fool to impress Helena, angering the rest of the audience…until suddenly he realized he was in desperate trouble, that people could actually hate him enough to hurt him. It's hard to say which frightened him more, the physica
l threat or the hatred. Alex had never been hated before. He fell to pieces…and I came to the rescue. Helena had nothing to do with my emergence, you understand? Nothing. Alex got into a scrape he couldn't handle and my presence was required.

  "The same thing happened earlier tonight, when the blood on his hands assailed him with strange unsettling voices; Alex retreated in confusion, and lo, I was there. I'm always backstage, milady, waiting in the wings. Biding my time for the show.

  "And now it's showtime again."

  He held the radio transmitter to his lips and murmured, "Resume. Take her to the bunker." Immediately the robot hoisted me off the ground…not roughly, but it clearly hadn't been programmed to maintain a woman's dignity. Its gripping arms didn't care where they gripped, and it held me on a slight downward angle—I could feel my blood draining into my head. When it started to walk, each step was spring-loaded: not jarring, but a big upward movement, then a sudden dip down as the bot shifted its weight to the next leg. Up, down, up, down, very smoothly, and if I'd been an archeological artifact, I wouldn't have felt jostled a bit. Being human, however, I got seasick after the first three steps.

  The Singer walked beside the bot for a few moments, watching me surge up and down with the bot's motion. Then he tossed something light onto my pinioned body. "That is your costume for the song," he said. "Please do me the honor of donning the outfit when you reach the bunker."

  I craned my neck to get a better look at the clothes. Scanty and gossamer, of course. "Are you going to tell me what I do in this song?" I asked.

  He shook his head. "I prefer it to be a surprise."

  "No rehearsal, no direction, a brand-new song and I don't know the words or the tune…"

  He caressed my hair with his long, cold fingers. "You'll be superb, milady. I have faith in your professionalism."

  The bunker smelled of mildew and cement; its only illumination was a gun slit that let in a strip of light from the beam-lamps outside. The robot lowered me carefully to the floor, withdrew the cable tentacles wrapped around me, and took up a position blocking the exit.