When Gravity Fails

by George Alec Effinger

  Yasmin made a vague, meaningless gesture. “I’ll call Okking,” she said in a toneless voice, “but I got to go back to work.”

  “Frenchy can go fuck himself tonight,” I said. “I want you to go home. Listen, honey, I need to have you there.”

  “All right,” she said, smiling a little through the tears. Our relationship hadn’t been destroyed, after all. With a little care it would be just as good as new, maybe even better. It was a relief to feel hopeful again.

  “How did you know she was here?” I asked, frowning.

  “Blanca found her,” said Yasmin. “Her back door’s down there, and she passes by here on her way to work.” She pointed further up the alley, where a peeling, gray-painted door was set into the blank brick wall.

  I nodded and watched Yasmin walk slowly toward the Street. Then I turned back to Nikki’s ruined body. It had been the throat-slasher, and I could see the bruises on Nikki’s wrists and neck, the burn marks, and a lot of small cuts and wounds. The killer had invested more time and expertise in finishing Nikki than he had with Tami or Abdoulaye. I was sure the medical examiner would find the traces of rape, too.

  Nikki’s clothing and purse had been thrown into the trash bag with her. I looked through her clothes, but I didn’t find anything. I reached for the purse, but I had to lift Nikki’s head. She had been clubbed cruelly and savagely until her skull and hair and blood and brains were all crushed together into a repellent mass. Her throat had been cut so brutally that her head was almost severed. I had never seen such profane, desecrating, perverse savagery in my life. I cleared the strewn refuse from a space and rested Nikki’s corpse gently on the broken bricks. Then I walked away a few steps, knelt, and vomited. I heaved and retched until my stomach muscles began to ache. When the sickness passed, I made myself go back to look through her purse. I found two curious and noteworthy objects: a brass reproduction that I’d seen in Seipolt’s house of an ancient Egyptian scarab; and a crude, almost homemade-looking moddy. I put both in my shoulder bag, chose the trash bag with the least stench surrounding it, and made myself as comfortable as I could. I addressed a prayer to Allah on behalf of Nikki’s soul. Then I waited.

  “Well,” I said quietly, looking around at the squalid, mucky place where Nikki had been abandoned, “I guess I get up in the morning and get my brain wired.” Maktoob, all right: It was written.

  12

  Muslims are often, by nature, very superstitious. Our co-travelers through Allah’s bewildering creation include all sorts of djinn, afrit, monsters, and good and bad angels. Then there are legions of sorcerous people armed with dangerous powers, the evil eye being the most frequently encountered. All of this makes the Muslim culture no more irrational than any other; every group of people has its own set of unfriendly, unseen things waiting to pounce on the unwary human being. Commonly there are far more enemies in the spirit world than there are protectors, although there are supposed to be uncountable armies of angels and the like. Maybe they’ve all been on R&R since the deparadisation of Shaitan, I don’t know.

  Anyway, one of the superstitious practices clung to by some Muslims, particularly the nomadic tribes and the uncivilized fellahîn of the Maghrîb—i.e., my mother’s people—is to name a newborn with an affliction or a dreadful quality to ward off the envy of whatever spirit or witch might be paying too much attention. I’m told that this is done all over the world by people who have never even heard of the Prophet, may peace be on his name. I am called Marîd, which means “illness,” and I was given it in the hope that I would not, in fact, suffer much illness in my lifetime. The charm seems to have had a certain positive effect. I had a burst appendix removed a few years ago, but that’s a common, routine operation, and it is the only serious medical problem I’ve ever had. I guess that may be due to the improved treatments available in this age of wonders, but who can say? Praise Allah, and all that.

  So I haven’t had much experience with hospitals. When the voices woke me, it took me quite some time to figure out where I was, and then another while to recall why the hell I was there in the first place. I opened my eyes; I couldn’t see anything but a dim blur. I blinked again and again, but it was like someone had tried to paste my eyelids closed with sand and honey. I tried to raise my hand to rub my eyes, but my arm was too weak; it wouldn’t travel the negligible distance from my chest to my face. I blinked some more and squinted. Finally I could make out two male nurses standing near the foot of my bed. One was young, with a black beard and a clear voice. He held a chart and was briefing the other man. “Mr. Audran shouldn’t give you too much trouble,” he said.

  The second man was a good deal older, with gray hair and a hoarse voice. He nodded. “Meds?” he asked.

  The younger man frowned. “It’s unusual. He can have almost anything he wants, with approval from his doctors. The way I understand it, he’ll get that approval just by asking. As much and as often as he wants.”

  The gray-haired man let out an indignant breath. “What did he do, win a contest? An all-expense-paid drug holiday in the hospital of his choice?”

  “Lower your voice, All He isn’t moving, but he may be able to hear you. I don’t know who he is, but the hospital has been treating him like a foreign dignitary or something. What’s being spent to ablate every little twinge of his discomfort could relieve the pain of a dozen suffering poor people on the charity wards.”

  Naturally, that made me feel like a filthy pig. I mean, I have feelings, too. I didn’t ask for this kind of treatment—I didn’t remember asking for it, at least—and I planned to put an end to it as soon as I could. Well, if not an end to it, that is, maybe ease it off a little. I didn’t want to be handled like a feudal shaykh.

  The younger man went on, consulting his chart. “Mr. Audran was admitted for some elective intracranial work. Elaborate circuit implants, very experimental, I understand. That’s why he’s been on bed rest this long. There may be some unforeseen side effects.” That made me a little uneasy: what side effects? Nobody had ever mentioned them to me before.

  “I’ll take a look at his chart this evening,” said the gray-haired man.

  “He sleeps most of the time, he shouldn’t bother you too much. Merciful Allah, between the etorphin bubble and the injections, he should sleep for the next ten or fifteen years.” Of course, he was underestimating my wonderfully efficient liver and enzyme system. Everyone always thinks I’m exaggerating about that.

  They began to leave the room. The older man opened the door and stepped out. I tried to speak; nothing came out, as if I hadn’t used my voice for months. I tried again. There was a whispered croaking sound. I swallowed a little saliva and murmured, “Nurse.”

  The man with the black beard put my chart on the console beside my bed and turned to me, his expression blank. “Be right with you, Mr. Audran,” he said in a cool voice. Then he went out and shut the door behind him.

  The room was clean and plain and almost bare of decoration, but it was also comfortable. It was much more comfortable than the charity wards, where I had been treated after my appendix burst. That had been an unpleasant time; the only bright spots were the saving of my life, all thanks be to Allah, and my introduction to Sonneine, once again may Allah be praised. The charity wards were not wholly philanthropic—I mean, the fellahîn who could not afford private doctors were, indeed, given free medical attention; but the hospital’s principle motive was to provide a wide range of unusual problems for the interns, residents, and student nurses to practice upon. Everyone who examined you, everyone who performed some sort of test, everyone who did some minor surgery at your bedside, had only a modest familiarity with his job. These people were earnest and sincere, but inexperienced: they could make the simple taking of blood an ordeal, and a more painful procedure a hellish torture. It was not so in this private room. I had comfort and ease and freedom from pain. I had peace and rest and competent care. Friedlander Bey was giving this to me, but I would repay him. He would see to that.
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br />   I suppose that I dozed off for a little while, because when the door opened again I awoke with a start. I expected to see the nurse, but it was a young man in a green surgical outfit. He had dark, sunburnt skin and bright brown eyes, with one of the largest black mustaches I’ve ever seen. I imagined him trying to contain the thing within a surgical mask, and that made me smile. My doctor was a Turk. I had a little trouble understanding his Arabic. He had trouble understanding me, too.

  “How are we today?” he said without looking at me. He glanced through the nurse’s notes and then turned to the data terminal beside my bed. He touched a few keys, and displays changed on the terminal’s screen. He made no sounds at all, neither the doctor’s concerned clucking nor the encouraged humming. He stared at the scrolling parade of numbers and twirled the ends of his mustache. At last he faced me and said, “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” I said noncommittally. When I deal with doctors I always figure that they’re after certain specific information; but they won’t ever come out and ask you just what they need to know because they’re afraid you’ll distort the truth and give them what you think they want to hear, so they go about it in this circular way as if you’re not still trying to guess what they want to know and distorting the truth anyway.

  “Any pain?”

  “A little,” I said. It was a lie: I was drifted to the hairline—my former hairline, that is. You never tell a doctor that you’re not suffering, because that might encourage him to lower your dosage of anodynes.

  “Sleeping?”

  “Yes.”

  “Had anything to eat?”

  I thought for a moment. I was ravenously hungry, although the IV was dripping a glucose solution directly into the back of my hand. “No,” I said.

  “We might start you on some clear liquids in the morning. Been out of bed?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Stay there for another couple of days. Dizzy? Numbness in your hands or feet? Nausea? Unusual sensations, bright lights, hearing voices, phantom limbs, anything like that?”

  Phantom limbs? “No.” I wouldn’t tell him that if it was true.

  “You’re doing just fine, Mr. Audran. Coming along right on schedule.”

  “Allah be thanked. How long have I been here.”

  The doctor gave me a glance, then looked at my chart again. “A little over two weeks,” he said.

  “When did I have the surgery?”

  “Fifteen days ago. You were in the hospital for two days of preparation before that.”

  “Uh huh.” There was less than a week of Ramadân remaining. I wondered what had happened in the city during my absence. I certainly hoped a few of my friends and associates were left alive. If anyone had been hurt—killed, that is—it would be Papa who would have to bear the responsibility. That was just about as effective as blaming it on God, and as practical, too. You couldn’t get a lawyer to sue either of them.

  “Tell me, Mr. Audran, what is the last thing you remember?”

  That was a tough one. I thought for a few moments; it was like diving into a dark, stormy cloudbank: there was nothing there but a grim feeling of foreboding down below. I had vague impressions of stern voices and the memory of hands rolling me over on the bed, and bolts of blazing pain. I remembered someone saying “Don’t pull on that,” but I didn’t know who had said it or what it meant. I searched further and realized that I couldn’t remember going into surgery or even leaving my apartment and coming to the hospital. The very last thing I could see clearly was . . .

  Nikki. “My friend,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry and my throat tight.

  “The one who was murdered,” said the doctor.

  “Yes.”

  “That happened almost three weeks ago. You don’t remember anything since?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “Then you don’t recall meeting me before today? Our conversations?”

  The dark cloudwall was rushing up to blot me out, and I figured now was a good time for it, too. I hated these gaps in my consciousness. They’re a nuisance, even the little twelve-hour holes; a three-week slice missing from my mental pie was more trouble than I wanted to deal with, I just didn’t have the energy to work up a decent panic. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I just don’t remember.”

  The doctor nodded. “My name is Dr. Yeniknani. I assisted your surgeon, Dr. Lisân. In the last several days you’ve gradually recovered some self-awareness. If, however, you’ve lost the content of our talks, it is very important that we discuss that information again.”

  I just wanted to go back to sleep. I rubbed my eyes with a weary hand. “And if you do explain it all to me again, I’ll probably forget it and you’ll just have to do it all over tomorrow or the next day.”

  Dr. Yeniknani shrugged. “That is possibly so, but you have nothing else to occupy your time, and I am paid well enough that I am more than willing to do what must be done.” He gave me a broad smile to let me know he was joking—these fierce types have to do that or you’d never guess; the doctor looked like he ought to be shouldering a rifle in some mountain ambush rather than wielding clipboards and tongue depressors, but that’s just my shallow mind making stereotypes. It keeps me amused. The doctor showed me his huge, crooked, yellow teeth again and said, “Besides, I have an overwhelming love for mankind. It is the will of Allah that I should begin to end all human suffering by having this same uninteresting interview with you each day until you at last remember it. It is for us to do these things; it is for Allah to understand them.” He shrugged again. He was very expressive, for a Turk.

  I blessed the name of God and waited for Dr. Yeniknani to launch into his bedside manner.

  “Have you looked at yourself?” he asked.

  “No, not yet.” I’m never in a hurry to see my body after it’s been offended in any serious way. I do not find wounds particularly fascinating, especially when they are my own. When I had my appendix taken out, I couldn’t look at myself below the navel for a month. Now, with my brain newly wired and my head shaved, I didn’t want to look in a mirror; that would make me think about what had been done, and why, and where all this might lead. If I were careful and clever, I might stay in that hospital bed, pleasantly sedated, for months or even years. It didn’t sound like so terrible a fate. Being a numb vegetable was preferable to being a numb corpse. I wondered how long I could malinger here before I was rudely dumped back on the Street. I was in no hurry, that’s for sure.

  Dr. Yeniknani nodded absently. “Your . . . patron,” he said, choosing the word judiciously, “your patron specified that you were to be given the most comprehensive intracranial reticulation possible. That is why Dr. Lisân performed the surgery himself: Dr. Lisân is the finest neurosurgeon in the city, one of the most respected in the world. Quite a lot of what he has given you he invented or refined himself, and in your case Dr. Lisân has tried one or two new procedures that might be called . . . experimental.”

  That didn’t sooth me, I didn’t care how great a surgeon Dr. Lisân might be. I am of the “better safe than sorry” school. I could be just as happy with a brain lacking one or two “experimental” talents, but one that didn’t run the risk of turning to tahini if I concentrated too long. But what the hell. I grinned a crooked, devil-may-care grin and realized that poking hot wires into unknown corners of my brain to see what happened was not much worse than gunning around the city in the back of Bill’s taxi. Maybe I did have some kind of death wish, after all. Or some kind of plain stupidity.

  The doctor raised the lid of the tray-table beside my bed; there was a mirror under there, and he rolled the table so that I could see my reflection. I looked awful. I looked like I’d died and started off toward hell and then got lost, and now I was stuck nowhere at all, definitely not alive but not decently deceased, either. My beard was neatly trimmed, and I had shaved every day or someone had done it for me; but my skin was pale, an unhealthy color like smudged newsprint, and there were deep shadows under my eyes.
I stared into the mirror for a long moment before I even noticed that my head was indeed bald, just a fine growth of fuzz covering my scalp like lichen clinging to a senseless stone. The implanted plug was invisible, hidden beneath protective layers of gelstrip bandages. I raised a tentative hand as if to touch the crown of my head, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt a strange, unpleasant tingling shoot up through my bowels, and I shuddered. My hand fell away and I looked at the doctor.

  “When we take the gelstrips off,” he said, “you’ll notice that you have two plugs, one anterior and the second plug posterior.”

  “Two?” I’d never heard of anyone with two plugs before.

  “Yes. Dr. Lisân has given you twice the augmentation of a conventional corymbic implantation.”

  That much capacity hooked into my brain was like putting a rocket engine on an oxcart; it would never fly. I closed my eyes, feeling more than a little frightened. I started murmuring Al-Fâtihah, the first sûrah of the noble Qur’ân, a comforting prayer that always comes to me at times like this. It is the Islamic equivalent of the Christian Lord’s Prayer. Then I opened my eyes and stared at my reflection. I was still afraid, but at least I had made my uncertainty known in heaven, and from here on I’d just accept everything as the will of Allah. “Does that mean I can chip in two different moddies at the same time, and be two people at once?”

  Dr. Yeniknani frowned. “No, Mr. Audran, the second plug will accept only software add-ons, not a full personality module. You wouldn’t want to try two modules at once. You might end up with a pair of charred cerebral hemispheres and a backbrain that would be completely useless except as a paperweight. We have given you the augmentation as—” (he almost committed an indiscretion and mentioned a name) “your patron directed. A therapist will instruct you in the proper use of your corymbic implants. How you choose to employ them after you leave the hospital is, of course, your own affair. Just remember that you’re dealing directly with your central nervous system now. It isn’t a matter of taking a few pills and staggering around for a while until you recover your sobriety. If you do something ill-advised with your implants, it may well have permanent effects. Permanent, frightening effects.”