Reaction

by Seth M. Baker

  “Wow, this is wonderful. Really. Best food I've had in a long long time,” Amadeus said, earnest as a schoolboy. The meat was tender, rich and salty. He chewed slowly, savoring the food, trying to think of a time he had had a better roast. As he chewed, though, he felt Zora watching him, when she wasn't staring at her plate. Her dislike for him rose up from her like the steam coming off the mashed potatoes. Every time a fork scraped against a plate, Amadeus felt a sick feeling in his chest. He started to ball up a piece of napkin. She knows, he decided. She has seen my picture. Maybe it's not even conscious, but she knows. She doesn't want to say anything, but she is onto me. I've got to leave. Why hasn't she said anything?

  “Tell me about your family and your school. You a college boy?” Clifton said.

  “I just finished,” Amadeus said, “at Stanford. I studied computer science. I hope to head to east for grad school, but I'm not really sure where yet.”

  “Well, if you're anything like your uncle, you'll do really well. Shoot, if the bigwigs in our government knew how well you handle that...whatever it is, I'm sure they'd welcome you with open arms.”

  Amadeus nodded and scooped a heaping chipful of salsa from the bowl, red chunks of tomato falling from the side. The first thing Amadeus tasted was the watery-freshness of the cilantro, then a little spice from the jalapeno chunks floating in there. Zora openly stared at him. A vein on her forehead, the one right down the middle, was standing out. Amadeus knew the salsa wasn’t that hot. He looked over at Clifton. He seemed oblivious as he chewed his food, a goat grazing in the middle of a firefight.

  Amadeus ate quickly, hoping an empty plate would be a good excuse to leave the table, but when he finished his first serving, Clifton piled more on his plate. Zora watched her husband in disgust. Amadeus knew what she was thinking: how can he be serving food to a patricidal monster. It would be so easy, Amadeus thought, for people to hate him, especially if they didn’t know him, if they only knew what they had read in the newspapers. He had even seen a little capsule article about himself in the Opinion section of the pop culture website NuestroTiempo, all full of wild speculation about why he would do such a thing, how humanity had been robbed of one of its living treasures by the flesh from his very own loins, how the boy had knowingly and wittingly ruined his own bright future.

  Zora, after obviously kicking her husband under the table, finally threw down her silverware in disgust. It clattered on the plate as she stomped inside. Clifton looked at Amadeus, shrugged, and took another bite of his roast beef, forgetting to close his mouth as he chewed. A moment later, the screen door swung open with a clap and Amadeus was staring at a double-barreled shotgun.

  “He killed his father,” Zora said to Clifton. “Mi amor, this man is wanted by the police. I saw his picture in the magazine not long ago.”

  “No, really, it's a lie. I didn't kill him. Other people did, bad people, and they wanted to set me up, to blame me for it. I’m going to reach into my pocket now, Misses McComas, because I owe your husband some money.” With painstaking care, his every move watched by Zora, Amadeus retrieved the money Gravity had given him and counted out thirty-five hundred dollars.

  “I can’t take any of that. Not from you,” Clifton said.

  “I pay my debts,” Amadeus said. He sat the stack of bills beside his plate.

  Clifton looked from his wife to Amadeus and back. The gun in Zora’s hand shook.

  “Now, Zora, honey, lower the gun. You for one should know better than anybody that you can't trust everything the government says. Amadeus, I'm not one to judge, but you need to leave now,” Clifton said. “Just go. Leave.”

  Amadeus set down his fork and knife. They clinked against the glass tabletop.

  “I'm sorry for the trouble. Thanks for the food.” He backed away, toward the Pachyderm, thankful they had already detached the dusting equipment earlier. Even more thankful that they had let him leave. Most people would've held him for the reward money.

  Back in the Pachyderm, he trembled and stuffed the piece of napkin in his mouth. The fibers separated in his mouth. He rolled them over his tongue, concentrated on the sensation. He took the Pachyderm back up but he felt spent, like he’d just finished a day of training at Gravity’s boot camp. Using the map, he found an isolated place to land. Safely landed, he switched the system recharging mode and threw the tarp over the craft. With the light of the prairie moon shining through the tarp and into the cockpit, he fell asleep in minutes.

  In the morning, he crossed the rest of the continent without incident. The flatlands change to lush green mountains then, closer to the northeast, as afternoon changed to evenings and the mountains flattened out, the New England megacity started, stretching from Boston to Richmond, town after town, all connected by highways, rail lines, and lights, a giant electrified fishing net. The air traffic controllers made no mention of his craft, just as Jones had promised. Amadeus had half-expected someone from one of the air traffic controls to come on and shout him down, demand his numbers, despite what Jones had said about him being invisible to radar. Amadeus double-checked the coordinates for Esther Elgers’ building.

  Amadeus had programmed the coordinates in as the final way point. He hoped this would be easy, just flying into the city, landing on the roof, talking to Esther, getting her fingerprints and blood sample, and getting out. He also hoped she had enough time to talk to him. He flew several hundred meters over the city, coming in over Battery Park. Below, lights flashed from the ground; they looked like light reflected off mirrors hanging on strings. Tourists and their cameras. Hopefully they couldn’t see him; the media didn’t need any more alcohol for their orgy. He called Esther, said he was near her building, and told her to meet him on the roof in five minutes. She said she could get out for a few minutes, but she had a meeting later with a potentially huge client.

  Her building, all glass, carbon composites and solar panels, towered over the others. On the side, a giant video screen showed a model preening in the latest clothes from the most fashionable designer in the city. A woman in white stood on the roof. When he came closer, the wind from the Pachyderm blew her hair around. She shielded her eyes and backed towards the stairs. The helicopter pad wasn't lit up as much as he would've liked, but he flipped on his lights and they illuminated things enough. After landing, he shut things down and hopped out. The Pachyderm became slightly more visible. Esther greeted him with a powerful handshake then, looking him up and down, she said “come here” and pulled him in for a hug. She smelled like cigarettes and chai tea.

  “You look a lot like your mother, you know that?” she said. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “You knew my mother?” Amadeus said, feeling himself slouch.

  Esther smiled and said “long ago.”

  He didn't like being compared to the dead, but he kept his composure. “So you were one of the partners in my father's research.” She nodded.”I need your help with a couple of things. First, this.” He pulled out the phone and told her he needed her thumb print and a blood sample.

  “A blood sample? We haven't even had our first date yet.” Amadeus looked at her, his expression as flat as the tar roof beneath his feet. She smiled and touched his arm. “That was a joke. Jesus, kid, the world's fucked you up pretty good, hasn't it?” He smiled a little, but he didn't think it was funny. “Come on. There's a great coffee shop just a couple blocks away. You look like you could use some caffeine.”

  “You think the Pachyderm will be all right?”

  “That thing is named after an elephant?”

  “I didn't name it.”

  “Sure, it'll be fine. Only two other people have a key to this roof; nobody’s coming up here.”

  “I need to do something first.” He climbed back in the Pachyderm. When he came out, he was wearing thick glasses and a fake beard and the fuzzer around his neck.

  “Are you serious?” Esther said. “You look like you just crawled out of some Williamsburg den of trust–funders.”r />
  He followed her down the stairs then to the elevator. The beard itched, like he had a bag of insects crawling on his face. When he glanced in the elevator mirror, he thought he looked like someone in a disguise. They didn't talk in the elevator. The street hummed with the sound of a million cars. Well-dressed people walked past storefront shops and restaurants selling purses and pad thai. After his month in Colorado, the city made him dizzy. Esther walked fast. Amadeus had always thought he was a fast walker, but he struggled to keep up, especially as his legs were stiff from a night of sleeping in the Pachyderm. He thought if he lived in the city, he would probably walk fast too.

  They reached the coffee place, decorated faux-rustic with rough-hewn tables and wood-paneling. Black and white pictures of prominent people hung on the walls. Esther ordered for both of them, two café americanos. As they waited for their drinks, Esther told her story.

  “I was a friend of your mother years ago, before you were born. We weren't close, but we had dinner a couple times a year. I knew her through some b-to-b sales. We’d occasionally meet for drinks. Totally different lines of work, but we could still bitch about our bosses. Now that I'm the boss, I shudder to think about what people say. Once you get really good at something, you're going to have an army of critics, people who get off on saying terrible things about you. But you get used to it.” Their drinks arrived, hot and black.

  “Anyway,” Esther said, “I never had any kids or a husband, so this is how I’ve spent my time. I picked up a couple of degrees along the way. While I worked my way up, smashing every glass ceiling I came to, your mother, she took time off to have you.” Amadeus wasn't sure what a glass ceiling was, but he didn’t ask. “I had an entire division of a company, while your mother had a husband and, forgive me for saying so, a beautiful boy. I guess the company is my family and every contract we sell, every technology we develop and nurture, is one of my babies. I try not to worry about what could've been.

  “You're probably wondering why I'm telling you all this. Well, I had met your father a couple of times and we hit things off okay. He knew I had access to some venture capital funds. Two years ago he propositioned me.” She noted the look on Amadeus' face and laughed. “Just playing. Totally business. He told me what he was doing, showed me his research, let me listen to a tape, and promised some pretty generous royalties. Spooky stuff, but the potential market for this tech was mind-blowing. I mean, teleportation? That’s wild. So I agreed not only to fund him, but I put him in touch with another man who might be interested, a Czech by the name of Vesely Gustavius. You know Czechs put their family name first, right?”

  “No, didn't know that,” Amadeus said.

  “There's a lot you don't know, isn't there,” she said, not really asking. “So I agree to be a silent partner and set him up with Gustavius. When I asked him about other investors, he was kind of vague, said he had two more anonymous partners. I never pressed him for details. So your father would occasionally send progress reports, but one day I get an email. It’s your father explaining that something had gone wrong, that he had had some terrifying, um, encounters.”

  “If I told you the problem, you’d never believe me.”

  “Amadeus, I really wish I didn’t know. I did see the problem, that repulsive thing. I still have nightmares about it. I think your father's honesty worked against him. He should've just kept quiet and either refunded our monies or kept going. But he kept talking about full disclosure, keeping things on the up and up. Anyway, after seeing what happened, Gustavius and I asked him to stop, told him we wanted to get out. This was just too far out; we had our reputations to think about. Teleportation and maybe even talking to the dead was one thing; look at the Ouija board. But this monster stuff? No way. We’d be destroyed.”

  “Do you know where Gustavius lives?”

  “He's a prominent Czech. He lives in Prague, of course.”

  “Do you think Gustavius knows who the other partners are? Because after him I'll still need one more fingerprint if we're ever going to open this file.”

  “I believe he hired someone to find out the identities of the other partners, but I’m not sure if they found anything. I recently received a message from him from a personal courier. He flew a man all the way here from Prague to tell me it was better if we didn’t communicate electronically for awhile; he believed he was under surveillance. If you want his help, he might need some convincing. Maybe you can make a deal with him, something to make helping you worth his while; guarantees of royalties for any future developments, for example. Now that your father is, uh, gone, technically you own the intellectual rights to his work. Do you have access to the research?”

  Amadeus nodded and laid the phone on the table.

  “I hope you've made backups,” Esther said.

  “Can I get your blood now?” Esther nodded and placed her finger on the screen. He scanned it, then placed a clean lance in the blood sugar tester. The lance pricked her finger and collected the blood. On the screen, a dialog box appeared with Esther’s picture in it. “You’ve successfully collected information for Esther Elgers. Please press okay.” Amadeus pressed okay.

  As they finished their coffee, Esther gave him Vesely’s address from memory. When he commented on her excellent memory, she said recited pi to the thirtieth digit. When she saw Amadeus’ slack–jawed expression, she said: “memory tricks and mnemonic devices are one of my hobbies. I’ve trained myself to remember lists, names, and long strings of numbers as easily as putting on a pair of socks. Tell me something once, and I've got it. How do you think I got to be in charge of things?”

  24

  Back on the street, Esther started to hail a cab. Amadeus stopped her. “Do you mind walking?” he asked. “I'd like to walk a bit.”

  “I've got the shoes for it,” she said, pointing to her flat heels. They walked north on Broadway, from the 30s to the 40s and through Times Square. Hucksters and bucket shops sold discounted tickets for plays. Video screens lined the sides of almost every building. Amadeus smiled and looked around, feeling less nervous and starting to enjoy the kitsch and energy of the place.

  “Let's stop for a minute,” Amadeus said.

  “Aren't you the little sightseer,” Esther said, but her voice was kind. They found a bench at Bryant Park.

  “Tell me more about my mother,” Amadeus said.

  “Well,” she started…

  At that moment, glass crashed on forty-second street, followed by a hurricane of screaming. A bus-sized version of the demon from the videos crawled along the glistening glass side of the MetLife building. Its mouth was as large as a double door. The creature moved like a bear, powerful and a little awkward, its great claws digging into glass and steel.

  Amadeus started, open-mouthed. Esther grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the Bryant Park subway station. As they ran, Amadeus twisted his neck to watch the creature as it pounced upon a group of pedestrians. Even from where he stood, Amadeus could hear slurping sounds as the creature lapped up the blood along the sidewalk with its medusa tongue. “My father did this,” he said to no one. “And this is my fault.”

  People fought and shoved to get through the bottleneck on the stairs to the subway, but the stairs weren't wide enough for the thousand people trying to escape and a semicircle of people formed around the entrance. Amadeus found himself shoulder to shoulder with frantic, panicked people. His body was jostled, knocked around like a soccer ball. Somehow the crowd came between Esther and him, separating them and sending them in separate directions. He yelled for her to tell her to go on, but he couldn’t see her and she probably couldn’t hear him over the screaming crowd.

  The demon finished its first course and was creeping towards the crowd at the subway entrance when the bright red and yellow umbrella of a hot dog cart popped open. The creature howled and pounced on the cart like a dog pinning on a mole, swallowing the umbrella in two bites. It roared in satisfaction, a sound like an arriving subway train.

  T
he people pushed harder, trying to get to the stairs and into the subway. Amadeus felt a fist in his back and turned, ready to hit back, but with so many scared faces pressed so close together he couldn't begin to guess who had hit him. Probably an accident anyway. He imagined using the people around him to pull himself up and walk over them, to step on their shoulders as he dove down the stairs to safety, but he decided he’d probably end up trampled. He was still no closer to the stairs.

  After flinging the remains of the hot dog cart down Forty-Second Street, the demon turned its attention back to the crowd and crept towards them, its tongue probing ahead of its body like an octopus’ tentacle. The crowd let out a collective scream. Amadeus gasped for breath as a new wave of panic spread, causing people to push and push harder and harder.

  As he gasped for air, he smelled a mixture of sulfur, sewage, and rotting carcass even worse than the regular New York smell. When the demon was close enough, he could see the folds and wrinkles in its scarred, smooth flesh. The demon took a swipe at the crowd with its tree-sized paw, knocked ten rows of people away. They twisted through the air like paper trash in the wind, landing on the grass nearby. Suddenly he could breath because he wasn't deep in the crowd, he was at the edge. He screamed and flailed his arms. The column of eyes on the demon’s legs looked at him then to the pile of people in Bryant Park. It went for the pile, pinning a group of men in power suits, two under each paw, and began tearing at the soft flesh of their abdomens with its needle teeth. Their cries rang out like the stock exchange bell, their innards spilling out like ticker tape.

  Sirens wailed, four-note car horns blared, as if the city were fighting the creature with noise. Flashing red and blue lights reflected off the windows of the surrounding buildings. Two SWAT trucks smashed into cars, pushing them out of the way, making a path for a line of police cars. They formed a line in front of the crowd around the subway entrance. More people pushed in. Amadeus was again trapped.