by Tim Scott
“That’s enough, Sister Rachel,” said another nun.
“Yes, Sister,” the nun said and composed herself.
I nodded, not quite being able to take all this in.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“She’ll be fine again soon, I’m sure.”
I took this as my cue to sink back in the seat and close my eyes. I could have died back there at least twice.
I tried to breathe away a thousand thoughts telling me I had been stupid.
Really dumb-assed stupid. But eventually my mind settled.
And I had a fleeting memory of the vivid images that had run through my mind during the head hack.
And I remembered how I had been walking the city streets but they had been empty of people. I opened my eyes, and the image stayed in my mind with a vibrancy that was unnerving.
chapter
THIRTEEN
The drongle drew up outside a convent with dreary gray walls, and the nuns got out in a flurry of umbrellas, which popped open above them like flowering roses.
Rain had erupted again.
A serious summer rain, with fat drops that splattered the drongle roof as the sky convulsed with lightning.
“There simply can’t be a God. I mean, what kind of a God would allow golf? It makes no sense,” said Sister Rachel before she was hustled away.
A huge unwieldy receipt came chattering from the drongle and the last nun took it, folding it carefully into a massive paper wafer, before getting out. If the nuns all started questioning God they’d have to rename the place Convent of St. Agnes, the Slightly Confused. It wasn’t so far-fetched: I’m sure somewhere I had read of a saint called St. Howard, the Slightly Racist.
I shut the curved goose-wing door. My arms ached and I realized my clothes had been torn.
The drongle moved off dodging through the traffic. And then I felt a chill as I stared ahead.
Police checkpoint.
The drongle slowed to a crawl.
If I was pulled in now, they’d put me in a cell and lose the key, and it wouldn’t just be down the back of the sofa.
We rumbled into line and stopped amid a group of cops. A man in a drenched suit was gesturing forlornly, his hair flat on his head as he talked to some cops who had turned up their collars to keep out the slanting rain. I could see their tired sneers run across their sodden faces. Then the man lashed out and the cops flattened him, pressing his face against the wet sidewalk slabs. The drongle edged forward so I passed within a few feet of his face, and I stared into his terrified eyes.
And then I was through the checkpoint and rumbling into the traffic again. Another five minutes and it crawled up a hill before it finally crunched to a stop across from the Halcyon motel.
“This is the Halcyon motel,” said the drongle. “Please leave the vehicle now. Your lucky color today is yellow. Your lucky ombudsman is one who works for the Financial Services Regulator.”
I heard the voice, but I was loath to rush from this snug, dry oasis, so I just sat there for a moment, trying to recollect what it actually meant to be alive.
I had been in this part of town many times before as a cop.
But that had been another life.
And for a moment I saw the image of Abigail run through my mind again. Nena had been right: I was paralyzed by the past. I was a stopped clock. I could appear sane and even content, but it was all an illusion. Even the hands of a stopped clock show the right time twice a day.
I looked out. The neon lights of the Halcyon motel’s sign tried to shine gamely, to cheer the place up, but it didn’t make a scrap of difference. The place hadn’t had any sheen to it in years. In fact, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had built this place with the grime already included.
I remembered how this neighborhood had always specialized in seedy motels. The sort that smelled of old wiring, memories of lost youth, and badly printed Technicolor photographs of some faraway place that seemed all the farther and unobtainable for being associated with these droves of damp-carpeted buildings that had no ambition to ever be anything else.
I still couldn’t bring myself to move, then I let the feeling slide and heaved myself out. The hotel sat among an unambitious set of small high-rise buildings that clung to the side of a hill.
I dodged halfway across the street, weaving through the traffic as it plumed up spray, hunching my shoulders pointlessly against the rain as though that might somehow keep me drier, until I found myself stranded on the central divider with drongles wheeling past on either side.
And as they whipped at my clothes, I tasted a strangeness in the moment.
And I recalled the dark presence that had invaded my mind during the head hack, and wondered if I had stared into the presence of death.
chapter
FOURTEEN
At Porlock, Inc., the whole situation was unraveling.
Mendes felt as though he had a cold coming on as he stood staring out at the lines of consoles that sat in the smoldering green neon light. It slid softly over the sleek walls and bathed the operatives in a ghostly ambient glow that was bordering on really-too-dark-to-see-properly-but-the-architect-was-fiercely-defensive-about-having-it levels.
The system had not responded at all.
The mainframe was now repeating the same question over and over: “Does anyone know any clever techniques for remembering a lot of numbers?”
He went back into his office and picked up the phone. Damage limitation. He should call the Pentagon. It would be an admission of defeat, and there was a chance he would be shunted into a backwater of D.C., but they might be able to help.
He hesitated and pulled a face, as though he had smelled something bad. Then he put the phone down.
chapter
FIFTEEN
I ran across the street, dodging the skidding drongles that looped spray up over the sidewalk in huge lazy arches, and headed toward the motel.
Above a New Seattle Health and Safety screen flashed: “Vacations can be stressful. Only go on vacation if you have the strength. Otherwise, stay at home where ALL YOUR NICE THINGS ARE.”
A Health and Safety logo of a small squirrel wearing some ear protectors followed me with its gaze as I scurried across the sidewalk and into the lobby.
The main door clacked shut behind me, and I paused to let my eyes adjust.
To call the lobby dingy would have been a disservice to the word. It was drowned in gloom, then coated with a strong layer of murkiness. The air was thick with a musty-damp, recently-cooked-food smell that irreversibly impregnated my clothes on contact.
A large, dark-skinned man with a white-patterned shirt straining at the buttons was on duty behind the desk. He was lost in the shadows, so I only got a sense of his huge frame.
“I’m visiting a friend. Her name is Nena,” I said. “I need the key.” He didn’t make any move.
I was about to repeat it when I caught the intense white of his eyes gleaming through the darkness, staring at me. The blood began to pump around my temples more forcefully.
“I see you have the red collar,” he said.
I took a long breath and reached up and touched the thing. I didn’t need more hassle and I sensed this wasn’t his idea of small talk.
“Yeah,” I said. “I have the red collar.”
He nodded. “That’ll be twenty for the key and an extra twenty for the collar.”
Forty was pretty much all I had, but this guy was nothing but trouble. In fact, “trouble” could easily have been his middle name—along with “terrifying psychotic maniac.” And I was in no shape to fool with anyone. I took out my wallet.
“Forty,” I said putting it on the desk and noticing he had a gun under there. “If anyone asks for me, you don’t know anything. They’ll be another forty in the morning if it’s all quiet tonight.”
He came forward into the light and I saw his shirt was clean and well ironed. He slowly took down the key and placed it on the desk. I reached for it wi
thout breaking his gaze.
Another person in the darkness of the corner I hadn’t even seen began laughing like a machine gun. The guy with the eyes just kept staring. But he added a nod and then said: “That’s everything. Unless you want me to plug your details into the registry?” He waved a lead from the hotel feed reader.
“You have a quiet evening,” I said, and got the hell out of there.
The police would trawl the motels and dark places with their dull and overzealous brand of efficiency tonight, but some things never change. There will always be people scraping by on bribes at the seedy ends of society. Baksheesh has been mankind’s closest companion since the dawn of time. Perhaps that’s why God created the universe—someone had simply given him a bribe. And then maybe he did it on the cheap.
That would certainly explain a great deal.
Particularly about the shape of some fish.
I headed down the veranda to the room, and thoughts trailed after me as I worked the key into the door. Would he still call the cops? It seemed unlikely. There were probably more scams going on around here than in D.C. He wouldn’t want them poking around.
I got the door open, flicked on the light, and saw four fridges and a tumble dryer in the room. “What the hell is this?”
“Hello,” said the nearest fridge, opening its door so its light came on. “Would you like some Primula?”
“Primula?” I said.
“Yeah, it’s processed cheese that you squeeze straight from the tube. It might make you feel better.” It opened its door farther. The shelves were all barren but for one tube of Primula that was so empty you’d need to hit it with a mallet to get anything more from it.
“It looks pretty empty,” I said. “What is all this?”
“It’s a welcoming gesture. Nena said we could stay a couple of nights, just until she worked out the details,” said another fridge. “And then we’re all going to Mexico. Ah…Tequila!”
“Great,” I said feeling my clothes drip onto the carpet. “That’s just great. She’s just full of surprises.”
“She’s gone to Bolivia,” said a blue fridge with a deeper voice.
“Bolivia?”
“Yup, that’s where she is. It’s a big place where they have yak.”
“How do you know?”
“Are you a cop?”
“No.”
“Don’t trust him!” said another fridge.
“Hey, I’m not a cop, okay?”
“He’s not a cop. Where’s his mustache?” said the one with the Primula.
“Okay, the truth is that we don’t know where she is. Do you?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh,” said the tumble dryer.
“She told us to tell the cops she’d gone to Bolivia if they came calling, and we were working on a song. But we couldn’t come up with anything that rhymed with Bolivia,” said one with Frost Fox written across its door.
“That’s a great idea,” I said.
“You think so? Want me to dry your clothes? I feel a spin coming on,” said the tumble dryer, nuzzling into me.
“Oh, yeah, you should. It’ll make him so happy,” said another fridge.
“Yeah, you can dry my clothes while I take a shower. She may be awhile. But stay quiet, all of you. If the management find out you’re in here, they’ll get angry. And if the guy in the lobby gets angry, we’re all in trouble.”
“Sure. We’ll be quiet. And I’ll have that Primula waiting for you when you come out.”
“Okay.”
I peeled off my sodden clothes. I had ripped gashes through a lot of the material and the gel had stripped the color from my shirt. I wasn’t going to be making it to any flashy parties in those again. I put them in the tumble dryer, which squealed happily, and went into the grimy bathroom.
My head was throbbing, probably as some aftereffect of the head hack, and now it had become harder to ignore. It felt like I had a nest of bees in there.
Everything that had happened in the past few hours shimmered in my head, refusing to coalesce into any kind of shape, so my thoughts did little more than shamble around at half pace and I did my best to ignore them.
The bathroom was pretty disgusting. Nobody had done more than run a mop around the place in living memory, and green mildew was hidden behind the sheen of grime. The cockroaches were in cockroach heaven.
I turned the shower on, but it clearly wasn’t used to this turn of events and began hammering away like a malfunctioning engine. After a minute, water spluttered defensively from the head. It was entirely cold. I waited awhile.
It got colder.
I forced myself under it, and my chest contracted with the shock. Then the water turned scalding hot.
I hopped in and out of the tiny jet as I tried to wash my hair and clean out the cuts and grazes. That’s when I caught a glimpse of myself in the steamed-up mirror across from the cubicle.
My hair was blond.
My hair was completely, fucking blond.
I stumbled out of the shower and stared. The realization came at me in a confused ball.
The head hack gel. It had bleached it. The woman had said something about that and I began to recall that was why we had never used the stuff at Memory Print.
I looked at my appearance and it seemed as if in the space of a few hours I had begun turning into somebody else.
Maybe this was how Kafka’s first draft of Metamorphosis had been. Perhaps the protagonist had just woken up with a different hair color and the idea of him turning into an insect only came later. The story possibly wouldn’t have had the same impact on European literature, but it might have been more of a hit with hairdressers.
I dried myself off, managed to cut off the red collar using a broken tile, and went out into the main room.
The fridges immediately started singing.
“Where’s she gone?
Here’s a bit of trivia,
It’s got the highest lake,
That’s right! It’s Bolivia!”
“Sh! Quiet!” I said.
They went silent. Most of them closed their doors nervously. My head throbbed. “Okay, listen. I’m in trouble, right? I need to keep a low profile and having four fridges and a spin dryer in my room singing loudly about Bolivia is not a low profile.”
“Sorry. We thought it might cheer you up,” said the Frost Fox. “I don’t need cheering up. I need to stay alive and away from the police.”
“Oh.” The fridges shuffled.
“So let’s all just chill out, okay?”
They all began humming with intense vigor.
“No, I meant relax,” I said. “Just relax, okay? How are my clothes doing?”
The tumble dryer padded over and opened its door happily. They were pretty much dry, so I slipped them back on.
“Thanks,” I said. “Good job.” Then I flicked off the light and lay down on the bed. Ideally I needed food, but that would have to wait. If Nena made it back, we could find a place to eat later on. I could really do with some coffee and whatever else they served in this part of town at night. And, ideally, pastries. Pastries always made everything better.
In any hijack situation, it was well known the negotiators always sent in pastries; it just took the edge off the terrorists’ anger. You can’t bring yourself to start shooting people when you’ve just eaten a nice Danish. They’re too sticky and flaky.
I reeled in my thoughts. The police didn’t have anything to go on. They weren’t going to find me tonight.
“Anything suspicious and I’ll do an owl call,” said a fridge by the window.
“Just stay quiet,” I said and tried to get comfortable, but there was a lump in one pocket. I felt to see what it was and found the memories printed off at the head hack. Nena had stuffed them in there as we left the room. Now they had been fused together by being soaked and dried. A few peeled apart and I thumbed through them under the light that spilled in through a crack in the curtains.
Most
were out of focus, but then I came to one that was as clear as a bell.
My heart jumped. I hadn’t seen her face in eight years.
I looked at her smile and her hair. And I traced the shape of her face.
Abigail.
chapter
SIXTEEN
Bryce Canyon.
The crunch of snow as we stooped under the pine branches that smelled sweet with resin to find the bar. The ice-hot freeze of the snow that fell on my neck from one of the trees. All around was the glimmer of pinprick white lights, flickering with fierce magic, and the jagged silhouettes of the encircling mountains.
We drank enormous brandies in outlandishly bulbous glasses at one of the outside tables that came supplied with soft, thick blankets. And as the evening went on, we snuggled up together and talked about the places we’d been and things that meant something to us. Raoul Dufy paintings, the lilt of the writing by Tennessee Williams, the calm quiet of an empty dawn sky in Nebraska. And for a while, all my cynicism, irritation, and anger with the world melted away as we watched the stars and listened to the background chatter and laughter around us, rosy with celebration and hope.
In that moment, I would probably even have had a for-giving word for people who thought spray-on stencils were a worthwhile aspect of interior decoration.
It was as though she was someone I already knew, and yet could not place. A person I felt I had been through fire with, yet had not enjoyed the stretched-out, delicious days of learning about who she was.
She was familiar and a total stranger, all in one.
And then, as it got toward midnight and the carol singers were gathered a little way off, singing without any kind of caution around a huge fire, she snuggled closer and said she wanted to stretch this moment out so it would cover the rest of her life with its warm glow.
And it was actually perfect. It was all shadows and magic.
And I couldn’t think of a better way of spending my life than with this girl. She was full of a wide-eyed, innocent passion about life, as though she felt the heartbeat of the very earth inside of herself.