by Ioana Visan
The girl didn’t listen to him. She continued to struggle, but she only managed to slip out of the bot and curl up by its side, whimpering.
“Maybe she doesn’t understand English,” Spinner said.
He tried seven other languages, and Rake added four of his own, but no luck.
“I bet she knows Japanese,” Spinner muttered with a peevish look. None of them spoke it, as the circus had never traveled that far east.
“Forget that,” Big Dino said. “Call one of the mimes.”
Spinner ran once again to the window. “We need a mime in here!”
The girl shuddered but didn’t try to crawl away. There was nowhere to go. She raised her head with great difficulty and glanced from one man to the other, waiting.
Rake brought a blanket from the closet and draped it over her.
She accepted it, her fingers wrapping around a tattered corner, but then she squeaked when the mime, dressed in a black and white striped costume, followed by Jacko in his colorful jacket, came in.
“We’re here,” Jacko said.
“Take the masks off,” Spinner said. “You’re scaring her.”
The mime made an apologetic gesture to the girl and indicated they were coming from the fair. The mask then broke into tiny pieces that retreated behind his hairline.
“Now, this is what I want you to explain to her.” Big Dino knotted his fingers behind his back and turned towards the girl. “We need your power source. We’ll still power your bot, and you can keep it if you want. But we can’t take you back. People will ask questions.”
She turned her eyes from the mime, who had gesticulated with fluid motions, and she gave Big Dino a long, pensive look.
“Do you understand?” Big Dino asked. “You’ll have to stay.”
Instead of an answer, she reached for the edge of the bot’s chest cavity and looked up as if asking for permission. When Big Dino gave a slow nod, she crawled back into the bot and brought it to a sitting position.
Rake and Spinner took an involuntary step back. Although unarmed, the bot’s fists could easily squash anyone in the room. A knife slipped into Rake’s hand. Working as a knife thrower came in handy. He could get her from there before she did any damage. The bot's armor had closed over her legs, but the head, chest and arms remained open, and the heart beating fast inside that deformed body made a perfect target.
“I think we fried some circuits,” Spinner whispered. He saw Rake’s hand that held the knife and pushed it out of sight. He had a knife ready too, the tension in his shoulders gave him away, but he was more discreet about it.
“We’ll fix them.” Rake’s gruff voice brought the girl’s attention back to him, and he had the acute feeling that she somehow knew he had electrocuted her. Had she been awake all this time?
“Will you stay and obey our rules?” Big Dino turned the previous statement into a question.
The girl closed and opened the bot’s fists with a dexterity that said a lot about her fine motor skills. She glanced at Rake’s knife and then peered down at the big dent in her stomach where the sphere was missing. For a brief moment, her hairless eyebrows plunged into a frown. And then she opened her mouth and spoke, “Fei Lin … stay…”
* * *
“Wheee!”
Bang!
Rake groaned and hid his head under his pillow. Outside his car windows, Fei Lin practiced her new circus act. She seemed to enjoy being fired from the cannon again and again, even if she still had problems with the landing. Spinner had painted the bot in bright colors and added fireworks launchers to the shoulders. All nice and well, but why did Rocket Girl have to be so loud?
Riella’s hand searched for him under the sheets, and he rolled on his side. Well, if he was awake anyway…
The Golden Lady
The bomb had gone off in the middle of the day while Aurore discussed the plans for her sweet sixteen party with her mom. There were only a couple of months left, and she wanted everything to be perfect. Dad kept nodding with his nose buried in the files, agreeing to anything she suggested. As a still-active diplomat, it wasn’t like they couldn’t afford it. Mom drew the line at having white horses and doves released on the patio. Uncle Tem had been kind enough to agree to host the party inside the Hrad, the big Bratislava Castle, and Aunt Olivia couldn’t wait to introduce her niece to high society.
The bulky house-help robot arrived with a tray loaded with refreshments and fruits. Aurore wrinkled her nose at the bowl filled with cherries and reached for a fizzy drink instead. “I want a tiara. Real diamonds. I want to have the best jewelry at the party.”
“Sweetheart, your father is a socialist,” Mom said. “That wouldn’t look good to his electorate.”
“I didn’t ask you to buy them,” Aurore said in her most reasonable tone. “It will be the biggest event of the season. Any jewelry house in Europe would be happy to lend us something.”
Mom tsked, staring at Dad. He raised his eyes from the files, grinning. “You heard her … she’ll make a fine politician some—”
A low rumble covered Dad’s voice. The entire house shook, from the foundation to the roof, as if trying to uproot itself from the ground. The noise hurt Aurore’s ears and left a gasping hole in her chest. Concrete blocks flew at them, smashing everything in their path. The robot turned into a mangled pile of metal surrounded by sparks in a corner. Mom’s scream was cut short by a blow to the head, and Dad toppled off the chair and slammed against the wall behind him. Lucky for her, Aurore didn’t remember the rest.
She woke up in a room she didn’t recognize, her head clouded and her body numb. As her eyes focused, they found Uncle Tem and Aunt Olivia standing by the side of her bed, faces grim. Their presence was comforting in lieu of her parents, who must be in another hospital room. But why wasn’t Aunt Olivia holding her hand? She was big on holding hands.
When she tried to move, Aurore discovered she couldn’t. “Mom?” She whimpered.
Aunt Olivia pressed a hand over her thin-lipped mouth and rushed out of the room, but not fast enough for Aurore to miss the tears running down her cheeks.
Mom? Surely her parents couldn’t be dead. She’d been closer to the blast, and she had survived.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart.” Uncle Tem clumsily patted the bundle of bandages that covered her arm, both arms apparently. “It will be all right…”
No, it wasn’t going to be. Uncle Tem was rubbish with children. He and Aunt Olivia didn’t have any, and he had never shown any interest in his too-young-to-vote niece. Besides, his campaign motto was Don’t promise anything you can’t deliver, so if he’d felt the need to make that promise, it meant there was no one else left to do it.
Hit by the realization, Aurore turned her face away and let the warm tears flow.
From that day on, Uncle Tem made sure to stop by for at least a few minutes each day. It was a big deal to make room in his busy mayor’s schedule, but he did it without complaining. The part of Aurore that hadn’t succumbed to despair appreciated it. The other part, however, didn’t care about anything now that Mom and Dad were gone, and she certainly didn’t care about her injuries not healing the way they should.
“She looks peaceful,” Uncle Tem said one evening when she pretended to be asleep.
“She’s not getting better.” The doctor’s soft voice was barely audible.
“Well, make her better. Money is not an issue. Tell me what she needs, and I’ll get it for you.”
A pause followed, during which Aurore imagined the doctor giving Uncle Tem a judgmental stare.
“You can’t buy what she needs.”
Aurore could clearly picture a raised, bushy eyebrow. Try me.
“The table protected her torso from the blast,” the doctor said, “but her arms and legs were totally crushed. We did our best…” A sigh. “Unfortunately, gangrene is settling in on her extremities. We will have to amputate soon.”
Loud sobs and a slammed door signaled Aunt Olivia had left the
room. Good. Aurore had long gotten sick of the woman’s crying. At least now she could listen to the conversation in peace.
Practical as usual, Uncle Tem asked, “Which limb?”
“All four.”
Uncle Tem’s gasp covered Aurore’s own little gasp.
“I see…”
Aurore couldn’t wrap her mind around it. He wanted to cut her arms and legs off? Sure, they hurt, but … cut them off? How was she going to dance at her party?
“She’ll need prosthetics, right?” Uncle Tem asked.
“Yes, but … thanks to the Eastern goods ban, she can only have second-hand prosthetics. No fine motor skills, and she’ll be lucky if she’s able to walk again. As for the cosmetics part of it…” Another sigh. “Only a few months ago, we would have still been able to find parts, but everything coming from the East has been repossessed and destroyed to cut our ties with the enemy. We’re in a very bad place right now, and it doesn’t do your niece any good.”
The next pause was even longer than the last.
“How much time do we have?” Uncle Tem asked with determination in his voice.
“Not long. If we wait, we’ll only have to cut them higher up.”
“Let me worry about that,” Uncle Tem said, and for a week, there was no more talk about cutting.
* * *
The pain got worse, regardless of how many painkillers they pumped into her bloodstream. The doctor was getting anxious, too.
And then, there was no more hospital and no more doctors, which would have been worrisome if she had cared. Aurore took it as a sign she would find peace soon. She might even be reunited with her parents if such a thing as the afterlife existed. Still, when she was moved into an ambulance and taken out of town, she couldn’t help being intrigued by the destination, but there was no one around to answer her questions.
The car passed by a circus tent with yellow and blue stripes and pulled up near a train car on its other side. Two men dressed in clown costumes but wearing no make-up came to pull her stretcher from the car and carried her to the train. If Uncle Tem hadn’t accompanied her all the way, she would have been scared.
The fresh air helped clear Aurore’s head, and she stifled a small regret that she couldn’t attend the circus this year. She hadn’t even known it was in town yet as it usually arrived late in the fall, but news filtered with difficulty into the isolation ward.
The clowns laid the stretcher on a table and retreated, leaving them alone in a compartment that must have occupied at least half of the train car. Pieces of equipment and metal parts lay discarded on tables and shelves. This looked nothing like a hospital. It looked like a car repair shop—cars that had been built in the past century maybe.
A heavy shuffling announced the arrival of a large man with a green-tinged complexion and dark crusts spread on his skin. He maneuvered his huge body around the corner of the table. “Mayor Ternchiev, welcome to my lair.”
They didn’t shake hands.
“This is the patient,” Uncle Tem said, “Aurore.”
“Hello, doctor…” Aurore spoke in a weak voice.
The man lifted a finger. “There are no doctors here, so we don’t do patients. We only deal with clients.” He took a long look at her and licked his fat, dark lips. “You may call me Big Dino like everyone else.” With that, he picked up a device covered in hard plastic with a long hole on the side. “Do not worry, Miss Aurore. This isn’t going to hurt.”
He positioned the device on top of her left leg, covering it from the ankle to the knee. He studied the image that appeared on the small screen encased in the device then moved it higher up her thigh. Murmuring something to himself, too low to be understood, he repeated the procedure on her other leg. Her arms were next.
Uncle Tem shifted his weight on the other side of the stretcher. Aurore admired his patience, as the mayor wasn’t usually this subdued. “Well?”
Big Dino stepped back and rubbed his chin. “I’m afraid it’s too late. The gangrene has spread, quite far actually. A clot can break off anytime and cause a heart attack, not to mention the infection. You waited too long.”
“I waited for you,” Uncle Tem said.
“We came as quickly as we could. We were outside Europe when you contacted me. This train can only go so fast.”
Uncle Tem lowered his head but didn’t look at her. “Well, you’re here now. What can you do?”
“The left side is the most affected.” Big Dino approached the table again. “We’ll have to cut above the knee and elbow … on the right side, below will do, but she’ll lose her hand and foot.”
Aurore whimpered. “I-I don’t want to lose my arms and legs!”
“I know, sweetheart,” Uncle Tem said, “but there’s no other way. You will get new ones.”
“There was a way … if you had let the doctors remove the dead tissue when the gangrene first started,” Big Dino said.
“They would have insisted on adding the prosthetics, everyone would have…” Uncle Tem shook his head. “Our prosthetics aren’t good enough. Even the black market wouldn’t have provided anything better. Then, I remembered about your people.”
“So, what are you trying to do, make sure she’s either perfect or dead?” Big Dino’s question came with a little sneer. “You could have used some of the available prosthetics and changed them when something better became available.”
“And have her go through this again?” Uncle Tem replied with a frown. “She’s suffered enough. This nightmare ends now. She’ll get the prosthetics and go on with her life.” Uncle Tem’s bushy eyebrows lowered over his eyes when Big Dino didn’t say anything. “Will they work?”
“Yes, they will work,” Big Dino said, fiddling with the cuff of his jacket. “But you are forgetting something. My people wear costumes and masks more often than not. They don’t expect to fit in the real world … or be accepted. This little lady, however…”
“She will be fine. Her social status will make her accepted.”
Big Dino’s tilted head hinted he believed otherwise.
“What exactly can you do for her?” Uncle Tem asked, and Aurore felt like they were two warriors fighting and the battlefield was her poor, battered body.
“Four fully functional prosthetics. I have something in the works, but they need to be adjusted to her size.”
“She’s still growing.”
“We’ll take that in account. Yearly fixes will get them to the right size,” Big Dino said. “Normal mobility, resistance, and sensitivity … unless you want some other features. That will cost extra, and it will take more time.”
“No, normal will do,” Uncle Tem said. “Of course, you will stay until she gains the full use of them.”
“That’s not possible. It will take months.”
“We have a whole summer ahead of us. That’s when the circus is touring, isn’t it?”
“We can’t stay that long in one place. If the circus stays more than two or three weeks, the expenses will surpass the profits once the interest decreases, and the circus will lose money. We still have a winter to live through.”
“That isn’t my problem,” Uncle Tem said.
“Nor are Miss Aurore’s arms and legs mine.”
“Still, you came.”
“I did…” Big Dino murmured.
“Why?”
“Because it hasn’t been done before, not at this level. If done right, it will be a work of art.”
“It is a challenge. So rise up to it. I’ll pay you as agreed, and you can have the satisfaction of doing it.”
“You can’t pay me that much, not for a whole summer.”
“All right … then find a lucrative way to make more money while you stay here. If it doesn’t break too many laws, I’ll make sure the municipality doesn’t get in your way.”
“We could offer repair services to the locals. We’ve got a car full of spare parts.” Big Dino’s eyes narrowed. “Would you let us do that? The new laws don’t enc
ourage the reuse of second-generation prosthetics.”
“They don’t outright forbid it either … and if that’s what it takes…” Uncle Tem raised his shoulders.
“We could work with that. Very well. We have a deal.”
“Anything to get her back to normal.”
Big Dino and Uncle Tem shook hands above Aurore’s body.
“Oh, speaking about normal,” Big Dino said. “We don’t have the right materials to give them the look and feel of normal skin. No matter how hard we try, they won’t look human enough, not from close. At this point, it would be easier to make them any other color.”
A long pause fell between the two men.
“Make them golden.”
* * *
They hadn’t let her see them, neither the arms or the legs. Aurore knew hers were gone because the burning pain had stopped. They hadn’t let her see the stumps either. The prosthetics had been attached right away, and they were still working on them. She followed the progress on the screens that showed the inner working mechanics as the prosthetics lacked the cover.
Coming up to mid-thigh, the left leg promised to be a beauty when finished. She used to have nice legs, but this was outstanding. If her math was right, she’d gained at least two centimeters in height. She had already managed to make the joints work, the knee and the ankle, but wasn’t quite ready to use the toes. Big Dino had asked her to be patient. They had other things to figure out first.
There was still no sensation below the right knee. Something blocked the sensors’ input access to the brain, despite the scans being clean. They worked on finding an alternate path via the unaffected nerves. She couldn’t do anything about that while left by herself. The last time she tried to make her right leg move, she’d sent half of the installation that kept her connected to the bed flying and still hadn’t felt a thing. They had made her stronger than intended.
The hands worked, though, and in between tweaking sessions, Aurore’s job was to learn how to use them. Fine motor skills took time to master, but it wasn’t like she had better things to do with her time. She’d cared little about the piano lessons abandoned in early childhood, but now she wondered if she were ever going to be able to play again. So she watched the screens and moved each finger independently, again and again. If she pressed too hard, the oval-shaped, never-growing, never-changing-shape fingernails would embed themselves in the armrests of her chair where they had already left several sets of indentations. She didn’t know which would break first if she pushed them, the nails or the chair.