Dr. Adder

by Jeter, K W

  Endpoint straightened back up and faced Fuller. “We’ll have to convene the welcoming committee tonight. We can’t wait any longer.”

  “Why not?” asked Fuller. “If he runs away we can always track him down again.”

  “I’m not worried about that,” snapped Endpoint. “I think he’s going suicidal.”

  “But if that’s the case—”

  “The ceremony will change all that,” Endpoint interrupted brusquely. “I’m the Patriarch this month. It’s my responsibility, and my decision.”

  “All right,” said Fuller, shrugging. “I’ll get on the phone to the others.” He started to turn away to his office, then stepped back to reach behind the artificial whore and switch it off. Limmit felt the padded breast begin to grow cold beneath his face.

  “How long is this going to last?” asked Limmit. He was seated in the back of Endpoint’s car, between two SPS members. Endpoint himself was driving, with two others up front.

  “The ceremony?” said Endpoint, glancing at Limmit in the rearview mirror. “Not very long. A couple of hours; we should be through shortly after midnight.”

  Limmit stared out the car window at Orange County’s brightly lit streets. The questions that had sprung into his mind when confronted by the artificial whore, that had indeed been boiling at the closest edges of his subconscious since the night of the Raid, continued to repeat themselves endlessly, like some mnemonic jingle. As soon as it’s over, he decided, I’ll say goodbye and light out. Back to the sewers. Or any way out of Orange County.

  “Why do you ask?” inquired Endpoint.

  “Oh,” said Limmit, “you know, I don’t want to eat too much at this feast of yours. Slows you down when you’re traveling.”

  “He doesn’t want to eat too much?” asked the SPSer on Limmit’s right, sounding puzzled.

  Fuller, sitting up front, turned around. “He doesn’t know yet,” he said explanatorily.

  “Ah.”

  “Know what?” asked Limmit quickly. Something seemed foreboding.

  No one answered him. The vehicle pressed on through the late night traffic. Limmit watched the men’s silent faces, all looking straight ahead into the night without meeting his eyes. The rumor, Limmit thought suddenly, that Bandita told me—

  He lunged across the lap of the SPSer to his left, scrabbling for the car’s door handle. The door popped open for a brief second, giving him a dizzying glimpse of the concrete road surface flashing by beneath the car. Then the two SPS members hauled him back into his place between them, and clamped themselves firmly onto his arms, rendering him immobile. He could see Endpoint’s livid eyes observing him from the rearview mirror.

  “That’s right, son, ” Endpoint grated. “I’m afraid we observe a reading of the parable of the prodigal son that may differ a little from your conception of the story, son. ” The way he rasped out the word bristled Limmit’s neck hair. “But then,” Endpoint continued, “you don’t really know what it’s like to be a father, eh? And to raise a son like you? Maybe, if you think about it in the time left to you, you’ll begin to see why we hold that the prodigal son is the fatted calf. It makes more sense that way, of course. After all, how would you really welcome home such a son? The flesh of his father’s loins, yet who has feasted on his broken heart. Now it’ll be tit for tat, so to speak.” Christ, thought Limmit crazily, they’re not even gourmets— they’re probably going to eat me bloody raw! He struggled to keep control of his senses. Looking out the window, he saw that the road had entered vacant land, scrubby gray and brown hills. That probably meant they were only minutes away from whatever isolated spot the SPS held their ceremonies at. A pair of headlights was visible heading for them; soon they would flash by on the other side of them and disappear.

  “But,” said Limmit desperately, “I’m not even your real son.” In the rearview mirror, Endpoint’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Like I told you,” he said quietly, “you’ll do.” Then the eyes darted away from the mirror; Limmit saw them grow wide in startled astonishment. He looked ahead through the windshield and saw that the pair of headlights on the road before them was heading straight for them, and accelerating. “What’s he doing?” screamed Fuller in a terrified falsetto.

  Endpoint panicked, slamming on the vehicle’s brakes and cranking the steering wheel to the right. The car skidded through a ninety-degree arc, nearly heeling over as it continued sideways in the same direction. Limmit felt himself bounce off the shoulder of the SPSer next to him, then slam his forehead against the back of the seat ahead. Dazed, he watched through the side window as the other car’s lights sped closer; at the last possible moment the lights veered to one side. Something struck the car’s tail a glancing blow, spinning it back the other way around on the road and smashing Limmit and the SPS members against the right side of the car’s interior before it came to a lurching stop.

  There was a taste of blood in Limmit’s mouth. His head aching, he looked around at the car’s other occupants. All except one were still conscious; a spatter of blood traced itself across the windshield to where Fuller’s head lay on the dash. Endpoint clutched the steering wheel tightly, his face drained white. Before he or anyone else could say anything, a hand snaked through the side window and placed a small revolver against Endpoint’s temple.

  “Freeze, Dad,” said Edgar Endpoint.

  * * *

  “My own son,” said the elder Endpoint bitterly, staring out the window at Edgar. “And my gun, too. Who said you could go into my bureau?”

  “Two bad ones in a row,” muttered one of the SPS members beside Limmit.

  “Let him out,” said Edgar, holding the pistol steady at his father’s head.

  “Who?” asked Endpoint blankly. He seemed genuinely confused, still not recovered from the collision.

  “The prodigal son—he’s going with me.”

  Limmit scrambled out of the car, the two SPSers in the back seat not trying to stop him. Outside, on the dark, empty road, he could see Edgar’s blood-red vehicle a few yards off, one entire side crumpled like metal foil. In the hand without the gun, the youth dangled a battered crash helmet by its chin strap.

  “Don’t try to follow us, Dad,” said Edgar, pulling out the gun. Limmit sensed the air of nervous tension around him. “Come on,” Edgar said, waving him over to his car. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Limmit. He reached inside his boot. The blade was still there; amazing, considering all he had been through lately. He walked around Endpoint’s car, quickly and systematically slitting the tires.

  “Ta-ta,” he yelled as he climbed into Edgar’s car. He was filled with giddy excitement from the violent escape. “See you later, child eaters.”

  “Pretty hairy driving,” said Limmit as Edgar accelerated down the road. He sank back into the car’s upholstery, accepting it like a dream. “I’m surprised this thing can still run.” Edgar grinned across at him. “It’s built for little street games like this. The favorite sport of Orange County’s affluent young. Steel beams all the way around—I could’ve slammed into a bank and not hurt this car. The side panels are just snap-on decorative modules—I’ve changed them about twenty times already.” He fell silent; his gleeful smile drained away completely as he hunched over the wheel.

  Limmit studied his silhouetted profile. “So why?” he asked finally. “Why’d you do it?”

  “It’s true,” said Edgar, staring straight ahead. “About Dr. Adder. What you told me.”

  “What confirmed it for you?”

  “Droit. I went down below, to the sewers, to give him his money. I told him what you had told me, and he admitted it was true. He said that he had seen him, Dr. Adder, himself.”

  It’s true, all right, reflected Limmit, plunged again in private melancholia. Now you know, too.

  “Droit told me to give you this,” said Edgar. He handed Limmit a sheet of paper. “He said he couldn’t arrange another guide for you.”

  Holding it up against the c
ar’s dashboard lights, Limmit could make out the paper’s details. It was a map of sections of the Sump Line. Directions were indicated on it, leading from a spot marked VISITOR back to some point in the L.A. slums. It looked impossibly complicated; maybe, he thought, I’ll be able to figure it out when I get down there again. He folded the sheet carefully and placed it in his inside coat pocket. Might as well see it through, he decided. “I take it,” he said, “you’re going to lead me back down to the sewers.”

  Edgar nodded, continuing to stare at the road ahead. “What are you going to do then?” asked Limmit.

  “I don’t know,” said Edgar, shaking his head. “I can hide out all right, I guess, either down in the sewers or up here at my friends’ for a while.” He fell silent for a moment. “I always used to think,” he said softly, “that someday I could always go to the Interface, or Rattown even. Get away from here. But now what can you do?” He turned his face to Limmit; the car’s dim green dash lights shining wetly upon his cheeks. “What can anybody do now?”

  I should’ve asked the kid for a watch or something, thought Limmit. My sense of time is really fucked up now. His legs ached as if he had been walking beside the dark underground river for days; but since leaving Orange County he had slept only once, curled up dreamless in one of the side tunnels, woken, and plodded on upstream.

  Or better yet, he thought, some food. His stomach had long ago ceased rumbling—only a periodic tremor of faintness welled upward with each step. So far he had not even seen, let alone been able to catch, any of the small rodents Bandita had found for them before. They’re probably too smart for me, he thought.

  The next section of tunnel he entered was only faintly lit from a few remaining fluorescent panels above. What looked to be a large clump of rags lay in his path, and another similar object lay farther on. Weakly, Limmit prodded the closest bundle, and Bandita’s dead face lolled over, staring up at him.

  He bent down beside the body. Against the Sump Line’s background melange of odors was the scent of several days’ putrefaction. A pool of blood had dried and caked around the body, pouring from the ragged exit wound in her chest and the smaller hole in her back where the bullet had entered.

  The other object was Victor’s corpse. Stooping down, he saw that the throat had been expertly slit. One stiff hand still clenched the rifle he had had time to fire before he bled to death.

  Limmit walked back to Bandita’s body and noticed her small outstretched hand cradling the strap of a large canvas bag. He pulled the bag free and looked inside. It was filled with old, but still edible, canned foods. He extracted and weighed in his hands a can of peaches. She must have found a cache, thought Limmit.

  He walked back and forth between the two dead objects, studying their outlines and contortions. I don’t understand it, he thought. She killed him, and left him. Heading for ... where? For me? He shook his head, the canned peaches a weight in his hand.

  Her body was astonishingly light when he lifted it in his arms. As he lowered it into the black, silent water, it sank below the surface, but bobbed back up as it slowly wheeled around, following the river’s current. When it was out of view he sat down and pulled off the peaches’ lift-tab. He fished out with his fingers the slippery golden sections, like tangible sunlight in the dark, from the warm fluid and placed them in his mouth.

  The end of the tunnel, where the dark water emerged from behind a steel and concrete wall, was littered with the rotting fragments of old packing crates. Beyond them to one side was a small doorlike opening. Limmit, entering and following its downward slope, soon found himself in a long room crowded with banks of electronic apparatus, connected to each other by thick bundles of black cords lying on the floor. The passageway was so narrow that he slid the strap of the can-filled canvas bag from his shoulder and dropped it to the ground. On the machines’ faces a few colored lights shone or blinked erratically; a low, wavering hum filled the room.

  Beyond the computers, Limmit entered another room, lined with shelves. Most were filled with large black volumes—half of one side contained cardboard boxes crammed haphazardly with computer printout paper. With a finger he wiped the dust from the spine of one of the volumes—the typed label read VISITOR—TRANS. SERIES R. A pair of cables from the previous room snaked across the floor and vanished through another door.

  The Visitor was on the other side. The space itself that contained it was enormous, a cathedral-like immensity. Standing on its floor, Limmit could see no ceiling; only the wall behind him indicated any of the area’s dimensions. And a few yards away from him lay the gargantuan bulk of the Visitor. Somehow Limmit sensed that he and it were the only living things there.

  It reminded Limmit of pictures he had seen as a child of certain ants whose queens grow gross and immobile until the chitinous body becomes nothing but an appendage of a great shapeless, pulsating mass. Only this was not insect-sized: it swelled and towered over him like a cloudbank.

  Limmit walked closer to its bulging flank and touched it. A faint luminescence added to the dim electric lights set up around it. A section some fifty feet square slowly bellowed in and out. As far as he could see, the soft bulk pulsated all over in like manner, with no apparent coordination. It’s dying, Limmit realized suddenly. It’s been dying for years.

  Where it rested on the floor, great discolored bruises had developed, as if the pulpy body’s fluids were collecting and growing stagnant with lividity. Several patches touching the floor had rotted open, and had emitted a puslike fluid that dried into a yellow crust around the body’s edges.

  He slowly circled the body for several yards. As in the dimly remembered pictures of the insect queens, a comparatively small half-figure, like a human imbedded waist-deep, hung attached to the great mass. A hard-shelled trunk the size of a man’s, with thin, sticklike limbs hanging limply or occasionally twitching, and a smooth oval head that hung just at the height of Limmit’s own. He walked up and stared into the suspended alien face. The large, flylike, complex eyes seemed to contain only the barest spark of consciousness. A tiny microphone was attached to one side of the face’s arrangement of mandibles. Leaning close to it, Limmit could hear a faint stream of sounds, a liquid whining. His message, thought Limmit. From so far away. That he has come to die in order to give us.

  He followed the microphone’s dangling cord across the floor to a small machine, clattering softly to itself and unreeling from a wide slot a closely filled length of printout paper. The sheets had piled up into a disorderly mountain at the machine’s foot, sliding like a glacier over the thick black cables from the other rooms. He lifted a handful of the paper and read it. After a few minutes, he dropped it and snatched up more, scanning it quickly; then he tore the sheet straight from the machine’s mouth and studied it frantically.

  In the other room he tore the black volumes from the shelves at random, dropping them as soon as he had seen a few pages of each. He uprooted the cardboard boxes’ contents, until he was standing, panting from exhaustion, knee-deep in a welter of paper.

  Sickness, he thought, filled with disgust and bitterness; filth and disease. All this way ... for this. He looked around at the scattered sheets of translation. Years, he thought, decades of babbling, incoherent self-pity. Idiocy. It must’ve been diseased, deranged when it got here, was sent here. And wallowing in its own decay since, begging moronically for our help. As if we could do anything at all.

  Limmit walked back into the chamber and stared at the Visitor’s bulk. It was no mystery to him now why the old scientists had all gone someplace else and died, away from it. To work and hope, he thought, and then find out that no one was coming with the answers after all.

  The thing’s faint whine and necrotic mass stirred Limmit’s memory. Full circle, he said to himself; from the egg ranch to the L.A. sewers, two giant corpses at either end. This would be as good a place as any, he thought, to finish. To lie down beside it and die. To stop.

  The stench of rot flowed through him, warm
and rancid. Why the fuck keep on moving? he thought wearily. Life’s nothing but the beating you take before you die. And I’ve died so many times already. Killed and lost so much. The remains.

  Minutes or hours later, he turned away from the pale mass and slowly followed the black cables out. Stupid; you keep taking it, he thought, extracting and unfolding Droit’s map. Until the last time.

  The sewer fluffs luminescence had increased somehow, or Limmit’s eyes had become completely adapted to the dark. Bandita’s bullet-shattered lamp still lay on top of the fluff onto which he had fallen from the surface of Rattown. A rope ladder dangled above him—Droit’s, he thought. He reached up and mounted it, swaying slightly in space, and climbed until the fluff below him was lost to sight. Looking down into the darkness, he could see hundreds of yellow points of light, arranged in pairs, appear on all sides below him. The rats, he thought. They’ve been watching all along.

  For a brief flash of delirium, the yellow lights looked like stars in a black sky, and he hung suspended, unable to tell up or down —it seemed as if he were descending headfirst into the depths, rather than up from them. The feeling passed, and he climbed on, until the lights disappeared.

  On the surface it was night. Nothing’s changed, he thought as he walked through the empty dark alleys. The walls were covered with the Siege Front’s red and black posters, only slightly faded and tattered. Advertisements, he thought, for the land of shades.

  And Mox’s gunman is waiting for me. He knew I’d come back here to die. As good as dead—only a thin crust of animation left to shatter. He felt as if some slow corrosive had eaten out the rest, leaving only stilled vacuum.