This is hi-tech, he realises.
And with that expression, finally, comes a trickle of memory. A trickle that becomes a torrent.
****
Stacy Sickler.
A hard sounding, uncompromising name. Exactly the kind of woman she'd been. She'd loved everything about the modern world. Its corporations, its sciences, its decadence and diversions. If you had wealth in such a world, you could do anything, she'd often said. She was right. Technology ruled and money bought the monarch.
Kurt Dunne had been astonished she'd taken any interest in him but she had pursued him like a huntress and he was willing prey. She lingered after meetings to flirt with him. Followed him to his office not caring how obvious her intent was. She was an assistant in HR; he was head of the Australasian division of ArkTek, the corporation whose research arm had created the AMG. It was largely a one-product business now, and a monopoly at that. The global relaxation of genetic research laws had brought into the public domain what had previously been the preserve of the Military. The double helix had been separated and flattened out, every secret in its code laid bare. It was only a small step to creating the AnthropomorphoMass Generator and ArkTek was first to the post.
Everyone wanted the ArkTek franchise. Body adornment was history. Joe and Jane Public could enter any AMG outlet human and walk (or trot or fly) out as animals or human hybrids. Larger animals were the most popular: 'Huline' was the standard half lion, half human — a favourite with women. Men loved the giant-cocked 'Huquine'; front half man, rear end stallion, making a centaur of the sexually inferior male. And for more aggressive types the 'Hursine' template made 'little' men into bears.
More through luck than planning Kurt found himself running one large limb of a global business more successful than any in history, bigger even than Coca Cola. Maybe that was why Stacy had been so keen.
****
Kurt doesn't like thinking about her in cynical terms. Sure, to anyone else, anyone watching from outside, she was a hard-faced, gold-digging bitch. But no one looking in from the outside ever understands, do they? What he and Stacy have…Shit…What they had was secret and precious and delicate. She had an armoured shell but Kurt had been allowed through.
Thinking about it is wasting time too. He'll only have time to follow her, to find her, if he can get out of this trouble fast. He remembers her goodbye note. When had he found it? Last night? The night before? Surely no longer ago than that. The last thing he recalls is vowing to track her down and tell her it's not over, tell her that there's nothing they can't get through if she'll only keep the dream—
—Huh. She's already mentioned that part, hasn't she?
No matter. She needs to know that he would give up everything for her, for them. Everything. He'd live far away from the world with her, somewhere in the outback where no one ever comes calling. And there she'd be safe to open her shell to him forever.
He grips the strange barrier that keeps him in his earth-bubble tomb. He takes a few deep breaths of oxygen-depleted air and pushes with every muscle in every limb, bracing his crooked legs against the rear of the tiny chamber.
The barrier gives. Hope rises like an eagle.
Triumph awaits with just a little more effort. The barrier expands further and then stops. His legs quiver not with fear now but with exertion. The barrier contracts towards him, returning the concertina of his body back into its ovoid cell.
Momentarily spent, his lungs unable to take enough nourishment from the wet, black air, he lies in the darkness, diaphragm pumping, stars going nova behind his eyes, suffocating.
Only when, many minutes later, his breathing settles to the point at which every inhalation is merely the first half of a huge sigh, only when his heart has slowed and he is able to sieve just enough oxygen from the stale atmosphere, only then does he allow himself the luxury of weeping.
****
My darling Kurt
I know you understand what finding this letter means. But I still owe you an explanation, I suppose. You're a good man, certainly too good for me. Good men all over the world must be so sick of hearing that but it's true. Some women need to be treated with the same respect their fathers gave them just to feel normal. In so many cases, mine included, that means no respect at all. I know it's wrong but I can't change my nurture and so I'm gone, Kurt. Out of your life for good. You ought to be pleased. It will save us both the inevitable bitterness. This way, I'm out of here while we have nothing but happy memories. I know you saw this coming and I know that even though you never said so, you believed you could fix me just by keeping the dream of us alive, by throwing on a log every hour or two and never letting our fire go out. I'm so sorry, Kurt, but I'm far more broken than that. There was nothing either of us could ever have done to stop this love fading. In the end it would have poisoned you too.
I loved you, Kurt. I really did. Got to go now.
Stacy
****
God in Heaven, what is that smell?
It was the first thing Kurt noticed when he woke but it was the least of his concerns. Now it's one of the discomforts that most drives him to break free. It's a dirty smell, similar to the ammonia in cat's piss but that isn't quite it. It's a damp stink, one that sticks at the back of his parched throat and lines his nostrils like liquid filth. There's an undertone of decay to it and suddenly he remembers where he's come across this before.
As a kid, growing up in Black Town, there'd been one summer when the block of units where his family lived was overrun with cockroaches. They put Roach Motels in every room. The kitchen was the worst. Kurt remembers being thirsty one night when he was about ten. He slipped out of bed and walked to the fridge for a cold glass of juice. Something hard popped as he stepped on it. He reached for the light switch. In the glare not hundreds, but thousands of cockroaches, every size from ladybird to mouse, had run for cover. In seconds it was like they'd never been there. Under his bare foot, white entrails leaking ventrally, was a huge flattened roach. He'd shut the kitchen door, knowing it wouldn't make any real difference, washed his foot in the bath and gone back to bed without his juice.
Months later there had been a bad smell in the kitchen which took weeks to track down. Finally, Kurt had looked under the cooker and found a forgotten Roach Motel with no vacancies. Every part of it was covered with cockroach carcasses, those that had walked across unwittingly and those who had been attracted to the scent of their dying brethren. And that was what he could smell now, give or take a note or two.
Rotting insect.
****
In their last few days together the subject of children came up. He'd brought it up, to be exact. It was a short conversation.
"I'm not saying we should have kids, Stace, okay? Christ. All I'm saying is what do you think of the idea?"
"I think it sucks."
"Even the idea of having a family sucks? Why?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Talking doesn't mean anything. It's just a conversation. I really want to know what you think."
She rolled out from under him, turned away.
He kept it light.
"I'm getting the impression you don't want to talk about it."
She didn't respond. He pushed.
"This is what your hard shell is all about, isn't it, Stacy? If there was ever an opportunity to talk to someone you can trust, this is it and I'm that someone. Come on."
She was silent and still.
He reached over and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. Stacy threw off the sheet and sprang from the bed. Her whole body was bent with tension as she screamed at him.
"It's none of your fucking business, Kurt. Okay? You don't know me and you never will. I said let's keep this simple, didn't I? Why do you have to make trouble for us? I can't have kids. I won't have them. Not with you, not with anyone. The only way I would ever have children is if the man was willing to carry them, bear them and feed them. Would you do that, Kurt?"
Wi
th the arrival of the AMG, such things were not out of the question, Kurt supposed. He'd heard of customers using the Generator to change sex as well as species. Was she serious, though, or was she merely goading him?
"If it was with you, Stacy. If it meant we could always be together, I'd do it all."
"Bullshit, Kurt. You're such a fucking liar."
"It's the truth."
She began to gather up her clothes.
"I told you, we're not having this conversation. Not now. Not ever."
She'd walked out. He'd stayed in bed not moving, their mingled fluids cooling at his groin, dying there.
****
Cramp hits both hamstrings simultaneously — something to do with his recent exertions and the restrictions of space, he assumes. Whys and wherefores evaporate as his muscles bunch into twisted nuggets of agony. He straightens his legs as far as he can to oppose the contractions but there isn't enough room to make a difference. He has to wait, stifling whimpers and grinding his teeth, for the muscles to release on their own.
It takes too long and he cries out despite the fist rammed against his mouth. When the muscles finally twitch and release, he discovers he now lies in a pool of his own urine. A spasm clenches his stomach and a small jet of fluid blurts from his mouth. Once again the burning followed by numbness. His stomach feels full and uncomfortable. His stomach turns over and spasms again. He resists, needing to hang on to his body fluids to avoid dehydration. Judging by the stinging in his urethra, he's already drying out, nothing but toxins in his piss.
It's as the stomach cramps ease and he allows his hand to drop from his mouth that he realises he can see movement. He raises his hand. There it is again. Light is coming in from somewhere. Light means he's not too far underground. Light means it might be morning outside. Light means there's an exit. Just the thought of there being a dawn and that it might be only a few metres away raises his spirits. He reaches out to the barrier and pulls his face towards the light. All he is aware of is brownness. Gritty brownness. His hand is an indistinct blur in front of his eyes, enough movement there for it not to be his imagination. He thinks he can smell clean dew and promises himself he will lick pure dawn droplets from leaves every morning for the rest of his life if he can get out of here. Stacy will think he's crazy, of course, but their love will see them through his foibles.
For the moment there's nothing he can do but wait.
Wait and remember.
****
Dozens of times it crossed his mind that her behaviour was odd. Just as many times he passed it off as eccentricity and childhood damage. No one came through that unmarked, did they? There was so much to love about her, it was easy to ignore her freakish side.
Sometimes she came home late and very obviously out of her head on something more potent than booze or hash. It would have disturbed him more if those hadn't been the times when to have sex with her was to enter utter abandonment and uninhibited ecstasy. Occupying some strange psychological territory between coma and nirvana, she would appear to sleep but at the slightest touch would be aroused almost to orgasm. It made for long, aching nights. Nights in which he seemed to die into her. Sex was a kind of suicide then, an exploration of a self beyond this world. It made his love for her fierce to the point of violence. He wanted to beat her even as he wanted to bathe and kiss her deified feet.
On other occasions, she would miss a dinner date or concert and he would neither see nor hear from her for days. When she did finally return his calls or if she knocked on his door at some arbitrary hour, there would be no mention of it and certainly nothing approaching an apology. Their love would continue as it had before.
Her absences drove him mental but worse by far were the times he found cuts and scars on her arms and thighs. He knew her past had not been a happy one but that door was closed to him as he'd discovered to his cost each time he tried to explore the subject. Often his question led to violence — hers against him. It was this ease of physical attack that made him certain she was hurting herself — cutting and scratching with a tool he couldn't quite picture. Sometimes she looked as though she'd forced herself to walk naked through camel-thorns, such was the damage to her arms, hips and thighs. It became easier just to allow her to heal without asking questions. In fact, the less he pushed her on any of these issues, the happier they were together.
The need to stay happy made her foibles very easy to overlook.
****
Cramps now hit muscles at random all over his body; between his shoulder blades, along the edges of his feet and hands.
A hot ache has begun in his joints and what started as nausea has become a deep tenderness in his guts. Even the muscles of his abdomen ripple and cramp from time to time. He's not thinking clearly any more; his mind switches from his real circumstances to memories of Stacy and fantasies about their future. He's already decided to resign from ArkTek and put all his effort into finding her. Once they're together again, they'll disappear into the bush, somewhere truly remote, and live a quiet life. Far from the molestations of her long-fingered past, far from the madness of science and technology — once beneficent studies which whored themselves now to the ego of modern mankind. They'll live natural, live free. And they'll die that way.
The only thing pulling him back to the moment is the gathering light. Each time he returns it's stronger. He holds up both hands and sees the movement of his fingers. He sees the pale outline of his legs against the walls. It's a relief, an extra confirmation of his existence which the darkness had stolen. He stretches out to the barrier and he can see that too. His imagination of it was almost exact. A brown, shiny weave like hardened resin, stretching from one multi-armed joint to another and secured to the dirt by what looks like a kind of welding.
He can see through the untidy mesh. Beyond is a larger chamber not much higher than his own cell. At intervals of two or three feet around this new space are more barriers, like the one which imprisons him. As his eyes adjust to the distance and sort imagination and approximation from reality, he sees that the barriers on these other cells have not held. Whoever was inside them has broken out.
Now, he realises, he heard the last one getting away. The bastard had waited for the clicking to stop and then crawled to freedom. No attempt to release Kurt. Not even a few whispered words promising to return with help. The selfish fuck. But Kurt also realises that he, too, has done his best to make no sound. In the total darkness of the previous night, the other prisoner couldn't have known he was there. It was Kurt's own stupid fault for not calling out.
He looks to the left and right trying to see everything in the chamber. There's nothing else there except the six other cells and the small expanse of the same, knobbly, ridged dirt he lies on. He is naked. He is alone. He has nothing he can use to break free. And somewhere out there, Stacy is making good her plan to get away from him and start her doomed cycle of short-lived love affairs all over again.
But she'll never find anyone like him.
Savage with frustration and anger, Kurt throws all his weight against the barrier of toughened gum, strains every fibre of muscle against it. Something wrenches in his gut, a muscle tearing deep inside, and he collapses again. Cramps ripple through his whole body, setting muscle groups against each other in stone fires of agony. He urinates again, vomits, but nothing comes save the gruel of burning bitterness and the numbness it leaves behind. Every inch of his skin is aflame now, not just with heat but as though touched by toxic chemicals. Even the tears he weeps burn his eyes. He wipes them away to save his sight — that's all he has left.
And then the clicking begins again. Loud, sharp and clean in the rusty quarter-light.
Loud because it's so very close by.
****
He has already slid through a slick of his own waste to the back of his chamber, clutching the strained, tortured muscles of his abdomen. The sight of the thing was enough to release his sphincter and now the cell is choked with the acrid stench of what must be
diseased shit. The fumes from it burn the insides of his nostrils.
The failings of his body are of little import when measured against the beast that has crawled into view. He is suddenly very glad of the tough mesh that separates him from it. Kurt looks into the eyes of the scorpion; twelve eyes, blind with determination.
First the left claw:
Click.
Then the right:
Click.
And so on.
And with each collision of chitin, he feels ripples in his guts, as though those claws are magnets and he has swallowed ingots of iron.
Her voice, when it comes, is the most surprising thing of all because it is still so beautiful, so intelligent and this…thing…is so abhorrent. He hears her in his mind.
"All love fades, Kurt. Ours would have too."
"No…"
He's not sure what exactly it is he's denying. Her assertion, her transformation or the circumstances.
"Yes. It's how people are. Love is an ideal, a concept — one we can never live up to."
"But I do—"
What was he going to say? Does he still love the woman now she is a scorpion? Now he knows it's her who has imprisoned him here? And, if she doesn't even believe in love, is there even any point in—
Scenes From the Second Storey Page 16