Alyzon Whitestarr

by Isobelle Carmody

  “OK,” he said. “So who was listening last night?”

  Some reckless daring prompted me to say lightly, “A couple of Da’s musician friends. They thought you must be in love with me because you were calling so late.”

  Harrison gave a strangled laugh that sounded both alarmed and embarrassed. All at once, desperate to shift the subject before he said something that would cut me to the quick, I asked if there was something wrong with his father.

  Harrison lifted his eyes to the sky and gave a sort of muted Tarzan cry.

  I gaped at him in astonishment, and he looked down at me and burst into laughter. “I’m not going mad,” he said when he had got control of himself. “It’s just that … ah hell. I might as well tell you. My father is an alcoholic. That’s what I meant when I told you before that he tries tae hide from things. He’s a binger. That means a lot of the time he’s fine and he doesnae drink at all. But about once a fortnight he goes on a bender and drinks until he falls down wherever he is, then he wakes and drinks again. When the binge is over, he somehow gets himself home. Last night was the first night he’d been home for three days, and he was a mess. I had tae clean him up, and at the same time I was worrying about what had happened tae you.”

  “Oh, Harrison,” I said, full of pity. “Can’t he get help?”

  “There’s not really anything anyone can do,” Harrison said. “He’s a pretty good father when he’s OK, but we try to keep the binges tae ourselves because otherwise welfare would be ontae us and there would go all of my freedom.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said softly.

  He shrugged. “How could you? You can do a lot but you cannae read minds, thank God.” He said this so harshly it jarred me. He gave me a quick look. “I dinnae mean that how it sounded. It’s just that I wouldnae want anyone reading my thoughts.”

  When we got on the bus, we were both silent. I was thinking about how it must feel to have to take care of your father instead of the other way round. I looked at Harrison out of the corner of my eye, but his expression was intensely private and gave away nothing of his thoughts.

  * * *

  “Hello,” Raoul greeted us, looking pleased. “You’re just in time to try some of this hot chocolate I’ve made. They serve it like this in Italy; it’s made with melted chocolate instead of powder. I’ve got some croissants from the bakery in honor of it.”

  So there we were half an hour later, eating croissants and drinking hot chocolate that was the most delicious thing I had ever drunk in my life. But then Raoul asked what had been happening and Harrison turned to me expectantly, so I set the cup aside and told them about Harlen. I expected them to reproach me for the risks I had taken, but Raoul said he thought my extended senses would keep me from doing anything that would endanger me.

  “You say you felt this virus was looking at you out of Harlen’s eyes? Like it was alive?”

  “Maybe not alive exactly,” I said. “Just … roused.”

  “It could be,” Raoul said thoughtfully. “In a way, every cell in our body is a separate life-form with its own motivations, responding to different stimuli.” Raoul absently poured us all some more chocolate as I told them about Cole. They both looked interested when I told them of the brief vision I had experienced.

  “It sounds a lot like he was thinking about where he was when things went wrong between him and Harlen, and if you are right about their falling-out, then there is a good chance you saw the place where the infections happen,” Raoul said. “It’s a great pity the vision wasn’t clearer.”

  Harrison drew in a deep breath. “It’s a long shot, but when you talked about what you saw, Alyzon, it made me think of those warehouses on the industrial park in Shale-town. Remember the ones owned by Rayc’s wife? There was long grass by the side of the road, and if it wasnae raining, that sandy surface could look white. And a warehouse would cast a blocky shadow.”

  “It’s worth taking a look,” Raoul said. Then he got a strange look on his face and he said in a halting voice, “You know what? It’s an odd thing, but my car is acting up.”

  “We could take a train there this weekend and have a look around,” Harrison offered.

  “You don’t understand,” Raoul said. “That young guy we drove to the industrial park? He said that something in my car would break, and it would give me a reason to come back.”

  Harrison nodded. “I remember. But it could just be that he’s a good mechanic.”

  The hair was rising on the back of my neck as I told them what Davey had said to me.

  “He mun be able tae see or sense people who are infected, too,” Harrison said, his accent growing stronger with his excitement. “That has tae be what he means by ‘them’ and ‘they.’ And I’ve just thought of something else. Ye ken how he said he’d got tae show us the way, and it sounded like he’d got his tenses muddled. Well, what if he meant exactly what he said? That he was showing us the way tae them. Tae the place where the gang meets and where the infections happen. The warehouses! And he directed us there! Ye ken what this means?”

  “I do,” Raoul said softly. “But I wonder if you do.”

  “What do ye mean?” Harrison asked, frowning at him.

  “I mean we are talking about rather more than extended senses if Davey really was directing us to Them. Because how did he know he was supposed to direct us? Who told him? And if no one told him, then how does he know? And how did he know my car would need repairing? He couldn’t … unless he can see into the future.”

  Now it was my turn to gape.

  “He is part of this, somehow,” Raoul said. “And I believe he knows we will see him again, and why. Tomorrow morning I’m going to drive to Shaletown and find out what he knows. And I’m going to take another look at those warehouses.”

  “You ken what I think?” Harrison said, looking from Raoul to me. “I think both you and Davey are a natural response tae this sickness. If we think of humanity as an organism, it stands tae reason there’d be a response tae an attack.”

  “A response by whom? God?” I asked.

  “By the organism as a whole. Just like each individual body produces antibodies when a dangerous organism invades.”

  “You’re saying we’re some sort of antibodies?” I was glad to laugh at the absurdity, because I had begun to feel a little like we were floating off into the ether.

  But Harrison said quite seriously, “In a metaphysical sense, yes, that’s exactly what I think.”

  The telephone rang and Raoul went to answer it. He came back looking worried. “That was Bellavie. Dr. Austin has just been on the phone demanding to know by whose authority Sarry was removed from his care. He’s planning to go to Remington.”

  “He mustn’t be allowed near her!” I said, appalled.

  “My sentiments exactly. The trouble is that as her previous doctor on record, he does have some authority. I’ve just called Dr. Abernathy, the doctor who’s been caring for Sarry at Bellavie. It’s her day off, but she has agreed to come in when Dr. Austin arrives. She wants me to meet her at the hospital.”

  “We’ll go, too,” Harrison said, half rising, but Raoul shook his head.

  “I need you to stay here and wait for my hacker friend, Daisy. She’s to come this evening, and I don’t want to spend the time right now tracking her down to postpone.”

  “I can stay,” Harrison said, glancing at me.

  “Me too. At least, I can stay until the last bus.”

  “Don’t worry about the bus. I’ll be back in time to drive you home,” Raoul promised. “Help yourself to anything you want, and use the computers or TV or whatever.”

  “OK,” Harrison said. “But are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. Daisy’s not the sort to take kindly to being stood up. Even by someone who can’t stand. I’ll leave a note for you to give her.”

  “I dinnae like this,” Harrison said after he had gone.

  “Me either,” I said. “Why would Dr. Austin go all that way to see Sa
rry?”

  “The sickness must be driving him. But dinnae worry. Raoul willnae let him lay a hand on her.” Harrison suggested we pass the time by going through the articles that referred to Aaron Rayc and making a list of all the other artists he had been associated with, because sooner or later we ought to try to find out which, if any, were infected. We had only been at it for twenty minutes when the doorbell rang.

  Harrison went to answer it and ushered in a scraggy old woman of about sixty, clad in skintight leather jeans and leather jacket, a white T-shirt, and black boots with high stiletto heels. She had the foulest mouth I had ever heard on someone old enough to be a grandmother; she was furious to hear she had just missed Raoul. We barely managed to stop her walking away then and there, but she calmed down when she read his note.

  She shoved it in her pocket, looked from me to Harrison, and then swore some more about being left to deal with a kindergarten. Harrison looked as if he was about to say something, but I just asked her sweetly if she wanted to see the computer room. “You think I need directions, kid?” she snarled, and stalked past me into the hall and down to the back of the house.

  “We need her,” I hissed at Harrison, before hurrying after her. By the time I got into the back room, she was already at a terminal tapping away. Ten minutes later she shifted to the next terminal, and then to the next, tapping and huffing and swearing constantly. Now that her attention was not riveted on me, I was able to study her properly, and the strange thing was that in spite of her language and grumpy rudeness, my senses warmed to her jasmine and bubblegum scent. In reality, however, she smelled of smoke and sweat. She had set a packet of cigarettes on the desk beside her, but she made no attempt to light one the whole time she was there.

  “You Alyzon?” she suddenly asked, glancing over her shoulder. Her hands continued flying over the keyboard.

  “Yes,” I said, realizing Raoul must have written about us in the note. She made no comment and went on tapping until Harrison came in, then she gave him the same interrogating glare. “You’re Harrison?”

  “I … yes,” Harrison said, looking startled.

  “Don’t sound too sure, kid. Gotta be sure of who you are in this world, or someone’ll steal your identity.” I didn’t know if she was joking or not, and from the look on his face, neither did Harrison.

  “Can you fix the virus?” he asked her.

  Daisy gave him a withering look. Then she said, “It’s an interesting breed. Designed to form spontaneous links to heavy porn sites, and it can circumvent the sorts of bars people use to stop their kids viewing stuff like this. Lucky Roo has such a sophisticated setup, because a normal system wouldn’t let me track the originating site.” She tapped for a bit more as we waited with bated breath, then she let out a hiss of air between clenched teeth.

  “You’ve found it?”

  She nodded absently. “The Castledean Estate Web site.”

  “But … but that’s the Web site Raoul logged in to when—”

  “There’s a false loop of trails that would bamboozle a lesser hacker, but I can tell you that the virus originated at that site,” Daisy said, and she gave a small smile and stretched with the languid sensuality of a cat, all the skinny stiffness in her smoothed and fluid with triumph. Then she shot us a look and said, “And this site is linked to the Rayc Inc. site that Roo asked me to check out. Doesn’t surprise me. The guy’s a freak.”

  “You know Aaron Rayc?” I asked.

  “Better than his mama,” Daisy said with a leer. “What I don’t know about his finances and business dealings ain’t worth blowing your nose on. He’s a savvy businessman with a knack for making money.”

  “What makes you call him a freak, then?” I asked.

  Daisy stopped tapping to look at me as if she had forgotten I was standing there. For a moment I thought she would refuse to tell me anything. But then she said, “The way he deals with all that money he makes, for instance. It’s like he doesn’t give a shit about it.”

  “What do you mean?” Harrison asked.

  “He routes most of it to causes all over the world,” Daisy said.

  Harrison looked so disappointed I knew he had expected to hear that Rayc Inc. were drug or arms dealers. “He runs a charity,” Harrison said.

  Daisy seemed to take this as a personal criticism. “I’m not talking about the company, boyo. I’m talking about his personal fortune. He gives thousands away to noble causes,” she snarled. “Leprosy Society. Mother Teresa’s Helpers. Starlight Foundation. It’s like he’s a give-a-holic. Because dig a little deeper, and you find his giving ain’t quite so discriminating. For instance, he donates to the IRA, the Red Brigade, and a dozen different religious cults with more than a nodding acquaintance with terrorism.”

  “Aaron Rayc sends money to terrorists?” I asked, totally confused.

  Daisy glared at me. “You got wax in your ears, kid? The guy is funding everything. Anarchists’ leagues and neofascist groups, Ku Klux Klan and black-activist organizations, gun-support groups and fanatical antigun organizations. It’s like he’s funding both sides of just about every hot cause you can imagine. And quite a bit of Rayc’s company donations wind their way to some pretty offbeat causes, too. It’s all here.” She got out a memory stick and set in on the table beside her cigarette packet. “Now, what about a drink?”

  “Sure, uh, what would you like?” Harrison asked.

  Daisy smiled, and for a second she looked like someone’s sweet old grandmother. “Now I wouldn’t say no to one of Roo’s special Italian hot chocolates. You just toddle along and make it up, and I’ll put what I brought into Roo’s system.”

  We exchanged a look, then went out obediently. Somehow I wasn’t surprised to find a jug of the chocolate in the fridge with a note telling us to heat it in the microwave for Daisy.

  She came in as we were pouring the chocolate and prowled restlessly around the kitchen, picking up things and putting them down again. She came to the list of names we had been compiling, and which I had brought in from the living room, and picked that up, too.

  “I remember that guy.” She was pointing to an opera singer. “He was this fat bozo with greasy hair and a voice like an angel. Just hearing him made you want to wrap yourself around him, at least until he stopped singing.” She cackled, and I hoped I didn’t look as shocked as I felt. “He went on and made the big time. Then he just went crazy and started singing these operas written by a madwoman. People went in the beginning because of him, but the reviews stank. Ended up in an asylum, he did.”

  Harrison handed her the chocolate, and she slurped it up with the noisy relish of a little kid before leaving without so much as a goodbye.

  “So that was Daisy,” I said when Harrison came back from escorting her to the front door. We both laughed, then the phone rang.

  Harrison answered it while I washed the cup and pot, wondering what it meant that Aaron Rayc funded so many causes. Then Harrison came back and I turned to ask him, but his face was white as chalk and his eyes were like bruises.

  “What is it?” I whispered, frightened.

  “That … that was Raoul. It’s Sarry,” he said, his eyes filling with tears.

  “Harrison, what …?” I took a step toward him.

  “Alyzon, she … she’s killed herself.”

  Raoul returned at two in the morning, looking drawn and exhausted. I made hot tea for him, suppressing a little stab of horror at seeing blood on his collar.

  “What happened?” Harrison asked when Raoul had a mug of tea in his hand.

  Raoul sighed. “I hadn’t long arrived at Bellavie. I was just speaking with a receptionist when one of the nurses came rushing along the hall shouting that Sarry had cut her wrists. She was young and frightened or she wouldn’t have blurted it out like that. There would be a code she should have used so she didn’t alarm any visitors. As it was, I insisted on coming with them, and short of physically restraining me, there was nothing they could do.” He gave a weary laug
h and I wondered how he could laugh at such a time, before deciding that he must be suffering from shock.

  “It was Austin, wasnae it? How did he get tae her?” Harrison demanded through gritted teeth.

  Raoul blinked at him, eyes red-rimmed with fatigue. “Austin arrived about twenty minutes before me and bullied the head nurse into shifting Sarry to a small room where he could examine her. One of the younger nurses was passing and heard her scream. She ran in and found Dr. Austin trying to administer an injection. Sarry was struggling and terrified.”

  “Bastard,” Harrison grated.

  “Dr. Austin ordered the nurse out. If he had been in whites she might have obeyed, but he wasn’t so she told him to leave Sarry alone,” Raoul went on. “When he didn’t, she knocked the syringe from his hand. Then she rang for help, and minutes later the head nurse appeared and hustled Dr. Austin out into the hall. He was shouting that Sarry had been removed from his care without the proper authority and that he had merely been trying to administer a tranquilizer. The young nurse had been left to calm Sarry, who started babbling that Dr. Austin was ‘one of Them’; that she had felt the wrongness in him. The nurse ran out to tell the head that the incident had brought on an episode. Sarry would have been alone all of five minutes, and that’s when she did it. She used a scalpel.”

  “I cannae believe this has happened,” Harrison exclaimed, his eyes blazing. “What was he trying tae do?”

  “Drug her strongly enough to let the sickness take over, I’d guess. But he somehow let her feel or see that he was infected. I’m sure he thought Sarry wouldn’t fight. Or it might be that the sickness was driving him so hard he didn’t think. Frankly he looked a mess. His clothes were obviously thrown on without any regard for how he looked, and he was unshaven, his hair wild. If he hadn’t had his ID with him, I doubt he’d have been let in at all.”

  I wondered how Raoul could think about clothes with Sarry so recently dead. The tragedy of her life and death seemed to me to be some terrible shadow that had got inside me. I kept thinking of her licking the ice cream and talking about going with the flow. Kept feeling it was my fault it had come to this.