by John Park
Her tongue was shrivelled in her mouth. Before she could speak, he had turned and was walking back down the slope. Immediately she began to run up the slope, and that was a mistake, because it released the fear she had been holding in check, and she could not tell if he had really gone, or was playing with her, stalking her again, closing in on her under cover of her footfalls. She allowed herself one look back over her shoulder, then forced herself back to a walk. A monster. A psychopath. Barbara’s leaflet was right. She should have run, she should have screamed for help and run. But the voice had held her, the rhythm of the words-how could she have fled while he was still talking quietly of music and pain?
She concentrated on controlling her breathing. In four steps, out four steps. The wind roared about her. That exit line of his had been a threat: If I catch you there again. . . . The last curve in the road was coming up ahead. Cold spectral lightning bloomed among the pillared clouds. Another hundred metres. A hundred steps, twenty-five more breaths. A threat. How much did he know? Had he seen her following Larsen?
Was she going to have to be on her guard the whole time now? Was every hour going to be as harrowing as this until she got to the end of whatever tangle she was unearthing? It was too much. The fear would exhaust her.
She looked at Paulina and Louise’s home, but all the windows were dark. Her own home was closer. She broke down and ran the rest of the way.
With lights on and the door locked behind her, she let herself collapse. She dragged herself to the bed and lay, still dressed, staring at the light. It churned up images for her: Larsen’s candles, the paper-maker’s elegant horror, and some that did not fit.
She felt that if she went and looked out of the window, the dark would be held back by a row of purple-white mercury lamps on chipped concrete poles scrawled with graffiti. There would be cars parked along the curb—rust buckets with twisted bumpers, cracked windshields, broken headlights, their paintwork smeared with dust that the kids’ fingers had turned to blackboards, all colours bleached to anonymous greys by the streetlights.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, but the picture only became clearer. She got up and walked through the house, switching on lights, and it went with her.
There were flattened beer cans in the gutter, milk cartons, torn candy-wrappers, scraps of newspaper, blackened leaves. A gaunt mongrel rooted there, then lifted its head and scuttled away towards the bank of the dead canal beyond the row of lights. A patrol cruiser was entering the street, a dark bulk above the parked cars. Blades of red and blue light rotated from its cupola.
Her hands knew what to do. They found a black pencil and copies of Barbara’s leaflet. They slashed a group of horizontal lines along the back of a sheet, poised to make other marks.
The patrol car was outside, was stopping, its lights beating against the window blind. Blue, then dark, then red. Footsteps on the steps outside, approaching. Stopping.
Dark.
Blue.
Dark.
Red—
The door thundered.
Her pencil ripped through the paper and snapped. Then she was in the kitchen, blocking her ears with the rush of water. The sink filled, and the ceiling light glared back at her from a thousand jagged facets. She moaned, unable to look away, then let her head go down. The cold burned her face, bit into her eyes and ears, until there was only a high singing sound from somewhere inside her. Air plopped from her mouth; water forced itself into her throat in hard lumps. She retched and straightened up, spilling water over the floor. The pictures had gone. She was sick and trembling all over, but the pictures had gone. And she no longer wanted to know what buried memories they had come from.
She pulled out a chair, sat. And began to force the world back into place.
Pain scored Grebbel’s arm. He floated in a grey space, where pictures and sounds circled at the edge of awareness. Sometimes they drifted closer, where he could examine them. One was a thought: I can’t feel my face. Others were images: faces in white masks looming like clouds. Red and white dapple. A mouth straining open, showing the tongue and the stained molars, the cheeks white and beaded with sweat, rucked up in folds against the clenched eyes. There was no sound with that image, as though whatever should have accompanied it could be properly represented only by silence.
“Mr. Grebbel.”
He recognised that the voice was from outside the greyness. He thought words in reply, but could not push them into the air.
Now there was a woman’s face lit by moonlight. The air was freezing, and they clung together for warmth. Behind them was the long snow slope down to the fence and the trees. Orion reared above them.
“Jon Grebbel.”
He thought words again, and this time there came a croak from the void where his face should be.
“You can hear me. Good. Listen to what I say, but don’t try to move. In a few minutes we’ll be ready to begin.”
The voice continued, but he was out in the snow, holding her for warmth, then turning, trying to shield her from the wind.
“They’ve given you a heavy dose of analgesic. You may not be fully aware of what’s happening to you, but the procedures should work well enough. Afterwards you’ll be disoriented for perhaps several days. Try to remember not to say anything that will reveal what happened to you. As far as possible, don’t speak except to answer questions. We will implant a hypnotic suggestion to that effect, but it’s as well if the conscious mind has the same instruction. We’ll be starting soon. Don’t be alarmed if you feel yourself being moved.”
She was laughing with him and the snow was whipping past them unfelt. The world darkened around her. She glowed for him in the night, moonfire, moonsilver, and his reflection lived in her eyes.
“We’re wheeling you into the treatment room now. We’ve got the place to ourselves. In a minute you’ll feel the headset being put on. Then we’ll uncover your eyes. After that, we’ll have to put you under for an hour. You may feel the needle, but nothing else. When you come out of it, we’ll be finished.”
He held her until he could not tell where his body ended and hers began. Still he strained towards her. For a moment the wind screamed icy words in his ears. Then he broke through into the light that annihilated all thought, pain and fear.
Niels Larsen straightened from the oscilloscope screen and looked across at Osmon. “He’s into phase epsilon. Cut off the drug now until I tell you.”
“Whatever you wish.”
As usual, if there was irony in Osmon’s subservient manner, Larsen couldn’t be sure of it. Mercifully, Osmon was an almost pathological follower, without initiative; it was all that tempered the other sides of his nature. But at least he seemed to be behaving himself now.
They looked at the man in the bed. He was wrenching at the straps, his eyes staring blindly from above his bandaged cheeks. “Yes,” Larsen muttered, “it’s working now.”
Consciousness came and went for the man called Jon Grebbel. Sometimes, when the drugs released the storms within him, he seemed to be a creature of the tide flats. He squirmed and howled in the wind and the harsh sun, and then the dark waters would return and hide him in their depths.
Most of the time then, all was dark. Sometimes he would glimpse one of the deep’s unearthly offerings, but it would be gone before he could understand it. There would follow an interval of absence, when he knew nothing, but the currents and the sea creatures worked on him, and at the next change of the tide, the creature that bore his name was left gasping on the sand in a new shape.
When he floated free of the drug, he knew his eyes were bandaged again, but he was aware of the changes in light and shade that marked the passage of time. He tried counting days, but could not tell how many mornings he had seen and how many of them he had dreamt. Sometimes there were voices, and when he tried to answer them, they vanished into the dream world; or dream voices would insist, and would become those of flesh people ministering to his body.
Even when the drug
did not hold him, he lived among brilliant dreams. Some were so poignant and familiar that, when they returned to him, under the bandages he wept, and afterwards wondered what they could have been to have moved him so. Some were recent and forced themselves in front of him, and he regarded them with awe that he should have given and received such tenderness. But most of the dreams pulled him down into the dark sea where half-seen mouths snapped, and eyes glared. When he could, he tried to study them, and would think, That was me? And then: Yes, that was me. And later, with controlled anger: No—that is me. I will be what I always was.
The following morning, on her way to visit Barbara in the clinic, Elinda was told that Jon Grebbel had been admitted with concussion and fractures after a fall.
“We’ve got him on electro-ossipagation,” the technician told her, in what must have been meant to be reassuring tones, while she stared at him numbly. “The bones’ll be knitting nicely in a few days, and they’ll be better than new before he knows it.”
“Is that why he’s still unconscious?” she demanded, her throat dry.
“Well, no, actually.” The technician looked uncomfortable. “There’s something wrong in his head. It must be the concussion. I’m not meaning to alarm you now—we don’t think there’s anything organically wrong, nothing that won’t fix itself with rest—but if we don’t keep him deeply sedated, he squirms and thrashes about. Does his bone casts no good at all, you can imagine. Looks as though he’s having nightmares. We’re still working up the test results, but so far we can’t find any sign of brain trauma; and sometimes he’s been quite lucid. So we’ll just be keeping him under observation for a bit longer.”
“Can I see him, then?” Her voice sounded almost normal.
“Sure, you can see him. Just don’t expect too much. We’ve uncovered his eyes for the moment, but he may not know you. Then again, he may—depends on how he is this morning.”
She went in. Grebbel’s arm was in a sling. A bandage hid half his face. His eyes were closed and he seemed to be sleeping peacefully. She touched his hand with her fingertips, then held it, tracing the bones and tendons under the smooth skin. After a few moments, she sat on the bed and looked at him. His eyelids flickered, but he seemed unaware of her presence. He had gone to Larsen, she was certain, and now he was—different.
If she spoke to him, would he recognise her?
At least they hadn’t fastened his wrists, she thought; he didn’t bite. She felt ready to scream.
Then he murmured something and his fingers closed about hers. She bent forward until her forehead was on his chest. Her shoulders shook, her throat swelled and ached. His fingers were in her hair, stroking the back of her head. But when she sat up finally, his expression seemed unchanged, as though he had dreamed her and did not believe the dream.
Compulsively she scrubbed at the tear stains fading into the sheet. She wanted to spend the rest of the day sitting and watching him sleep, pretending they were cocooned from the rest of the world. And then she knew she was hiding from her own fears, and that they would only grow the longer she ignored them. She bent and kissed him, and felt his lips twitch in response. Then she got up and left.
TEN
In the office, she called the Security office over the net, and asked for the officer who had been with her when she found Barbara. She reached Charley as she was going off shift and arranged to meet her for lunch.
“Concerned about your Mr. Grebbel?” Larsen asked from his desk in the office. “I assure you, he was fine the last time I saw him.”
She turned to look at him. “Don’t worry, I’m not turning you in. And what does ‘fine’ mean? I just left him, he’s wrapped up like a goddamned Christmas present.”
“I meant, he’s doing as well as can be expected, given the choices he made,” Larsen told her, erasing her last doubts about what Grebbel had done.
She was searching for a reply when Chris rushed in and started talking about the latest gossip to come through the Knot.
Larsen pointedly turned away from her and called up the page. Making an obvious effort to focus, he said, “These young people, this group—they are musicians?”
Chris nodded. “Andropov and the Marxes, they’re giving a concert in support of more payload deliveries for us—there’s even a chance they’ll come through and play here for the celebrations, if the memory thing can be beaten in time. Here in the main Hall, live.”
Larsen shook his head. “However did we become worthy of such an honour?” he asked with a painful effort at levity.
“Well, don’t get too worried, nobody would make you come and watch.”
“Not today. Let’s hope we still have such freedom when your musicians finally arrive.”
Larsen made a show of returning to his computer, turning away from both Chris and Elinda, and leaving her with a handful of unanswered questions.
At lunchtime, Elinda met Charley at the tavern. Charley had bought a sandwich—“Your pseudo-cheese, plus my own sprouts from my own window box”—and Elinda bought a bowl of onion soup and some crackers. They sat at a corner table facing the doors and the Tree as it undulated gently outside in the wind.
“I didn’t have time to make sandwiches this morning,” Elinda said. “And last night, something happened.” She described her encounter with Osmon, without mentioning Larsen or what had happened to Grebbel.
“For Christ’s sake,” Charley said. “You let him walk you up past the woods? What in hell were you thinking of?”
“I don’t know. It just seemed impossible to . . .” She shook her head. “Anyway, the point is, what can I do about it?”
“You could stop going for walks by yourself at night till you get some common sense into you.”
“That’s just it. I think I may need to do more of that—and I don’t want my freedom of movement restricted in any case.”
“Of course you don’t.” Charley said, and frowned. “Well, you could lodge a complaint, your word against his. . . .”
“But—?”
“Exactly. There’s been some strange rulings lately. I can’t tell what will be followed up and what won’t any more. Gordie, on the desk, he’s a decent sort, but I get the feeling he doesn’t have as much say in things as he wants us to believe. If you made a formal complaint, you might wind up charged with mischief yourself, for all I know.”
“Shit. I haven’t got time for that. What, then?”
“Learn some self-defence.”
“I haven’t got time for that, either.” Elinda brushed cracker crumbs from her sleeve, then looked at Charley. “I need a weapon, don’t I?”
Charley spread her fingers on the table and stared at them. “What do I say? I enforce laws restricting private weapons. It’s my job. I don’t know. If you went around with a large kitchen knife in your coat pocket, you could be charged. And I don’t think a knife would be what you really need anyway. If we found an unregistered gun on you, we’d have to charge you, and you’d be in serious trouble. I can’t see you getting permission for a firearms certificate either—at least, it would almost be quicker for you to learn tae kwon do. I’ll tell you, we know there are unregistered weapons circulating here, including some small handguns; and someone who wanted one could probably get her hands on one if she tried, but that’s all I can say.”
Elinda considered. “Okay,” she said finally. “I guess I’ll have to live with that.”
The fog began to clear from Grebbel’s mind. He stared about him, tested his thoughts for the blurring of the drugs, and trusted himself to ask, “How long have I been here?”
The nurse turned to him with a faint smile. “You’ve asked me that every day for the last week,” he said. “Sometimes twice a day. But now you look as though you’ll remember. This is the end of your second week. There were some complications, but the worst’s over now. You should be on your feet tomorrow, I’d say, and then we’ll probably let you out for a few hours each day, for the next two or three days, to see how you cope.”
His jaw still ached. He mumbled, “How long before I can use my arm again?” He tried to test his muscles in the sling and the cast. “I’ve been driving a truck,” he added. “Can’t do that with one arm.”
“We’ve been giving you electrotherapy to encourage the bones to knit. For your head too. You had a nasty contusion there—hairline fracture as well. It’s well on the way now, but we had to keep you doped—you kept tearing the electrodes off. The bones should be able to look after themselves about now. They’ll be a bit delicate for another ten days or so, but then you’ll hardly know anything happened to them.”
“You said I’d be let out on parole for a few days. When do I get out for good?”
“Within a week, I’d imagine, provided you keep testing clear of brain damage.”
“Right.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that. Your reflexes look good. Any problems you’re aware of? You are an amnesiac, aren’t you? I thought so. It might be harder for you to tell then—but you don’t notice any changes in your memory? No gaps you can’t explain, no scrambled connections?”
“No. My memory’s as good as it ever was.”
That evening, Larsen came to visit him. “I heard you’d come out of the transition phase. How do you feel?”
“Fine,” said Grebbel. “Just fine. Can we talk freely?”
“We should be a little discreet. We’re not under actual surveillance, but I wouldn’t want our business shouted down the corridor. How is your memory?”
“Fine. Just fine.”
“You can be less discreet than that.”
“So far, I’m a satisfied customer just waiting to see how far things develop.”
“Good. I have a number of questions for you, and I imagine you have some for me. I gather you’re going to be out for a few hours a day in the near future. I’ll arrange to meet, and we can talk then.”
“Okay. Tomorrow, or the day after, then.”