Instead he hitches across the floor the way he did when he was two and sits with his back against the door, putting his head to the wood. Feeling her. He feels her outline pressed to the other side of the panel, her heart beating. Susan, breathing.
“Don't worry,” she says, “I understand. I just want you to come out so we can be together and be happy."
His fingers creep along the door.
“Happy,” she says, and he will not know whether she is talking about their future or using his name, which is his secret. “You know, you're really a very lovely man. It's a shame for you to be shut up in there when you could come out and enjoy the world!"
Swaying slightly in time with that musical voice, he toys with the lock. He can't, he could, he wants to open that door and do something about the way he is feeling. With Susan, he won't have to wonder how the parts fit together.
Like a gifted animal trainer she goes on, about his bright hair, about how lucky she felt when she first saw him; she is lilting now. “It's sunny today, perfect weather, and oh, sweetie, there's going to be a party in the garden!"
Then he hears a little stir in the hall. Someone else out there with her, breathing.
“A party in your honor. Cake, sweetie, and champagne, have you ever had champagne? You're going to love it...” He does indeed hear music. Someone tapping a microphone. Voices in the garden. Behind Susan, someone is muttering. She breaks off. “Brent, I am not going to tell him about the people from Miramax! Not until we get him out of there!"
The brother. Happy shuts down. What else would he do after what Brent did to him? Things in this room, he realizes; Brent was that much older. Brent giving him a mean, sly look on his last night in this world he outgrew, letting their father hit the gas on the minivan and drive away without him.
After a long time, when it becomes clear that there's no change in the situation, Susan gets up off her knees—he can feel every move she makes—and leans the whole of that soft body against the wood. He stands too, so that in a way, they are together. She says in a tone that makes clear that they will indeed lie down together too, “Champagne, and when it's over, you and I..."
There is the sound of a little struggle. Brent barks a warning. “Ten minutes, Frederick Olmstead. Ten minutes more and we break down the door and drag you out."
He does not have to go to the window to hear the speech Brent makes to the people assembled. He can hear them muttering. He smells them all. He hears their secret body parts moving. They are drinking champagne in the garden. Then it changes. There is a new voice. Ugly. Different from the buddabuddabudda of ordinary people talking.
“Thank you for coming and thank you for your patience. Okay, Brent. Where is he?"
It's him.
Brett whines, “I told you, Dad, I couldn't..."
“Then I will."
Another voice. The mother. “No, Fred. Not this time."
There is a smack. A thud. Under the window, the father raises his head and howls, “Two minutes, son. I'm warning you."
Happy's hackles rise. His lips curl back from bared fangs as in the garden under the window the mother cries, “I told you never to come here!"
There is a stir; something happens and the mother is silenced.
Him.
He commands the crowd. “Give me a minute and I'll bring the wolf boy down for his very first interview."
* * * *
His father comes.
He will find that Happy has unlocked the door for him.
Big man, but not as big as Happy remembers him. Big smile on his face, which has been surgically enhanced, although Happy will not know it. Smooth, beautifully tanned under the expensively cropped hair, it is nothing like the angry face Happy remembers. The big, square teeth are white, whiter than Timbo's fangs. Even the eyes are a fresh, technically augmented color. Blue shirt, open at the collar. Throat exposed, as wolves will do when they want you to know that they do not intend to harm you. Nice suit, although Happy has no way of knowing.
“Son,” he says in a smooth, glad tone that has sealed deals and gotten meetings with major players all over greater Los Angeles. “You know your father loves you."
This is nothing like love.
Caught between then and now, between what he was and what he thinks he is, Happy does what he has to.
He knows what all wolves know. If you are male and live long enough, you will have to kill your father.
It doesn't take long.
* * * *
Brent finds the door locked when he comes upstairs to find out how it's going. He says through the closed door, “Everything okay in there?"
Although Happy has not spoken in all these days, he has listened carefully. Now he says in the father's voice, “This is going to take longer than I thought. Reschedule for tomorrow. My place."
There is a little silence while Brent considers.
Happy is stronger than Timbo now. Louder. “Now clear out, and take everybody with you."
* * * *
It is night again. The mother knocks. Happy has mauled the body, as Timbo would, but he will not eat. There is no point to it.
“Can I come in?"
He allows it.
There will be no screaming and no reproaches. She stands quietly, studying the body.
After a long time she says, “Okay. Yes. He deserved it."
When you remember old hurts you remember them all, not just the ones people want you to. Therefore Happy says the one thing about this that he will ever say to her:
“He wasn't the only one."
“Oh, Happy,” she says. “Oh God.” She isn't begging for her life, she is inquiring.
It is a charged moment.
There are memories that you can't prevent and then there are memories you refuse to get back, and over these, you have some power. This is the choice Happy has to make but he is confused now by memories of Sonia. Her tongue was rough. She was firm, but loving. This mother waits. What will he do? She means no harm. She wants to protect him. Poised between this room and freedom in the woods, between the undecided and the obvious, he doesn't know.
What he does know is that no matter what she did to you and no matter how hard to forgive, you will forget what your mother did to you because she is your mother.
Copyright (c) 2007 Kit Reed
* * * *
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* * *
DRAW
by Pati Nagle
Pati Nagle writes science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and whatever else strikes her fancy. She lives in the mountains of central New Mexico, surrounded by trees, birds, many rabbits, and coyotes. Being a desert rat, she is eternally fascinated by the ocean, hence this story—her first for Asimov's.
Dimitri noticed the time counter was way past 21:00, and paused his Robo-Warriors Invasion game. Dad should have been back from his rounds by now.
He took off his headset and gloves and looked around the apartment like maybe he'd missed something, but he knew Dad would have said hi when he'd come in. Dad would have rubbed Dimitri's head and probably thrown off his score.
Dimitri got up and went to the big observation bubble that stuck out into the ocean from the living room. There was a cushion in it and he knelt on it, his breath misting on the cold surface of the bubble as he leaned against the thick plex, peering into the dark water outside. It was night up top, and the light from the apartment only reached a short distance past the window. He could see sand drifting around on the ocean floor, stirred by the ever-restless current, and he could just see the edge of the kelp beds beyond the nearest pump, fading into the blackness.
He shivered and backed away from the bubble. He was old enough not to be scared of the ocean, but at night it still bugged him sometimes. He didn't like being alone in the
apartment after dark.
He took his comcard out of his pocket and stroked it, then said, “Dad.” Held the card to his ear and waited, but his dad didn't answer. After five tones the message box kicked in and Dimitri disconnected.
Could there be something wrong? Dad had gone out to do the evening check on the pump system. That was part of his job as maintainer of the desalination plant. He checked all the pumps and the seals first thing every morning and last thing at night. Often Dimitri went with him on the morning run, but not at night.
Not at night, when the great, dark vastness of the ocean could swallow you faster than you could blink. Not at night, when the hunters were out, giant shadows sliding through the water. Dimitri shivered, thinking about his dad out there alone in the dark.
“Stop it,” he said aloud. This was no time to be giving himself the willies.
He called up some zaffa music to cheer him up and went over to Dad's monitor station to see if there were any alarms blinking on the diagram of the plant. Nothing.
He checked his message box, but there was nothing from Dad. His friend Collin had left a message about their homework assignment. That was it.
Maybe he should call Collin back and ask if Collin's dad would come over. Except Collin's dad wasn't an outside worker, he was a city administrator. He probably wouldn't know what to do other than call emergency services, and Dimitri could do that himself.
Was it an emergency, though?
It was starting to feel like one, but Dimitri didn't want to make a fool of himself and call out the rescue team when they weren't really needed. Dad always scoffed at people who did that. Usually they were new to Pacific City, recent arrivals who panicked over some simple problem.
Dimitri tried calling his dad's com again, then looked all over the apartment for a note or a message, then called a third time. He checked the equipment bay by the dive hatch. Dad's wetsuit and tank were gone, so he'd definitely gone out.
His own, smaller wetsuit hung there, gaping at him. Get into it, a whisper in the back of his head urged him. A wave of fear bubbled up through his limbs.
Dimitri frowned and turned away. He hadn't tried everything else yet.
He went back to the monitor station and started cycling through the cameras, looking for his dad at any of the sites they covered. There were lots of cameras—one at every critical junction or piece of equipment in the desalination plant—and none of them showed a diver. A spotted shark glided by on one screen and made Dimitri jump, then the cycle clicked to the next camera.
He could call Dad's boss, maybe. Except Mr. Whitmore lived topside, so all he'd be able to do would be call Pacific City emergency, too. And it was night. Dad might get mad if Dimitri bothered his boss at night.
“Cameras minimize,” Dimitri said.
The cycling images retreated to a small window in one corner of the monitor station, and the plant diagram returned to its normal position in the middle of the holotank. Dimitri rotated the diagram, looking for anything that might have caught his dad's attention, but saw nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
He shut off the music and sat down at the monitor station, straining his brain for anything else to check. His gaze drifted over the holographic icons arrayed along the tabletop, and caught on one shaped like a red wrench.
“Maintenance log!"
The wrench turned brighter in response. Dimitri smacked his temple for not thinking of it sooner.
“Dork!"
The station pinged a query.
“Ignore. Maximize maintenance log."
A spreadsheet rose up in front of the plant diagram. Dimitri scrolled it to the most recent entries. There was one from just after 19:00 hours:
* * * *
PERMEABILITY QUERY ON INTAKE FILTER 27-A.
* * * *
Dimitri brought up the status screen for intake 27, one of the fifty giant pipes that drew water into the plant. The volume stats were way down. Frowning, Dmitri ran the numbers back and found they were even worse than they'd been at 19:00.
It meant the water coming in that pipe wasn't flowing as fast as it should be. That's all Dimitri knew, but it was enough. Dad would have checked on it while he was making his rounds.
“Cameras maximize."
Dimitri checked the location chart and brought up the camera aimed at intake 27. It was mounted on the screen cage and gave an angled view of the meter-wide pipe.
He sucked in a sharp breath. The screen capping pipe 27 had a large hole ripped in it.
“Camera ... fifty-two,” he said, glancing at the chart again.
The image switched to the access hatch in the screen cage. It was hanging open. Bad.
“Backpage and zoom."
Back on the pipe, the image moved in closer to the torn screen. Dimitri couldn't see down into the pipe, but he did see something dangling from its rim. Zooming in even closer, he realized it was a grappling harness, the gear that Dad and the other maintenance techs used whenever they needed to do things around the pipes, to keep from getting sucked into them by the draw.
“Shit. Oh, shit!"
Dimitri looked at the chonometer: 21:43. His father would soon be out of air, if he wasn't already.
Too late to call for help—it would take the rescue team too long to get there. Shut down the plant? He'd watched Dad do it and thought he remembered how, but he wasn't authorized. It wasn't something you just did. It cost thousands of dollars to shut the system down, and thousands more to start it up again.
And he didn't absolutely know his dad was down in the pipe. He just thought so.
No time, no time. Dimitri ran for the equipment bay and called rescue while he was struggling into his wetsuit. His explanation was kind of crazy and broken, but he got the idea across.
“Okay, stay there,” the dispatcher told him. “I'm scrambling a rescue team now."
“I've got to take him some air!"
“It's better if you just stay there. The team will be out there in five minutes."
Screw that. Dad could suffocate in five minutes. He could be suffocating now.
“Just stay calm and keep talking to me,” the dispatcher said.
“Right."
Dimitri ran through the safety checklist as fast as he dared, and slid his comcard into the headset just before he pulled it on. The headset molded itself to within a centimeter of his face and threw up its array of diagnostic displays. With a flick of his eyes he sent them to the background, then took down a spare grappling harness from the gear bay.
He had to cinch all the straps and buckles down to their tightest, and the harness still fit a little loose on him, but it would have to do. Grabbing a full pony bottle of air, he cycled the dive hatch and went in the water.
Cold and dark. It was always cold, but the dark made him gulp his air faster than he should. His com lost the dispatcher and he kicked up to touch the outside of the structure and reacquire the signal.
“Are you still there?” said the dispatcher. It was a woman. He hadn't even noticed that before.
“Yeah, I'm here."
“You sound like you're breathing hard. Try to calm down, okay?"
“Okay."
Keeping contact with the building, he worked his way out from under it and up the side. The plant stretched away into the darkness. Off to the left, the lights of Pacific City glowed hazily through the dome. He'd rather have swum toward the lights, but that wasn't his goal. Turning away from the city, he turned on his lamps and kicked off toward the plant.
He brushed his hands against the uppermost pipes as he crossed the massive assembly of pumps and filters that made up the plant. He felt his tension growing as he approached the edge of the draw field. The light from his lamps picked up the dull red edge of the screen cage, a huge, mesh box that surrounded all the intakes for the plant. He reached the cage and drifted to a stop, one hand against the mesh.
Really a first-level filter, the screen cage kept anything larger than a centimeter away from the intake
pipes, keeping out plant matter, fish, other critters, and anything else that could clog or even damage the finer filters down inside the pipes. The reverse osmosis process the plant used to remove salt and other minerals from the water required high-pressure filtering, and what better pressure to use than a hundred feet of ocean?
Every twenty seconds the pipes drew water. When he'd been a little kid, his dad had brought him here once in a while. Dimitri had loved to get up above the cage and let himself be sucked against it over and over by the draw. You absolutely could not move when the draw was pulling you against the screen. Even Dad couldn't.
“Are you still there?” asked the dispatcher.
“I'm here."
“The rescue team is leaving now. They'll be there in a few minutes."
“Okay."
“Just stay calm."
“Okay."
Dimitri worked his way down the cage to the open access hatch he'd seen on the monitor. He went through it and paused, fighting off a fit of shivering.
Nothing between him and the pipes now.
He looked at the hatch, debating whether to close it. Yes, he should—otherwise critters would start drifting in and clogging up the filters. Maybe this precaution would win him some points to counter the chewing out he was going to get for coming in here.
He swallowed, remembering the time Dad had yelled at him for goofing around the screen cage without permission. He and Collin had gone to play in the draw. When they'd come back Dad had met them at the hatch, white-faced and silent, his green eyes glaring. He'd waited for them to get out of their dive gear and marched them into the condo, where he proceeded to chew them a new one in a rage-clipped voice.
“Never, never go out in open ocean without an adult and without getting my permission first!"
“But, Dad, we were each other's buddies—"
Asimov's SF, September 2007 Page 15