Wyrmhole

by Jay Caselberg

  Finally, she tossed her fork on the table and sat back, her legs propped up before her. She looked a lot older than twelve. But what did Jack know about kids? How was he supposed to know what a twelve-year-old kid looked like? There was a hardness around her eyes, a shadowing, and a firm set to her mouth, but her face still had that childlike quality, the big eyes, the roundness and softness of the young. He had no idea what he was going to do with her. She pushed the spaghetti container out of the way with her foot and returned his gaze as if waiting for something. Finally she sighed, shook her head and then got up to wander into the kitchen.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Looking for something to drink. You're not very good at simple stuff, are you?" He stared after her. She was like no kid he knew, not that he knew very many.

  There was a disgusted noise from the kitchen. "Water and coffee, is that all you've got? Little, little. What a place to live. Nothing in it." She appeared in the doorway. "You need looking after, Jack Stein." The way she leaned in the doorway had a peculiarly adult stance to it.

  "And I suppose you're the one to do it?" he said.

  "Nuh-uh."

  She disappeared, then reappeared a moment later with a glass of water and wandered back to the couch.

  "So who looked after you? Before Pinpin I mean," Jack asked her.

  "Me. I looked after me. Uncle Pinpin didn't look after me. He just taught me stuff. It was me looked after him."

  "So where did you live before?"

  "Way down Old. That's where I met Uncle Pinpin."

  "Hmm," said Jack trying to keep the tone of disapproval from his voice. "What were you doing there? Who did you live with?"

  "Others. That's all. No one you'd know. It's better when there's more of you." She shrugged again, and took a sip of her water. Jack didn’t want to ask what was better, or how; he could guess. There was a contradiction here – the offhand, mature responses, the glass held between too-small hands.

  Billie was clearly becoming bored with the conversation. She placed the glass down and was looking around the small living area and jiggling her legs up and down. It wasn't up to him to look after the kid, but he had a gut feeling that despite the lack of connection, she was here for some reason in the whole scheme of what was going on. He just had to work out what it was.

  "Is there anywhere you can go? Someone, somewhere. Family maybe?"

  "Nuh-uh." There was a resentful look on her face.

  He'd forgotten. She didn't want to talk about family.

  "Well, I guess you'd better stay here until we get all this sorted out and we can work out what we're going to do with you."

  "I'll do what I want." Resentment in the voice.

  Jack gave a sigh of exasperation. "All right. You do what you want. You can go back down to Old if you want. See if I care."

  Billie narrowed her eyes at him, then shifted position so she was sitting on her hands. "Well, I want to stay here."

  "Okay, then, you stay here." said Jack.

  There was a long silence while Jack sat thinking what else to say, while she continued to fidget and look around the room with a bored expression.

  "Listen, Billie, I've got to go to my office and do some work. Are you going to be all right by yourself for a while?"

  She swung her head around to face him. "Why can't I come?"

  "Because you can't. I need to be alone when I'm working."

  And he did. He didn't need the distraction the girl could give. Besides, he didn’t want to advertise her presence to the world at large. He shoved his hands into his pockets and his fingers met the small blue bottle he'd taken from Gleeson. The bottle would help him prioritize, sort things, establish his next move. If he could get some sort of lead on Gleeson's partner, he'd be able to work out what was going on with Outreach. He ignored her frown, the slight pout to her mouth.

  "All right," he said. "You’re going to stay here. I’m going to do some work. I won’t be gone for too long. Let's set things up for you." He turned to face the wall. "New voice."

  "Waiting," said the wall.

  "Say something, Billie."

  "Like what?"

  "Anything. A bit more."

  "How am I supposed to know what you want me to say?" She gave an exasperated sigh.

  "That's fine. The system will recognize your voice now. If you have any trouble telling it to do things, try saying it a different way. It's matched to me, so some commands might be different, but it learns as you go along. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with it if you’ve been working with Pinpin and you’re as good as he says you are. If you get bored, it links in to the entertainment network, but I hardly ever use it except for vids. You can watch some vids, or play some games or something. Will you be okay here? I'll only be a couple of hours."

  She looked at him calculatingly, her eyes narrowed slightly. "Why wouldn't I be?"

  "Fine," he said and sighed. "I'll be back later. Oh, and one last thing."

  He stood and crossed to the wall. The apartment only had one bedroom, and she was right, it was small, but there might be enough space for a bed over to one side of the living area. She wasn’t very big.

  “Command,” he said to the wall. “Bed, by the left wall. Single. Start.”

  A small chime of acknowledgement came from the wall itself.

  At least he could get that much started.

  He left her there staring at the opposite wall.

  He was probably stupid leaving her with access to his system — a child with her attitude and one who'd been under the tutelage of Pinpin Dan. It was crazy. She could strip his system, screw it up somehow, and be gone before he got back. He had no idea how much Pinpin Dan had shown her, how much she could do, but, if she was as good as Pinpin had said she was…

  At this stage, he didn't see that there was any other choice. Maybe she'd be scared enough or sensible enough simply to stay put.

  He was thinking about what he’d come back to find all the way down to the street.

  oOo

  Jack's office was still secure, despite his fears. His fail-safes told him that nobody had tried to enter since last he'd been there. Anybody trying to enter without his knowledge and a quick short message would be beamed to his handipad and a record made. Any tampering with the door at all would do the same thing. He closed the handipad and shoved it back into his pocket. It didn’t hurt to be careful, particularly at the moment. The day's events had given him an uneasy feeling about security, about everything really. He hoped to hell that Billie was going to be all right at the apartment. He had to find somewhere proper to take her. He slipped inside, locking the door behind him.

  Taking his handipad back out, he thumbed it on and slotted in the data card containing the personnel records from Outreach, then went to sit on the edge of his sleep couch. Gilbert John Ronschke. Gleeson's partner. There. A big man, solid. Square features. Tanned and bearded. Jack imagined the man, tall, well muscled, spreading a little with the onset of middle age. Patches of white in the beard. He had no way of telling how recent the picture was, but Ronschke had been with Outreach for about seven years. So, assume that he was seven years older than the picture on the record. Graying now. Perhaps losing his hair. He concentrated on the image, and then hit a sequence to age the features, going through a few variations so he'd have some options to carry around in his mind. He doubted that he’d get rid of the beard, but he tried it anyway. He thumbed the handipad off and placed it down on the table.

  He dug out the small blue bottle from his pocket and placed it beside him on the sleep couch, then stripped off his coat, trousers and shirt and hung them neatly from the rack beside the couch, there just for that purpose. He kept the offices at a temperature that was cool, but not too cool with his shirt removed. Too warm and it dulled his edge, even in sleep state. Too cold and it became uncomfortable, but he preferred it slightly chill. Settling himself comfortably on the couch, he lay back, reached for the inducers and placed the adhesive pads o
n his temples, pressing them in place with his thumbs. He reached for the bottle — thick glass, chunky and cold — and clutched it firmly in the center of his chest. Right, he was ready. Ronschke's image was still strong in his mind.

  "Commence," he said.

  Within seconds, the waves of sleep were pressing down on him, dragging him through alpha, and lower. He concentrated on the bottle held firmly in his hands, linking it with the image of Ronschke that still floated sharply in his perception. Gentle curtains of darkness swept over him, folding him away from the outside world.

  Jack stepped out into gray. No, it was more than gray. It shimmered, wreathed, mist-like, faint colors crawling across the surfaces. Yes, they were surfaces. They reminded him of something. Something long and sinuous, moving through walls. Whatever they were pressed up against him and around him, and yet they did not touch. Where was he? The place was full of impossible geometries. There were surfaces that weren't surfaces. Shapes moved through and over each other. How could that be? His mind was trying to make sense of what he was seeing, but he was struggling.

  He looked down at his hand. The blue bottle lay there, but it was larger than it had been before. He focused on the shape, trying to shut out the surrounds, guide the images. Focus on something solid. That was the way. Ronschke. Gilbert John Ronschke. Where was Ronschke?

  And then he was somewhere else. The impossible shapes were gone. The shimmering rainbow gray was gone. A bare room. Clinical. The walls were blank. A slick, hard floor, dark, devoid of furniture defined the room's boundaries. No, he was wrong; one wall was glass, thick glass from floor to ceiling. Or it was something that looked like glass. Shapes moved beyond it, indistinct, blurry forms, but he couldn't make them out properly. It looked like they were people behind it. A vague oval pinkish shape pressed up against the glass from the other side, dark smudges for eyes, and then it drifted away again into indistinctness. The movements continued beyond, gliding with ill-defined human movement. A large industrial chair sat in the room's center, bright lights glaring down upon it from above. There was no other furniture apart from a shiny metal trolley. On its top, something lay covered with a thin white cloth. In the chair sat a figure. A big man. A big man with a beard, flecked with white. He stared at Jack and spoke.

  "That's mine," he said. It was Ronschke. "Will you give it back to me?"

  Jack looked down at his hand. The blue bottle was what had attracted Ronschke’s attention. He looked back up at the chair. Ronschke strained, his face growing red with the effort . Jack suddenly saw why. Straps bound him to the chair. Broad straps at arms and legs, and there was another across the man's forehead. They were dark gray, made of something he didn’t recognize. The chair was thick, and seemed to have some sort of machinery built into it. It reminded him of one of those old dentist’s chairs. The lights glared down on him, harsh and white. Ronschke fought against the restraints, then collapsed back.

  "It's mine, not yours. Give it to me!" he growled.

  Ronschke pushed against the straps, his eyes growing wider, his face growing livid and contorting with the effort. Cords stood out on his neck and blue veins pulsed on his forehead.

  "What are you doing here?" said Jack. He was suddenly close beside the chair, looking down at Ronschke's face.

  The man looked up, naked aggression on his face.

  “What are you doing here?” Jack repeated.

  Ronschke's expression changed and his eyes filled with panic. "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know," he said. "The thing in the cloud place. The water place. The air place. The place of dark earth. The place of cold fire. I don't know."

  "What thing? What place?"

  "I don't know. I don't know," said Ronschke. "The stone," he said quietly. "The key to the door."

  The panic trickled from his features, and he relaxed back in to the chair. His voice took on a wheedling tone. "Will you give it to me? Please," he said. There was a pleading look in his eyes. "It belongs with me. It’s mine. It belongs in my home. Won’t you take me home? Is that why you’re here?"

  Jack reached down and unstrapped one of Ronschke's wrists, meaning to give him the bottle. Ronschke lifted his arm and ...

  There was no hand. His wrist ended in a blank meaty stump. Severed.

  And Jack was awake.

  Ronschke was alive. The dream image had been too clear, the interaction to real for it to mean anything else. At least it felt like he was. Maybe not undamaged, but alive all the same. Jack could tell Gleeson that much.

  Slowly, he peeled off the pads, placed the small bottle down beside him and reached for his handipad.

  oOo

  He'd spent more time than he'd thought at the office. Out on the street, starburst patterns were playing over the ceiling panels, filling the inside sky with colors. The smell of damp roadway floated up to him. It had been raining outside while he’d been locked away in his work room. Only it wasn’t really outside. A slow creaking came from the buildings around as they divested themselves of the moisture, small beads of water gathering on the outside surfaces and forming shimmering trickles that ran down the flat walls.

  Jack watched the displays above as he waited for the shuttle, thinking about what Ronschke had said. Sometimes the dream words meant nothing. Sometimes they explained everything. This time he just didn't know. Was Ronschke the owner of the severed hand? It could be just a blind, tying the two dreams together, something again planted by his subconscious mind, but there was too little to really go on at this stage. Bright starlight traceries fizzled away at the ceiling's edges, tracking into nothingness. Movement off to his right caught his attention. The lights of the approaching shuttle appeared out of the gloom in the far end of Old, growing nearer. The shuttle eased into his stop, and Jack clambered aboard, lost in thought.

  By the time he got back to the apartment, Billie had apparently been busy. Jack stood at the door waiting for it to open at his command. Nothing happened.

  "Let me in," he said. Nothing. No response. "Let me in, dammit!"

  A voice came from the wall – Billie’s voice. He knew it was Billie’s voice but somehow disguised. "Who's there?"

  "Billie! You know damn well who it is."

  There was a moment's pause and his door opened. His door. She'd locked him out of his own apartment.

  He strode into the living area and glared at her. "What the hell do you think you're playing at, Billie? How did you do that?"

  She glared back at him, wariness in her stance. "It was easy. I was scared. What was I supposed to do?"

  He took two steps across the intervening space and stood over her. "Don't try anything like that again, do you hear me?"

  She cringed back, climbing quickly onto the couch and scuttling back from his anger.

  "Oh, shit. I'm not going to hurt you, Billie. Just put it back the way it was. Okay?"

  She looked up at him with wide, fearful eyes, but her jaw was set, teeth firmly clamped together. How did you calculate damage? The girl was scared, but she remained defiant. Jack slipped out his handipad and bottle and placed them down on the low table then sat.

  He sighed. "Can you put it back? Please."

  Whatever had happened to the girl over the course of her young life had left its marks. Jack bore his own scars, but how did he measure them against what he was seeing now? The way she had scrambled away from him was too quick a response, too automatic. The world changed. Things supposedly got better — modern technology, society, enlightened civilization — but still there were people. Always there were people. And where there were people there were the inevitable consequences. He didn't like to think about it, but faced with it like this…

  She nodded slowly, watching him hesitantly, still wary of his already faded anger.

  "All right,” he said. “When you're ready. And when you've done that, I think there's something you might be able to help me with. Okay? If you're so good with systems, then we can put it to some good use. I need to research the Locality data banks. D
o you think you can help me with that?"

  "Yes," she said, relaxing a little, some of her belligerence and self-confidence returning. "Easy."

  "Good. You can start on it in the morning. For the moment, we have to work out the sleeping arrangements. I've started growing you a new bed, but it won't be ready till about halfway through the night. We need to work out where we're going to sleep in the meantime. I guess tonight you can sleep on the couch. We can work out what we're going to do with you over the next couple of days. I don't want you out there on the streets alone."

  "I can look after myself."

  "Yeah, sure you can." For all her bravado, he could still see the fear and tiredness in her face.

  "What about those two at Pinpin's, eh? Whoever sent them might have some idea that Pinpin Dan had someone staying with him. And what if they come looking?"

  "I can look after myself." This time the tone was not so self-assured.

  "Right."

  He reached for the handipad, flipped it open and started scanning his notes, letting her get on with whatever she was going to do. He watched her surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye as she stood close to the wall, giving his apartment’s systems the commands that would restore his access, talking in low tones so he couldn't overhear. It was funny – she could have stood anywhere in the room to give the commands, but there she was huddled secretively against the wall. He did the same thing. Well, let her have her little secrets for now. He wasn't going to press it.

  oOo

  He was drifting in that muzzy half-aware state, floating, warm. Soft, smooth skin, warm pressure across his abdomen, sliding across his belly. Fingers fumbled with his pajamas, loosening the ties. Fingers raking gently through the hair, tightly curled at his crotch. Fingers, lightly encircling the base of his penis, gentle pressure, then motion. He felt himself responding, his penis growing hard within the touch, pushing a path up through the hair as it grew larger. He made a low sound of pleasure, deep in his throat, and shifted slightly to give better access. The fingers touching the underside of the shaft traced up, seeking the sensitive areas, lightly stroking — gentle touch of small fingers, small hand, arm circled around his hip, cool skin pressing against him from behind. Small hand, small arm —