As he dictated, the lamp on my drafting table danced with each shift in meter. “From the file of Laszlo Arros,” he began. “Subject 1013 …”
In the Beginning
My first look at Muriel Heath was through the glass, after insemination. She is a fine subject, young and ripe, and Doctor Keng assures me her body will support the embryos. When I went in to greet her this morning her mouth rose slightly at the corners as I entered the room. My shape pleased her.
“How is the pain today?” I asked.
She nodded and said, “I don’t feel well today.”
Her Lolita face and large doe-eyes seduced me, and I put my syringe away. “Perhaps I can soothe your ache,” I said. “Stomach, is it?”
She nodded.
I pulled out a capsule from the pocket of my scrubs and poured a cup of water from the table on the sideboard. We would only have a few moments to chat before the sedative put her to sleep.
I gestured for her to drink all the water since she would sleep for more than twenty-four hours. She obeyed, and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, leaning over to place the glass on the table beside her. She smiled and thanked me.
“Your sickness is not without reason,” I assured her. “But like everyone here, you have a responsibility.”
“I know,” she said.
“Vesselhood is not something to take lightly,” I said. “Are you learning from the films?”
She nodded.
“Do you have any questions?”
Doctor Keng spoke with her after the last one, when she asked him about delivering multiples. He assures me she understands.
“You volunteered, did you not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Is your father Colonel Heath?” I feigned looking at the chart I held in my hand.
She nodded.
“He signed for you,” I said. “Since you are not of age, he granted his permission.”
“He wanted me to volunteer.”
I leaned forward and touched her chin, and she softened. My choice of form was a good one. “You are special,” I said. “Not like the others.”
“Why?”
“You are a healer, Muriel.”
“What do you mean?”
I told her I could see it in her, but I could actually feel it. Her skin pulsed with my touch. Her energy is incredibly strong but novel, and she has no idea how to tap it.
“Oh,” she said.
“Have you befriended any of the other vessels?”
“Not yet.”
I frowned. “Why not?”
She shrugged, unaware we have made it impossible for them to communicate with each other. Their sedation and isolation are working as planned, and I have continued to insist on it. I will not risk community, or coercion.
“When will I be allowed to go home?” She swung her legs on the small chair, a spark dancing in her eye.
I smiled. “Never, my dear. Consider this home.”
“But my father said,” her throat grew cottony, a side effect of the sedative.
“Colonel Heath is out on a mission, my dear.” I touched her chin with the tips of my fingers and her shoulders shook. “Just you see, my darling girl. This place will grow on you.”
“May I go back to my room?”
“How is your stomach now?” I lifted her chin anew, and led her eyes to mine. The twinkle in hers had gone, but the tiniest flecks of brown were splashed between branches of green. “This place,” I whispered, “is the safest one in the new world. It is the womb.”
“The womb?” She mumbled.
“The new world order,” I said. “The matrices base.”
She stared blankly.
I released her chin and stepped back, admiring her still. “Nothing, darling girl. Never mind. You trust your father, right? You know he would never put you in harm’s way.”
“Oh,” she said softly. “Yes, of course, I trust the colonel.”
She swayed forward as the sedative worked through her veins. She caught herself from falling as one does when slipping into sleep, and wrapped a foot around the leg of the chair.
“I’d like to lie down now,” she said, a slight color rising to her cheeks.
“Not just yet, Muriel.”
“Okay,” she whispered. She licked her lips and showed me the little gears slowing in her head. “May I have some sweet milk?” Her eyes went up to the side, as she searched for the courage to ask for the treat.
“You have had your allotment for the day, have you not?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then I am afraid Doctor Keng would not approve a second serving.”
She fidgeted with the hangnails on her unkempt fingers.
I leaned forward and whispered in her ear, “Would it make you feel better?”
She nodded.
“Okay then,” I said. “I will see what I can do.” I never intended to honor my offer since she would be asleep shortly. “Doctor Keng has a few more tests to administer today but I will grant your wish afterward. It will be our little secret. Promise me you won’t tell.”
“I swear.” She smiled and looked through me with a stare sharper than a bullet, and I turned away.
“Tell me about your dreams,” I said. “Are they vivid enough to recall?”
“Not really,” she said.
“Are you certain?” Her brain activity showed otherwise. Her monitors often recorded erratic and unusual movement when she slept.
She purred like a kitten, having fallen asleep again on the chair. I woke her with a nudge on the leg, and she tossed her head up and smiled. “I fell asleep, didn’t I?”
I shrugged. “You’re tired.”
“Would you believe I just had a dream?”
“What about?”
With a thin voice she said, “Him.”
“Who?”
She pointed to my reflection in the mirror in front of her, standing to gaze more intently at whatever it was she saw.
“Me?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “The man behind the glass.”
“That is not glass,” I said. “It’s a mirror.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “I see him plain as day. Don’t you?”
I studied the mirror and tried to picture what she saw in me. My figure hadn’t shifted, and I wondered if she was dreaming.
“Are you awake?” I took her by the shoulders and shook her.
She looked directly at me and asked who I was as if she saw through my disguise. I sat her back down and shone my light into her eyes. Her pupils were dilated, and she proved awake.
If she dreamed of the origin in that moment, if she somehow saw him in me, it is too early. The fusion will not begin for years, only after the plague has come.
I asked her to explain what she saw exactly, but she seemed bewildered. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “I said I saw a man in the mirror?”
It was as if she had imagined the entire thing. She nodded and her eyes glazed over before her head flopped to the side.
I woke her anew and said, “It sounds like your dreams are the result of an overactive imagination.”
I have since adjusted her dosage to account for hallucinations.
“But you,” she said.
“I what?”
“You and him.”
“Him who?”
“Never mind,” she said.
She picked at a hangnail on her left hand until it bled and then stuck the finger in her mouth to suck on the blood. The thought of the metallic taste on the tip of her tongue, sliding down her throat, contaminating my embryos sitting in her womb made my stomach turn. I yanked the finger from her mouth, and she stared up at me, stunned.
“I will send someone in to tend to your nails,” I said. “You must not pick at them.”
“It’s a habit.”
“I can see that, but it is one we shall break.” My voice dipped into a darker register, and the hair on her ar
ms rose.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
The blood’s allure escapes me. It is beyond me how anyone can suffer such a foul taste. The thought alone makes me cringe.
“Do you understand the importance of your role as a donor?”
“A donor?”
“Yes,” I said. “You are here as a surrogate and you are to donate the purest part of you.”
“I don’t under—” She nodded off, her head rolling onto her chest and her shoulders slumping forward, her bloody hands nesting in her lap.
I reached forward and tapped her cheeks to wake her again. She inhaled with a vocal drag, as though coming up for air, and then smiled. “Did I doze off?”
“Yes,” I said.
She touched her cheek with that single finger that would not relent its gush, as the blood bubbled on the rim of her nail. “Will I meet you again?”
“Of course.”
A red pattern crawled up her neck and crossed her ears to their tips.
“Blood,” she said.
“What?”
“He wants blood.”
“What does that mean?”
She shrugged. “Something I just dreamed, I guess.” Her lips curled into another smile and she shifted in her chair, looking up at me with doe-eyes again. She stuck her finger in her mouth anew.
“Overactive imagination,” I said, pulling the finger away.
Her head rolled back, and this time I did not wake her but let her sleep until they came for her.
She will not see me again, though I will watch her closely. Her intuition is remarkable, her capacity to empathize strong. I must keep an eye on my embryos, as they grow inside of her. If the origin has selected her, I must make the necessary adjustments. I may not be allowed to keep her.
It is closer than I thought. But if he sees my plan before it starts, I will fail. I must begin our correspondence at once. It is time to greet his beloved Byron Darrow.
The Birth of Laszlo Arros
My visitor quit reading from the booklet and said, “Are you going to ask?” His voice had mellowed but his question clung to the air, sticky like incense.
“Ask what?”
He stared at the back of my head, the cold penetrating skin to skull.
“About Muriel,” he said.
He crossed the room again but his figure got bigger, filling the entire space. I no longer felt cold but hot, as if his rage were outside of him boiling the air around us. He wore a charcoal coat, long and loose like a cape, that sashayed near the trim of his boots as he moved.
“Is she the girl from the ship,” I muttered. “The blood donor?”
“Yes.”
“Was that before?” I pointed to the booklet.
“Yes.”
“Before everything?”
“She was a victim of circumstance.”
“How?” I shifted on my stool.
“She was chosen.”
“For you?” My spine tingled, as he clutched the booklet before putting it back in his pocket.
“Yes,” he said.
“She is gone now?”
He nodded. “She is.”
“But whose booklet is that?”
“It is mine.” He paced the studio. “Though it belonged to Laszlo Arros once.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From the facility where he used up Muriel,” he said. “And the others.”
“What others?”
He glanced sideways, catching me with his eyes. I tried not to cower.
“She is the only one who matters.” He turned to face me and his coat drew a breeze that kissed my face. “Would you not rather know about Laszlo Arros, the most important character in my story?”
“Was that—well, is she the one interviewing Muriel?”
“Yes.” My visitor smiled and the gleam of metal in his mouth made me recoil. His aspect grew more horrifying the closer he drew. “But do not get hung up on gender, for she may as easily be a he.”
“I don’t understand.”
He sighed and turned away. “Laszlo Arros is a theonthrope.”
“A what?”
“A god that may take human form.”
“A god?”
He nodded and a brief smile rose to his lips, but then he said, “You know none of this because the world in which you live is nothing like the forgotten one. The other world had a longstanding tradition of mythos, expressed in song and literature and even painting and sculpture. But settlers do not value art, and they have left the forgotten world to ruin.”
“We don’t have the luxury of mausoleums like our forefathers did,” I said.
“Museums,” he said. “A mausoleum is something quite different, and those are still around.”
“Museums, excuse me. The word doesn’t exist in the vulgate.”
“Do you know the earliest works of art were found on the walls of caves?”
I shook my head. The recovered files didn’t go far enough back for that.
“You have maps, do you not? Of the forgotten world?” He asked.
I nodded and he told me to get them. I found the rudimentary atlas, water-damaged but recovered nevertheless. One of my prized possessions, I would explore its colored pages for hours. It had belonged to Gerenios, but he gave it to me as a gift not too long ago.
My visitor took the book from me, making it shrink in his hands. He handled it with little care, tearing through the pages to get to the one he sought. He threw the book open on my drafting table and said, “Here, this mountain range.”
“Pyrénées,” I read the French text, sounding out the letters as my guardian had taught me.
“The Pyrenees,” Vincent said, translating it to the vulgate. “A mountain range that spanned France and Spain, rock millions of years old. Inside were Neolithic cave drawings that depicted animal-headed men—gods that walked the earth at one time.”
“Have they all gone?”
“Not all.”
“Are you one?” I mumbled.
“You understand little of the forgotten world, despite your attempt to learn of its downfall.”
“How did you know?”
“Why else would I leave you clues to the answers you seek?”
“Your journals didn’t tell me what I’m looking for,” I said, unabashedly.
His shoulders rose slightly and I lost all bravado, shrinking as I sat on my stool.
“You think knowing the cause of the Red Death will prevent it from returning, but you are foolish to think it ever left.”
“The kinds of creatures you write about haven’t been seen for many seasons,” I said. “Since long before my lifetime there’s been no illness, no disease, no fever, nothing like what you describe.”
“Until now.”
My throat dried up. “Is it you?”
He scowled and said, “Shall I tell you about the Egyptian gods?” He flipped the pages of the atlas to one that showed the African continent, once desperate for water, it now sits beneath the sea. “That is Egypt.”
“I know very little about it,” I said, “just whatever’s in this book.”
“Yes, but cartography cares nothing for monuments and citadels. The pyramids, the desert, the gods are all gone now, and nothing stands as witness to their ever having been.”
“But you recall them.”
“I do.”
He touched the frayed edge of the map, running his hand across the faded ink. His nail beds appeared gray in the dim light of the studio. I looked away for fear he’d punish me for sizing him up.
“The Egyptians, a far more civilized people than the Achaeans—or perhaps the same people—worshipped therianthropes long before any other civilization did.”
“Theri—”
“The word comes from the Greek,” he said. “The language in the booklet. Therion means beast or wild thing, and anthropos is human being. The term can be found in many languages, for many have worshipped shifter deities.”
“You sa
id theon—something.”
“Theonthropy,” he said. “Gods into men. But animals are most common.”
“Animals?”
“Theriocephaly denotes gods which share animal and human traits,” he said. “Lycanthropy, for instance, is specific to wolves, though there have been legends of lions, tigers, birds, even swans and frogs. In Egyptian lore, Ra was depicted with the head of a falcon, and Sobek the head of a crocodile. Have you ever seen a crocodile? Its long nose and jaw ready to clamp its sharp teeth on flesh?”
I shook my head and held my breath, picturing the puncture wounds in the dead settlers’ necks.
“Can you guess what animal-head Anubis wore?”
“Who is Anubis?” I asked.
“The god of death.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, and my eyes welled up with tears.
“A dog’s head,” he said. “The first kynanthrope, Anubis is the Egyptian god of the afterlife, mummification and burial.”
“Mummification?” The word came trippingly off my tongue.
“Do you know what that is?”
“When a body is wrapped tightly and preserved,” I said. “After death, I mean.”
The corners of his mouth turned upward and he said, “Good. For what purpose does one preserve a dead body, do you suppose?”
“I can’t say.”
“No?”
“We burn ours.”
“Down to the bone, I see.”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“Why not preserve the body?”
“The colonists don’t believe in it.”
“Why?”
“They don’t think there is life after death—in this body.”
“I see,” he said. “Shame.” He turned his head to the side and asked, “What about death after life?”
“Huh.”
“I have confused you.” He tapped a finger to my temple and a bolt of pain shot through my eyes. “We shall cure you of your blindness,” he said.
“I’m a quick study,” I said, beating away the lump in my throat. “I learn quickly.”
“And so you shall learn, little by little. In the meantime, my story must hold some air of suspense,” he said with a wink as he backed away, his feet barely touching the stone floor.
The Journal of Vincent Du Maurier Trilogy (Books 1, 2, 3) Page 46
