Street Freaks

by Terry Brooks

  “Keep going!” Cay says eagerly. “Don’t stop!”

  “After the surgery, I would have to take medication to keep the memory from resurfacing. But if the medicine ran out . . . or if I quit taking the medicine . . . I would know . . .” His eyes widen. “I remember now! All of it! The medicine would run out, because he only gave me a little at a time, never more than a week’s supply. He knew something might happen to him, and he wanted to be sure I would be able to do something about it.” He felt a jolt of recognition at what this meant. “Cay, he used me as a storage bank! He manipulated my memory!”

  Abruptly, he stops talking. More memories are resurfacing, pushing up from where they have been buried in his subconscious. They no longer wait for him to sleep. Suddenly, it is all coming back, the whole of what happened to him and why. The last effects of the ProLx are finally wearing off.

  He looks at Cay, his face flushed hot with anger and shock.

  “What is it, Ash?” she presses. “Tell me.”

  “My father made a recording of everything that was happening at BioGen and then hid the file.”

  “You’re sure about this?” Now she is excited too.

  “Very sure,” he says, his memories sharpening even as he recalls them. He remembers everything!

  He tells Cay, the words tumbling over themselves as he rushes to get them out.

  His uncle is responsible for what’s happened. His father said Cyrus Collins lost perspective and any semblance of meaningful judgment a long time ago, doing things no sane man should even think of doing, and needed to be stopped. Because if he weren’t, the damage to the people of the United Territories would be irreparable. The hidden file would reveal this. It was too dangerous for Ash to know the particulars beforehand, but if his father failed to stop his brother or if something should happened to him, Ash’s supply of ProLx would run out and his memory of everything would return. At that point, he was to make contact with someone high up in the U.T. Government and reveal where the hidden file could be found . . .

  He chokes on the words, takes an unconscious step backward, and almost loses his balance. Cay grabs him.

  “Hold on,” she says, straightening him. “Take a deep breath. Where did your father hide this file?”

  He stops again. The rest of it comes tantalizingly close and then clouds over. He tries to bring it back and fails. At that moment, the machines go quiet, the downloading of Jenny’s files into the hidden portable drive complete.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I can’t remember the rest.”

  Cay jumps up immediately. She comes over to him, takes him by the shoulders, and pulls him out of his chair. “Not yet, you can’t. But you will. We just have to find a way to help you. Come on, we’re getting out of here.”

  - 25 -

  Minutes later Ash is sitting next to Cay in the Bryson Utility as they drive out of the underground tunnel and head out onto the Straightaway.

  Cay isn’t talking. Not yet. They travel in silence, eyes directed at the road ahead. The silence looms between them like a wall. The Street Freaks building remains locked; they were careful to leave no indications that they were ever there. The Shoe still hangs from the rope in Bay 3. The computers in Jenny Cruz’s office are emptied and scrubbed and returned to their place of concealment in the floor. Everything is back to the way it was. No sign of their presence remains. The portable storage drive is tucked inside Cay’s purse. When they link up with Jenny again, they will give it to her.

  Which will happen sometime tomorrow. Jenny called moments earlier, just before they were leaving Street Freaks. She and Woodrow are tucked away in a safe house somewhere in the north end of the Zone and will remain there until all four of them reconvene to figure out what to do about BioGen. Jenny has told Cay they need to get inside the building in order to access the main computers—the same thing she told Ash. Tomorrow they will meet to decide how to make that happen. And, more importantly, who will carry it out. Without the dexterity and strength of T.J. and Holly, the other four are severely handicapped. But it has to be done. There is nowhere else for them to turn, nowhere else to look for the information they need. It has to be somewhere in BioGen.

  Until then, Jenny stresses, no one is to do anything. Cay gives her promise. Yet she is driving with a considerable degree of determination and intensity.

  “You’re bothered about something,” Ash says finally. “What is it?”

  “Jenny is too eager to break into BioGen without being sure it will help. I think the idea needs further discussion.”

  “So you don’t think we should do it?”

  “Not sure yet.”

  Ash pauses, thinking it over. “Where are we going?” he asks finally.

  “My home,” she says.

  “Good. We can wait there and figure things out tomorrow.”

  “That’s your plan, is it, Ash?” she says without looking over.

  “It’s not yours?”

  Cay is silent a moment, and then she says. “No, it isn’t.”

  They are almost to her cottage. The houses on the street are familiar by now, the landscaping recognizable even in the shadows beyond the open walkways. Overhead, moon and stars add their pale white light in a radiance that blankets the whole of the neighborhood and reflects like snow.

  She glances over. “Let’s clear the air about Cyrus. You seem to think my spending time with him is some sort of betrayal of you. You know how silly that sounds, don’t you?”

  “I do when you say it like that.” He shifts in his seat so that he is facing her. “But I saw you hanging on his arm. After you told me you weren’t going to the Sprint.”

  “Yes, well, I told you what I thought you needed to hear. I would have told you something different if I had thought you were capable of listening with a clear head.”

  “So seeing you with him was just me being delusional?”

  “I was with him because I thought it was a good way to get information on what he intended to do about Street Freaks. It’s what I do, after all. Jenny and the Shoe both knew about it; they were hoping I could learn something about your father and BioGen. Isn’t that what you wanted too?”

  “Not that way, I didn’t.”

  “Oh, so now there is a right way and a wrong way? Listen to yourself! You sound like you’re ten years old. If your concern is for my virtue, you’re way too late. If your concern is for my safety, I am far more capable of looking after myself than you are. If your concern is that I might be selling you out, you and I are all done, right here and now. So if none of the above applies, ask yourself a question. Why would I agree to do it?”

  He sees it now, and he is ashamed. “To help me.”

  “Ah, the light dawns!” She reaches over and pats his leg. “In spite of your foolish fixation on our future and your lack of worldly experience, I like being with you. At least, I like being with you when you’re not mooning over me. I wanted to help you with your father. This was my chance to do so.”

  He nods. “All right, I jumped to conclusions without taking time to ask you what was happening. I’m embarrassed and I’m sorry.”

  “You have to understand. It’s not what happens between your uncle and me, which means nothing. It’s not the means I use or the measures I take. All that is programmed into me and no different than eating or drinking. Your uncle is a troll, but trolls are just trolls. I know how to deal with them.”

  She glances at him. “What matters is whether or not it was worth the time and effort. Did I get anything useful from expending both? Were they helpful in any way.”

  “Can we can skip the details?” he asks.

  “Sure. Just so you understand. Now listen. We’re only going to the cottage to get some equipment we’ll need. Then we’re going out again. To your old home at the sky tower.”

  He stares. “Why? What’s the point of that?”

  “If your father were going to hide something that would incriminate people who would hurt him if they found o
ut, where would he do it?”

  “BioGen?”

  “No. BioGen is the enemy. Much too dangerous to hide a file in their computers when the information is all about them and can be traced back to him if found. Your father would have realized that. He wouldn’t have risked it.”

  “So he hid the file in our home? But wouldn’t they look there first?”

  She nods. “But your father was a clever man. He created a misdirection of some sort to throw them off the track. Anyway, that’s not the only reason we are going back. Your home is where everything began for you, where your father told you about the danger, where you were warned that you might have to run. Being back there now might help trigger other memories. You’ve remembered a lot, but you said it yourself—you haven’t remembered everything. Being there might jog the rest loose.”

  “So you want to go back tonight? Without waiting on Jenny and Woodrow?”

  “We don’t need them for this. Besides, it would only lead to an argument with Jenny. You know she always wants to do things her way. Let’s leave them out of it. This is on you and me.”

  “You don’t know what might be necessary.”

  “I don’t? What part don’t I know? That we have to go back to your home and break into it? That your uncle will probably have it under guard? That we will likely have a fight on our hands? I don’t know that?”

  “Okay. But shouldn’t someone know what we’re doing? Shouldn’t we at least tell Jenny and Woodrow what we’re planning to do, even if we’re not taking them along?”

  “Oh, sure. We should just tell them. They won’t mind. They’ll understand.” She smirks. “Even you don’t believe that. Jenny will insist it’s too dangerous. Like somehow it’s safer for us to break into BioGen? No, we keep this to ourselves.”

  They have reached their destination. She pulls into the drive and slows until the gates swing open. Then she pulls the Bryson through and eases up the long drive and around the manor house to her cottage. The manor house is lit, but her cottage is dark.

  She looks at him, waiting. “What?”

  He shakes his head. “Even if I agree with you about keeping Jenny and Woodrow out of this, I don’t agree that going back to my home and hoping that somehow my memory will return simply because of where I am is a good idea. Jeez, Cay, it’s too dangerous.”

  “Well, jeez, Ash, do you have a better idea? By morning your uncle will come looking for us. How long do you think we can hide from him? He has all the resources of ORACLE at his disposal. He will hunt us down. That’s how he is. I should know.”

  He stares at her. “You should know? What do you mean?”

  “I mean I have some firsthand knowledge about his ability to track people down. I saw it happen. But I was lucky. I got out another way.”

  “What other way?” he says quietly.

  She triggers a node on the dashboard computer, and the lights inside her home blink on. She sits where she is, not moving. For a moment she doesn’t say anything.

  Then she turns to face him. “Okay. I’m going to tell you all the stuff I’ve been holding back. It might help you get a grip on reality. Remember when I said all of us at Street Freaks were discards? That we were built or reconstructed to be a certain way but ended up as rejects? That we were meant to think and act exactly as humans do?”

  She waits on him, so he nods. “I remember.”

  “Then you remember what I was built to do. I am a prototype—one so perfect it is virtually impossible to tell otherwise. The men who built me wanted me to have the emotional and intellectual responses of a real woman. A human woman. I was not to be an automaton. I was not to be bot-like in any way. I was to think and behave exactly as if I were human but to have one function and one function only. To please men like them. To be responsive

  and submissive to them in any way they directed.”

  She looks over, her perfect features suddenly sad beyond words. “But they overlooked something. Creating new life is unpredictable. Even when it’s synthetic. Constructing me in specific ways is no guarantee I will turn out as planned. It isn’t always possible to predict which responses will surface and take hold, even when what you build is so carefully designed and engineered.”

  He shakes his head. “What are you saying?”

  “That I don’t like doing what I was built to do. Not even a little bit. I was a prototype, but I turned out to be more real than expected. I was created to give pleasure to men. I was created to be their plaything. I was made desirable in order to attract them to me. I was not to question what was being done to me. I was simply to submit. But that isn’t how I turned out. I developed feelings and a conscience. I discovered I didn’t like being used that way. It made me feel like I was losing a piece of myself every time I let it happen.”

  She gives him a small smile. “So I stopped doing what they wanted, and just like that, I ceased to have a purpose. They didn’t see any other possibility for me. I couldn’t have children, couldn’t procreate. What use was I? They looked at me exactly as they would a machine that no longer worked properly. They began to talk about terminating me.” She pauses. “It was your father who rescued me.”

  The revelation shocks him. “My father?”

  “From your uncle.”

  He hears the words, but he can’t quite make sense of them.

  “Your father was working at BioGen,” she continues, not waiting on him. “He was lead scientist on their genetics engineering projects. I was one of those projects. After I was made, your uncle . . . appropriated me. I became his personal creature. I was still his when I began to demonstrate how unhappy I was. I rebelled in ways that infuriated him. Deciding to terminate me was his immediate response. Easiest way to get rid of a problem.”

  She takes a deep breath, clearly uncomfortable with her subject. “Your father found out. We had become friends by then. He saw me differently than the others; he understood me. He could see what his brother was doing to me. So he bargained me away from his brother and brought me to the Shoe. I don’t know what it cost him; he never told me and I never asked. Street Freaks became my new home. My refuge. The Shoe was like your father. He never asked anything of me, never expected any favors. Yes, he used me to gain information. Codes to security systems, security schedules at plants, locations of valuable designs and formulas—information like that. Anything Jenny couldn’t find on a computer. I did it willingly. He saved my life; I wanted to do something for him.”

  “Like sleeping with strange men?” he snaps in frustration.

  “Be careful. Don’t say something you will regret.”

  “Is there anything I won’t regret saying at this point?” He seethes with frustration and anger. “You should try listening to yourself! You tell me you hate it, but you do it anyway. You’ve even gone back to my uncle. How could you do that?”

  She gives him a long, careful look. “We’ve already covered this ground, Ash.”

  Ash slouches in his seat, angry all over again. “There is a word for what he did to you.”

  “Nobody made me do anything once I got away from your uncle. Nobody used me again the way he did. I did what I chose to do once I was with the Shoe. That’s what counts.”

  “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

  She gives him a weary look. “You know what I am. You’ve known from the beginning. You can’t keep pretending that I’m something else. And that’s what you seem intent on trying to do. Even though I told you that thinking of me as some kind of fragile flower was a mistake.”

  “I’m entitled to think what I want.”

  “Not when you’re being foolish. You think we might somehow have a life together—become a couple, maybe fall in love. Don’t look at me that way. That’s what you want. You want our relationship to mean something more than it does. It can’t.”

  “But you’ve broken away from your old life! You don’t have to go back to it!” He practically shouts it at her. “You have other choices—a world of choices. You ca
n make any one of them. Then maybe things can change.”

  Cay shakes her head. “I’m a pleasure synth, and that’s never going to change. I’m the leopard who cannot change her spots. I use that to my advantage. That’s why I’ve been able to fool your uncle the last few days. He only sees me one way. You should be able to understand. You’re grown up enough.”

  “I don’t understand any of it,” he insists stubbornly.

  “Well, you better start understanding. Life will be a lot better for you once you do. Now get out of the car.”

  They walk to the cottage door. Cay taps in the code that unlocks the door and disarms the alarm. They go inside.

  “Want something to eat?” she asks.

  He mutters that he isn’t hungry but then follows her into the kitchen where she begins fixing sandwiches anyway.

  “You know what?” he says, watching her. “Forget what I just said. You’re right. I have to get past how all this makes me feel. I have to learn how to accept things. None of it matters anyway. I don’t care how other people see you. I don’t care what you’ve done, or even why. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. It never will.”

  She nods absently. “If you say so.”

  “So I’m not going to let you put yourself in danger for me.”

  She finishes making the sandwiches and motions for him to sit at her tiny kitchen table.

  “Maybe you don’t have anything to say about it.”

  “Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean I can’t say it anyway. One of us has to show some good judgment.”

  “You’re pretty sure of yourself. You think you have this all figured out, don’t you?”

  He forces himself to stay calm. “No, I don’t. I don’t have anything figured out.”

  She takes a bite of her sandwich and regards him as she chews. “We don’t have a choice, Ash. Neither of us. Especially now that we know what’s at stake. We need to expose Cyrus before he catches up to us. Don’t you see that?”

  Ash closes his eyes in despair. “All I can see is how badly this is going to end.”