A dim smile flickered and died on her lips. “Well, that’s men for you, but at least you learned.”
He smirked. “All it took was a deep psychological purge and a full physical rebuild, at the very least.” Walken looked down at himself and shrugged again. “I’ll do whatever I can to help you, Bobbi. I know Cagliostro has plans for me, but your needs supercede those. I trust what you’re doing here more than anything that bastard is up to.”
Another smile found her, this one strong. “I’m really glad to hear that, Tom. Especially since it doesn’t look like Cagliostro is playing us fair.”
Walken did not blink when he looked at her. Or rather, through her. Bobbi could sense the wheels turning behind his eyes, even if his placid features betrayed nothing outwardly. What was he feeling? The statue act broke and his eyes refocused. “Yes. It certainly does look that way, doesn’t it.”
Bobbi pulled a stool out from under the slab and took a seat. “See… that’s what I wonder about. Why would Cagliostro send you off to collect these people, but tell me and my crew that that he was Yathi? If we had killed him, you guys would’ve been fucked.”
He nodded. “Very probably. Lionel’s efforts depended on them. The loss of Park did not derail that, but it would certainly slow things down.”
“So why would he do that? And why would he leave triggers in my head that would tell me you were on your way to me? That I should accept you?”
Walken frowned faintly at her. “You didn’t tell me about that. When was this?”
“Literal hours before you radioed in,” she said. “I want to say that this is a plot, but whose?”
“Certainly begs the question.” Walken’s frown deepened as he squinted at her.” But I sense that you have a theory.”
Bobbi drew a deep breath. Her brain spun out a thread as quickly as they spoke, but he was right. “Well, the evidence would suggest one of two things: one, he’s doing his usual plotting but on a far greater scale than we’ve ever had chance to see. Or maybe just he’s got more options, running two conspiracies at a time. Maybe he’s just playing both sides toward an eventual middle. But then again, for someone who says they love humanity as much as he does, and wants to protect it, I can’t imagine he would sacrifice necessary lives like that.”
“It’s no different than any other great power on earth,” Walken said. “Governments, corporations. They kill people all the time in the name of the greater good.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve got me there, Tom. Okay, well, then maybe that’s what he’s doing. But to what end? Why couldn’t he just, you know, put us together and make us play nicely? He certainly had no problems motivating me to get the band back together, not with that strike on the bridge. And if we assume he’s playing you and Lionel as well as myself, we have to assume he’s playing Julie Mendelson, too.”
“Perhaps he thought it the only way to bring us together,” Walken said. “And you have to admit, if this is the case, he’s been very successful.”
The lab hung in silence for a while as they shared that horrible thought together. Neither scenario was remotely palatable to her. Still, it would have to be dealt with, somehow. And then of course the other elephant in the room. “Tom… There’s something else.”
“Yes?” His gaze, which had wandered off to the machines in the room, returned to her. “What is it?”
“Well…” Bobbi swept a hand in his direction. “All this, actually. I mean…. why?”
He gave her a grim smile. “I’ve wondered the same thing. Very often. It makes little sense to rebuild me in this way, doesn’t it?”
Bobbi nodded. “It may sound heartless, but I mean, if I were gonna do the whole ‘break your spirit, let the alien in’ thing, I’d have just made you a floating torso, you know, and let you fester until you broke. I mean it wouldn’t take no six years to do it, either. So why would she build this incredible body for you, keep you together and, from what I can see, sane for the most part?”
“Well, you know what they told me.” Walken got to his feet. “She was going to do it this time. I don’t suppose you have clothes for me, do you?”
“Over there.” She gestured to a nearby table, where a set of black fatigues and a pair of boots awaited him. “And yes, I know what they told you. But do you believe that? I guess that’s what I’m saying, why would they even go through all the trouble of saving you? I mean, the Mother certainly has no problems sacrificing her people when she has to. What makes you different?”
“Everyone wonders that.” He crossed to the table. “And yet nobody has even the slightest answer. It’s not as though we can ask her, can we?”
He paused as she said that, poised in the middle of putting on his pants. “I wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“I wonder if we might not be able to. Or rather, if I might not be able to.”
Bobbi scowled at him. “You can’t be serious.”
Walken pulled up the pants and secured the button. “I am, actually. I mean, when it comes down to it, this might be very important. Is it possible to fool her into telling me, or otherwise engineer the situation so that she does so?”
“I don’t know,” Bobbi admitted. “She’s damned sharp. I can’t imagine that she’d be swayed by something so simple as an appeal from you. She’d probably just track you down that much more easily.”
Walken pulled on the undershirt, and then the tunic. “I wonder if it’s really so complex as that. But all right, if not that, do you think it might be possible to reach out to the…” He hesitated. “…mind inside of me? I mean it might be accessible by you, might it not? You’ve read my memories.”
Bobbi hadn’t considered that previously, and she wasn’t at all sure she wanted to. “I don’t know, Tom.” She shifted in her seat. “I mean, we’re trying to keep that thing asleep. I don’t know that waking it up to ask it questions is the best thing to do, even if it were possible. What if it starts trying to get back what it lost?”
“Who’s to say it isn’t already? The lack of physical connection to the rest of my brain aside, it’s awake. It could be plotting something.” He buttoned up the tunic and turned to her. “How do I look?”
“Like a goddamned fascist ghost,” Bobbi said with a grunt. “How charming. Anyway, I don’t know that I want to risk it. I’d rather just stick our head in the lion’s jaws.”
Walken nodded. “I imagined that you might say that. But I’d like to try it anyway.”
Bobbi rose so quickly the stool beneath her rolled away and banged against a nearby cabinet. “Absolutely not. Tom, I know you want to figure this out, and so do I, but we just said―”
“You said.” Walken folded his hands behind his back and looked at her, a life-size china figurine of a man. “I say I’d like to try. Is it possible?”
A corkscrew of mingled anger and concern twisted its way through her. What the hell was he thinking? “I have no idea. And I don’t want to try. Jesus, Tom. What the hell’s the matter with you? Are you that interested in saying hello to this thing?”
“I’m interested in figuring out why I’m so important to the Mother of Systems.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I understand your feelings, I do. I’d like you to consider, though, that it’s possible. If I’m as important as we suspect I am, or at least the mental cargo I carry is, then we should assume the Mother of Systems is going to eventually turn her focus here. You know what that means.”
Bobbi paused. Did she know what that meant, or at least, did she know what he thought she should? “I assume you mean we’re going to be obliterated.”
He made a noncommittal gesture with one hand. “Obliterated, no. I assumed that you would know she would be coming, and have methods of getting out. No, I meant that you would likely be scattered, and therefore in the time that it would take to regroup, she would find me. Any potential advantage that you might have concerning the identity of my parasite would be lost.”
She reconsidered if she liked
him better this way after all. Logic didn’t suit him. “All right. So what’s the idea, then?”
“Well, that depends,” he said. “Can you connect me to that part of my brain which has the thing inside of it?”
Bobbi had to think about that one for a minute. Tall order and whatever. You know. Nothing new. “I think I can. I mean, it’s just part of the system, right? But you would have to use an intermediary to connect to it, and it would be slower.”
“An intermediary like…?”
Bobbi shrugged. “It’d have to be me, I think.” She regretted it the moment she said it. “Yeah. I’d have to be the carrier. Basically what I’d do is hack your brain like I did before, route your signal through a Grail, probably, and then run you back into the part of your brain that’s holding the consciousness. I mean it’s a tiny, super-high-capacity data vault. A ROM construct, like the Dolls had, but much more powerful.”
“So it’s finite.” Walken sat on the edge of the slab again. “It can’t expand.”
Bobbi shrugged. “Well, I assume that’s what they need the human consciousness for. Sort of like growing bacteria on agar.”
He nodded. “So, will it be able to take me, do you think?”
She shot him an angry look. “Now you’re asking?”
Walken had the grace to look contrite. “Well, I don’t want to be eaten alive in there.”
This man. Bobbi sighed in exasperation. Yet, she could not be too angry with him; that part of her had burned out where humans were concerned, idiots they could be. More sensible to rail against the rain. “I doubt it. It’s going to be a digital construct in there, supported by software. Brains don’t work that way anyway, or at least not that we’re aware of. All Network technology since last century has a psychotronic layer that lets the Yathi do what they do, but…” She spread her hands. “Look, I can’t say for sure, okay? I just know that I can cut you free if you can’t cut yourself.”
“And how do I do that?” His eyes trained on hers.
“You just will yourself back.” She shrugged. “You’ll basically be using the same rules, you know? You just won’t be able to do field programming of any kind, so you’ll need me to watch out for you.”
Walken nodded slowly. “Of course. I trust you.”
So he did at that. Bobbi squinted at him. She knew he had changed. She had beheld it in his memories, the alchemy that the surgeries and the expelling of the alien from his mind had worked. And yet she didn’t trust him back, not really. She didn’t know if she should feel guilty about that or not; it just was. Who could blame her? Even this could be an implant. He could still be an engineered part of some alien mind, either the Mother’s or that of a possibly-fragmented Cagliostro.
So naturally, she was going to risk it anyway, because trust issues aside, he was right about one thing: if they didn’t find out the identity of the alien inside him right from the horse’s mouth, they had quite a miniscule chance of finding out from the Mother of Systems.
“All right,” she said. “Get back on the slab. I’ve got to get a bunch of shit ready.”
alken found himself in Baltimore, on one of the vast industrial piers. And yet he wasn’t. Nobody on the pier, or down the street. All alone in a city of ghosts. Only the wind blew, a soft breath of fetid air that wafted up from the bay.
A dream. He lay on a slab somewhere in Seattle, with Bobbi hacking his brain like any other computer. Waiting on the beast to come.
After a time, it obliged.
“I was wondering when we would meet.” A male voice, ripe with amusement. Metallic at the edges.
Walken whirled to face the voice. A tall, thin young man stood behind him, dressed in simple athletic clothes, his skin bone white, hair so blonde it looked silver, like all of the Yathi were. It surprised Walken how handsome he was, how his enormous silver eyes seemed to draw in the dream world – and his attention – as if they had their own gravity.
“Hey,” Walken finally managed after a few long seconds of staring.
“Hey,” the boy replied. Older, probably almost old enough to graduate high school, nearly a man. His smile carried a cruel edge. “It’s nice to meet you at last.”
A thrill of cold crept up his spine as Walken looked at the boy. “You’re him.”
The boy smiled. “If you want to call me that. You’re interesting meat, I’ll give you that.”
“Hey.” Walken frowned. Indignation buried the strangeness and fear. “I’m not meat!”
“It’s what you’re made from, isn’t it?” With a shrug, the pale boy took a seat on a nearby bench. He stretched out across it, looking up at Walken with an impudent smirk. “Meat and good intentions. I know you pretty well, Tom Walken, even if you don’t realize it.”
Waken frowned more deeply. “I imagine that you do. Do you know why I have come?”
“Frankly,” said the boy, “I’m shocked you were able to get here in the first place! However did you manage it?”
Walken shrugged. “We hacked my brain. It’s halfway biocomp tissue, after all.”
The boy laughed. He looked up at the lead-colored sky; Walken glanced up as well, and realized with a start that lances of glowing green sporadically flickered among the gray clouds. Walken could never escape from that sky. “I imagine there’s more to it than that. As far as I know, what we do here has never been done. What do you want from me, Tom?”
“You know what I want.”
“Oh,” said the boy. “I guarantee you that I do not. You could just leave me to rot, after all. It’s not as if I can threaten you.” He made a bitter face. “I assume you’re out and about, and not in Mother’s custody anymore.”
Tom shook his head. “I’ve escaped. I’m far away from Mother’s custody. She can’t find me where I am.”
An icy smile spread across the boy’s lips. “You should know better than that. They can always find you. That’s why she leads. No matter where you go, you can’t escape from her. And you can’t escape from me, either.” The boy tapped his temple with a fingertip. “Mother will never stop looking for me. Especially me. She will look for me until the sun burns out, and this world of yours is a cinder. “He smiled again, wider than before, and then wider still, so that his cheeks split and the flesh beneath gleamed wet and red, the teeth a set of horrifying dentures. From somewhere in his head, a quadruple set of gleaming black mandibles slid out and filled the space, glittering with moisture, flexing in the air. Walken drew back, which only made the boy laugh more, with a voice thick and disfigured, and the mandibles scythed rhythmically in amusement. Walken, in his horror and without reference for such gestures, could only recoil.
“Who are you?” Walken whispered. “What is your name?”
The mandibles clacked together in a horrible X-shape, then slid back into the skull of the boy-thing. His Glasgow smile sealed itself and he screwed his now-healed mouth up into a smirk. “I’m the future, Tom.” He shrugged. “More specifically, your future. I am what you were. I am what you will be. You know what I am.”
“I know what you are,” Walken said, recovering now that the insectile mouthparts had disappeared. “But I don’t know who.”
He laughed. The mandibles slid out again, clacking together hideously. The boy-thing got to his feet. “Mother was right about your race, meat.” His voice slid into the horrible barbed syllables of the Yathi speech. “They have always been far too slow on the uptake. I may not be able to take you, but I will enjoy trying.”
Walken forgot himself in the moment. Horror – real horror, keen and human – boiled through him as the boy-thing’s small body shuddered and split open. A fantastic shower of red gore painted the dock behind him as his torso hung forward like an emptied balloon. A mass of gleaming, bloody legs emerged from the jagged split in its back , black and elegant like the mandibles had been. The swollen white mass of an insectoid body erupted from the tiny shell like an inflating balloon, twin crests of bloody blonde hair ran down the back of the thing coming into the w
orld.
Walken awoke on the slab in the laboratory, gasping without breath or lungs, his mouth working like a landed fish’s, his eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. Bobbi leaned over him, her hands holding his face, looking down into it, her expression stern.
“Tom,” she called, though it sounded as if she were very far away. “Tom. Tom, honey, look me in the face here, you’re with us now. You’re okay, do you hear me? You’re safe. You’re with us. Tom!”
He came to himself with the light and frenzied slapping of her hand against his cheek, the rhythmic dinging of pressure sensors in his head giving him focus. Some kind of sound filled his ears, a kind of guttural, metallic sound, like a computer’s audio module stuck in action during a system freeze. Only when he saw the reflection of his face in Bobbi’s eyes, his mouth still open, did he realized he was screaming. Walken shut his mouth and stared at her, remembering to blink only a second after. “I’m sorry.” He spoke in his chip voice, as utterly calm as he suddenly felt. The fear, whatever it had been, had left him. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Bobbi stared at him for a moment, then slapped him anyway. “God damn it!” A distinct note of relief hid behind her shout. “We thought that thing got to you.”
“I doubt that this is possible.” On his other side, Hepzibah stood with a weapon that looked something like a long, curved black knife made from liquid metal. Its cutting edge glowed with a curious green plasma. “I see that you were prepared, however, if it should do so.”
Bobbi looked up at Hepzibah and shook her head. The giant Reclaimed woman touched a thumb to the grip and its glowing edge went dark. “We had to make sure that you weren’t going to go Satanic on us and kill everybody.” Her gaze returned to him. “Are you all right?”
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 45
