The Last Book in the Universe

by Rodman Philbrick

  “Yeah, right.”

  “The epilepsy is part of what made you,” he says. “Don’t hate it.”

  Don’t hate the spaz? Is he serious? The spaz is why I lost my family unit. Why I can never see Bean again. Why people run away when it happens. Spaz isn’t just a name, it’s a warning. Look out for the spaz boy, he might have a fit and bite you! He’ll infect you! He’ll infect your unborn children! Cast him out. Banish him. Disfavor him.

  Cancel him, they sometimes whisper, the boy is a monster, a mistake, he never should have been born.

  But Ryter, he doesn’t get it. “You think of it as a curse,” he says. “But the ‘curse’ is also a blessing. If you didn’t have it you’d be sticking needles in your brain like all the others. Rotting your mind with probes. Living in a mindprobe instead of real life. You’d have trouble remembering what happened last week, never mind when you were four years old. You’d have forgotten all about your sister.”

  “Shut up!” I say, holding my hands to my ears. “Shut up!” But the stupid gummy won’t shut up; he’s trying to tell me something important even though I’m covering my ears and I don’t want to hear it and I don’t want to think about who I am or what’s wrong with me or why I’m out here at the edge of the Urb, at the edge of the known world, listening to some old mope who’s so crazy, he thinks about the future when everybody knows that the future doesn’t exist.

  “Shut up!” I scream. “Shut up!” And then I’m running away, running as fast as my feet will take me, running until I can’t hear him anymore and the only word in my head is the word that never leaves, the word I hate the most, the word that means me.

  Spaz, spaz, spaz.

  WHEN I FINALLY slow down I’m a long way from the stacks, in a part of the Urb I’ve never been before. Where the streets are narrow and dark and the buildings are so high, the sky disappears and it might as well be night, even in the daytime. A place like this, you stick to the shadows and try not to be seen, because if they don’t know you the locals will assume you’re enemy, and most of the time they’re right.

  A drumfire burns on each street corner, and I can see the enforcers warming their hands in the sooty orange flames. They’re the block guardians, armed with chetty blades and probably splat guns, too. They might know I’m almost down with the Bangers and they might not. They might cut my red and they might not. The “might” part will kill you, so I edge my way along, trying to blend into the concrete.

  I’m thinking, you mope, never go where you’re not known. It’s my own fault but I want to blame it on Ryter, for telling me things I don’t want to hear.

  This time I’m lucky. Nobody sees me. I creep away through the alleys, keeping to the darkest shadows, heart pounding so hard, my ears hurt. Barely breathing, moving as quiet as a whisper. Thinking, please let me get away, if I get away this time, I’ll never be stupid again.

  After what seems like forever I finally get to a place where I know the streets and they know me.

  I made it, this time.

  Back at the Crypts I’m ready to fall down on my foam and sleep, because being afraid makes you tired. But I never make it to the foam because someone is waiting inside my cube.

  As soon as I step through the door, a voice hisses, “Don’t move.”

  I can’t see who it is because the power is out again, but the voice in the dark sounds as scared as me.

  “Who is it?” I ask.

  “Nobody,” whispers the voice. “A runner.”

  A runner. Runners carry messages between the latches, crossing from one gang area to the next, and they’re strictly forbidden. The gangs want to control everything, and that includes information. Because it’s so dangerous — get caught and you’re canceled — latch runners are highly paid, and that’s what bothers me: I don’t know anyone who could afford to send me a message by runner. Or anyone who’d want to, even if they could.

  “Shut the door!” the voice urges me.

  I shut the door. The darkness is close and thick and makes me feel out of breath all over again.

  “Show me your face,” I demand, trying to sound brave.

  “Never,” says the voice. “Listen and listen well. I’m not here, we never met, understood? All I am is a message.”

  “What message?”

  The runner’s voice changes slightly, as he recites what he was sent to tell me. “I bring you news of home,” he begins.

  Already my heart is sinking because nobody knows better than me that all news is bad news. And this is the worst news there ever was.

  “Your sister lies close to death,” the runner tells me. “She wishes to see you one last time. End of message.”

  That’s all. A moment later the door eases shut and I’m alone in my crib, in the dark. I find my old microflash and turn it on, but the light doesn’t help. Nothing helps. The words are like a scream inside my head that won’t stop echoing.

  Bean is dying and she wants to see me.

  That’s two impossible things. Bean can’t be dying. And I can’t see her because my old family unit lives on the other side of the Urb. That’s why I was banished to Billy Bizmo’s latch, so there’d be some distance between us. Now if I want to get to Bean — and I do, more than anything — I’ll have to go through at least three warring latches that won’t let a stranger pass. Unless.

  “Billy Bizmo,” I say to myself, and the name gives me hope. Hope to see Bean, hope to save her somehow.

  Billy might grant me safe passage. He has the power. If he wants to make it happen. Maybe he can even fix whatever it is that’s wrong with Bean.

  I’m not thinking too clear; there’s no room for anything inside my brain but what to do about Bean. Or else I might have remembered another of Billy’s rules. The rule that you never go to him, he has to come to you. Because when I get to the bottom level of the Crypts, where the Bangers have their headquarters, the enforcers throw me down on the damp concrete.

  “Search him,” I hear someone say, and rough hands go over every inch of me, looking for weapons.

  “He’s clean.”

  They flip me over so I’m looking up into their laser sights.

  “State your purpose, scum.”

  “Billy,” I gasp, closing my eyes so the lasers don’t burn me. “Need to see Billy.”

  “Billy don’t need to see you.”

  “It’s the spaz boy,” one of them says. “Must be having a fit, to come down here without an invite.”

  “Crazy mope. Let’s cut him.”

  I figure they’ll do it, they’ll cut me for sure, but for some reason they hold off. Now they’re mumbling to each other, but I can’t make out the words.

  “Do it,” someone says. “Go on and slam the little mope.”

  Boots womp into my ribs so hard, the air goes out of me and won’t come back in.

  “Move and you die.”

  I’m making this can’t breathe noise, erp, erp, and it makes them laugh and go, listen to the spaz boy, he’s singing our song. I’m not thinking of anything except finding a way to make my lungs work. Finally the air whistles into me and their steel-toed boots prod at me like I’m a bug that can’t turn over, which is pretty close to the truth.

  “Pick ’im up.”

  They carry me into another room. A room where the light is dim and purple and the air smells of incense and candles and something like medicine.

  Billy Bizmo’s private crib. I don’t care how much it hurt, I’m in. They drop me on a rug at his feet and tell me not to move, not to say a word, because the boss man is busy, he’s got things on his mind.

  When my eyes adjust to the dim purple light I see what they’re talking about. The thing on Billy’s mind is a needle. He’s probing. That’s the medicine smell, the disinfectant for the electrode needle that slips into his brain.

  The boss man of the Bangers sits in a big, padded chair, like the throne of a mighty king in the backtimes. His eyes are open but you can tell he’s not seeing the room, or the candle
s all around, or me. He’s seeing whatever is happening inside his head, where the mindprobe is playing. Putting him right there, like he’s inside a moving hologram only better. Better than real. Better than anything.

  Not that I know from personal experience. Like I said at the beginning, a spaz like me can’t probe. They say it’s like entering another world, a world created for your pleasure and excitement, a world where all your dreams come true and every wish is granted. A world much, much better than the one we live in, that’s for sure.

  If I could do it I’d probe myself into a place where I still lived with my family unit, and we were all happy and healthy and loved one another, forever and ever, like in Eden. But I can’t probe and I can’t wait until Billy comes out of it, either, because Bean needs me.

  So I do something incredibly stupid: I put my hand on Billy’s ankle and try to shake him awake. At first nothing happens, and then all at once he comes back to life. He grabs my hair with one hand and sticks a splat gun in my face.

  His terrible dark voice goes, “Who disturbs me? Who dares make Billy unhappy?”

  I’m too scared to speak. I’ve seen what his gun can do, and how it got its name.

  “Speak,” says Billy. “Speak to me, or the last sound you hear will be ‘splat.’”

  “It’s me,” I say. “Spaz.”

  “Impossible,” Billy says, pressing the gun into my forehead as he slides back the trigger guard. “The spaz boy is too frightened to show his face down here. You’re an impostor.”

  “My sister,” I tell him. “My sister is sick. I have to see her.”

  “You lie. The spaz boy has no sister.”

  “We’re not blood, but she’s still my sister.”

  He’s staring at me as if I’m not quite real, as if I’m something that came from the probe he was watching. But then his eyes sort of flicker and I know he recognizes me. Slowly he takes the splat gun away from my forehead. “It is you,” he says. “What happened to give you courage?”

  “Bean,” I say. “I heard she was sick.”

  He thinks about it, then shrugs. “Most unfortunate. But as you say, this girl is no blood of yours.”

  “She asked for me,” I tell him. “They live on the other side of the Urb. I need your help. I need safe passage.”

  I beg, I plead, but Billy Bizmo sits like a stone, a cold stone with dead eyes. He could care less what I want, or if Bean lives or dies. There will be no safe passage, and I am forbidden to leave.

  “Hear me, Spaz boy,” he says. “No one leaves my latch without my permission, and that includes you. Too bad for your little friend, but people die every day. Every hour. Every minute. So put it out of your mind. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Billy, please.”

  He places the splat gun under my nose. “Billy says no,” he whispers. “If you ask again, you die. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Billy.”

  “Good,” he says. “Now, what are the rules?”

  “Always believe Billy. Always obey Billy. Always speak true to Billy.”

  “Most excellent,” he says. “Again.”

  By his command I repeat his rules, believe, obey, speak true, but inside my head I’m already running away.

  ONCE WHEN SHE WAS eight years old, Bean almost died. They said she had the bone marrow sickness, and her blood was so weak, it couldn’t keep her alive. Her eyes had this going away look, and all she could do was lie on her bed and tremble. She couldn’t eat or sleep, and everything hurt, from her skin all the way down into her bones.

  Nothing helped until this old woman came, a healer. The healer passed her hands over Bean and said she might live or she might die, but the only thing that might save her was a special remedy to strengthen her blood.

  The remedy was this gooey liquid stuff that smelled awful and tasted worse, and I was the only one who could get Bean to take it. If her mom or dad tried to spoon it into her mouth, she’d spit it out. But for me she’d make a face and swallow the stuff. She was too weak to speak, so I’d tell her these dumb little stories I made up, about how she was always stopping me from doing stupid things, which was pretty close to the truth, and sometimes she’d smile and doze off for a little while.

  For the whole time she was sick I stayed with her, and slept on the floor by her bed, because I had this weird idea that if I ever left her side she wouldn’t be there when I got back. It scared me worse than her dying, that she might just disappear. Charly said it was unnatural, my not wanting to leave her room, but Kay, my foster mom, said, Let the boy be, can’t you see he makes her smile?

  Then one morning when I woke up and looked over, Bean was sleeping peacefully and the color was back in her cheeks. Either the remedy worked or Bean had gotten better on her own. I was so happy, it felt like my head would explode, and then when I ran to tell everyone the good news I must have got so excited, it brought on a seizure. I remember shouting, “She’s better! She’s better!” and then it hit me and the blackness rose up.

  When I came out of it my foster mom said it was true, Bean was much better, but Charly said, “That’s it, he’s not going into her room anymore; what if he pitched a fit and hurt our little girl?” From that day Charly always looked at me different, as if I’d turned into someone he didn’t know, even though they’d raised me almost since I was born.

  None of that matters now, not what Charly thinks, or me losing my family unit, or anything. The only important thing is how to get to Bean so I can make her take the remedy. I don’t care how many times she spits it out, I’ll just keep trying until she makes a funny face and swallows the stuff.

  So I go back to my crib, throw a few things in my carrybag, fill my pockets with the goodies the proov girl gave me, and head out before anyone tries to stop me.

  One thing I know for sure: There’s no way to get through the main part of the latch. The Bangers are everywhere, and they’ll be on the lookout for me, to make sure I don’t disobey Billy’s orders.

  My only chance is out along the Edge.

  Night falls before I get there, which means I have to find my way through the stacks in the dark. I don’t want to waste the power in my microflash because there’ll be no place to recharge it, not where I’m going. So I stumble along, bumping into piles of old bricks and junk so useless, even the stackboxers threw it away. Trying to remember where the Pipe is from here, because the old water pipe points to the Edge.

  A few small fires glow near the stacks, probably fired up to keep the wild dogs away. I’d love to warm my hands over the flames and rest for a while, but there’s no time for taking my ease, not until I get clear of Billy’s latch.

  As I turn to go, Little Face finds me in the dark. “Chox!” he cries, and hugs my leg.

  When my heart finally comes unstuck from my throat, I go, “Don’t you know it’s dangerous out here? Where do you live? Who looks out for you?” but all the little guy will say is chox, chox, so what choice do I have?

  I give him my last choxbar and take his hand and walk him toward the fires, hoping the stack people will know where he belongs. I’m also hoping that old geez Ryter won’t be there, because he’ll want to talk about Bean and that’s the last thing I need right now. Talking won’t help — I have to get to her.

  The people tending the fire back away, blending into the shadows, waiting for me to make a move. When they see Little Face holding my hand, a few of them come forward, showing off crude chetty blades made from the rusted steel wreckage that lies all around the stackboxes. Mostly the ’boxers look ragged and broke down somehow, as if they always expect to lose, and even though the odds are ten to one, they seem to be more scared of me than I am of them, which is just fine with me.

  “Go away!” this one old woman screeches. “Leave the boy alone!”

  “Stand down,” I say, raising up my hands. “I brought the kid back, understand? Now I’ll be on my way.”

  Little Face finishes the choxbar and prances around by the fire, grinning an
d spoofing without saying a word. No one comes forward to claim him, but he seems to know the people there.

  Then as I turn to go, a voice pipes up. “Who you going to bustdown this time, Banger? Another old gummy?”

  I figure, don’t even turn around. Just keep going, before the darkness gives them courage and they decide to charge me with their rusty old chetty blades.

  “Look at him go, the big bad Bully Banger!” crows the taunting voice. “He ain’t so brave at night, is he? None of his gang to help him now, is there?”

  I can hear them moving behind me but I don’t look back. I’m thinking, you blew it, you mope, you ripped them off and then came back alone, in the dark, what did you expect?

  “Get him!” somebody yells. “Cut his red!”

  Most days I can outrun just about anybody, but this isn’t most days, it’s the darkest part of the night and the ground is strange under my feet. Almost before I get going something trips me hard, and suddenly I’m flat on my face, surrounded.

  “Don’t let him get away!”

  “Bust him down and see how he likes it!”

  They’re all around me but keeping their distance, as if afraid that I’ll strike back. Maybe they think I’ve got a splat gun hidden in my carrybag, or a stunstik or something. If they knew all I had was an old microflash and a few edibles, they’d swarm over me in an instant.

  “Cut his red! Cut his red!” shouts the ’boxer who started it. He’s hanging back, this scrawny mope with a scraggly beard and crazy burning eyes. Even in the dark I can see the spit flying out of his mouth as he screams for them to cut me.

  “Get up!” another of them shouts.

  I get slowly to my feet, holding my hands to show I haven’t any weapons. I’m trying to think of what to say that will make them let me go when a terrible feeling starts to come over me.

  “No,” I say to myself. “Please, not now.”

  But I can’t keep it from happening, no matter how hard I try. It always begins this way. First the smell of lightning fills my nose, the clean electric smell of the air after a thunderstorm, and then the blackness rises up and takes me down.