Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls

by Jane Lindskold

  He is not so tall as in my memory, but still he towers over me. Like many very tall people, he stoops forward and the stoop has been permanently frozen into his bones, nearly concealing the incongruous potbelly that juts from his skinny frame.

  “Sarah,” he says, holding out a hand. “Welcome. I am Dr. Aldrich—you may remember me from years ago.”

  I do and only with the greatest self-control can I offer my hand in return. He beams, seeming unaware of my discomfort.

  “I see you’ve had your hair done. Very good. For the next several weeks, we are going to do numerous—painless—brain scans on you. All that thick, lovely hair would have gotten in the way. Once we know what we need, you should be able to grow it all back.”

  He is lying. I can tell this so easily that I am amazed that he even bothers. Dr. Haas only smiles.

  The next hours are a blur to me. I am lightly strapped into a chair and various things are attached to my shaved scalp. Some hurt, most do not. Some of the tests seem remotely familiar, but the rest mean nothing. I think that I am doped because when I begin to focus again, the light from the one high window is gone. Dr. Aldrich is musing aloud to Dr. Haas.

  “So, the language block is genuine, not an act. It’s a wonder she has as much control as she does.”

  “We will be using the direct link then.”

  “No choice, I’m afraid. Should be fascinating. Wonder how she’ll take it?”

  “Wonderfully, I’d guess.” Dr. Haas chuckles. “My guess is that she’ll find it quite addictive.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Aldrich sounds bemused. “Dylan did, didn’t he.”

  Hours spin into days as I am shuttled from test to test. I come to recognize the staff regulars and guards. Only three are really important: Dr. Aldrich, Dr. Haas, and Jersey.

  Jersey must have another name, but I never learn it. He is a chunky man, overweight, with watery grey eyes—he also is as bald as I am. Jersey is the operator and, I think, designer of the machine by which Dr. Aldrich plans to circumvent my inability to speak as other people do.

  Despite his sloppiness and the fact that he smells like rotting potatoes, I like Jersey. Perhaps because, as with Head Wolf, I recognize that he is utterly insane.

  “We’re not going to bother to explain what we’re doing, Sarey,” he says one morning, “because you wouldn’t understand it. What’s going to happen—now, that’s important, so tune in and listen carefully.”

  I fold my hands around Betwixt and Between and sit very straight in my chair so he will know that I’m listening.

  “Now, in a bit, we’re going to link you up with my computer here. Dr. Haas’ll give you some stuff to make you drifty and mind that you take it, otherwise the probes don’t feel so good. I know, I’ve done it both ways. You’ll feel like you’re going to sleep and then do you know what will appear?”

  “A miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer?” I suggest.

  He grins. “Nope. Better. We’ll be in a nice, comfortable room and you’ll know it right off because it’ll have a picture like this one on the wall behind my chair.”

  Taking a card from his pocket, he slides it across to me, “Know it?”

  I shake my head.

  “That’s Van Gogh’s Olive Orchard,” he says with a sigh, “one of my favorites, and I’ve got it—there at least. When you see it, let it be a sign to you that you are able to talk and we’ll have a chat. Got it?”

  I nod slowly, still confused.

  “Don’t worry,” he smiles. “It’ll be flipping great. In fact, why should we wait and let you get nervous? C’mon!”

  He goes to the intercom and pages the doctors. There is some brief discussion, then argument, but when he comes back to me, he is smiling again.

  “We’ll be ready in an hour. I’m to either send you to your room or keep you distracted. Your choice.”

  I study him, reaching, sense no threat or hidden motive. Wanting a friend in this place, I smile.

  “God Almighty first planted a garden,” I offer. “And, indeed, it is the purest of all human pleasures.”

  “You want to garden?” Jersey asks incredulously.

  “I am tired of four walls and a ceiling,” I explain, feeling a pang as I recall Professor Isabella using the same words. “I have need of the grass.”

  “Okay,” he says, “but only the roof garden. I’m no jungle beast.”

  I smile and if he wonders at my amusement, he does not say.

  The roof garden is hot and humid, the air heavy with a thousand scents. Betwixt and Between puff their approval from where I carry them. We walk around on the gravel paths, looking at orchids pale and bright that evoke images of prom dresses and weddings. This continues for nearly a half hour, until Jersey is streaming with sour sweat.

  I return indoors without protest, knowing cooperation is essential. Once we are in, I struggle for words to try and thank Jersey.

  “Don’t worry, Sarey,” he says, smiling mysteriously. “Don’t fight for it. You’ll be talking easy in just a bit. Now, sit quiet and I’ll go and rinse off and be back.”

  After parking me in his office and pouring me some iced tea, he leaves. When he returns with Dr. Haas and Dr. Aldrich in tow, he has not only showered, he has changed into loose pants and a top similar to those that I am wearing. Patting the back of my hand as he walks by, he grabs a handful of wires and other gizmos and then motions us all through another door.

  The annex is twice the size of his office and whereas the one is cluttered with gadgets and related debris, this room is nearly spotless. The walls are painted a restful shade of blue that in no way competes with the array of computer equipment that borders the four walls. The only other furnishings are four strangely sinuous chairs and a startlingly prosaic table.

  I am given no time to frame questions or grow concerned. Dr. Aldrich motions me into one of the chairs, his impatience a blunt, musky thing.

  Gingerly, I lower myself onto the weird stretch of ebony plastic and gasp when it conforms to me so perfectly that I tap the surface to confirm that I am indeed sitting on something.

  Jersey glances from where he is arranging wires and electrodes on the table and chortles at my expression.

  “Flip you, did it?” he asks. “Won’t bug you with the details, Sarey, but that thing is so sensitive to posture and other comfort signals that it’ll react to a fart.”

  Dr. Aldrich makes a disapproving noise.

  “Hey, that’s scientifically accurate and necessary,” Jersey grins. “When a human is interfacing with the computer, minimal distractions are best. These chairs guarantee that there will be no physical discomfort and the other senses will be dealt with during the hookup. Now, I want you to set me up first so Sarey can see what will happen to her.”

  Dr. Haas makes as if to protest, but Jersey waves her down. “No, I’m the expert here. If you’d listened to me more in the first place, maybe Dylan wouldn’t have…”

  He trails off, suddenly at a loss. I look blank, as if I hadn’t heard the last exchange.

  Hurriedly, Dr. Aldrich steps into the gap. “Fine. You first. Then Sarah. Let’s just get onto it.”

  Although I listen as Jersey narrates the placement of various electrodes about his head and body, I only catch that they will capture some things and monitor others. I am more concerned about why—or how—Dylan died.

  When my turn comes, I sit very still, refusing to jump, even though the cream they smear on my scalp is cold. Finally, as Jersey promised, we are each given something to drink.

  Almost immediately, I feel a drifting sensation, similar to when I am falling asleep and believe that I am awake only to discover that I have been dreaming all along. The sensation is not unpleasant, and I let myself slip into dreams, coasting away from the annex of Jersey’s office into the familiar, sleepy, swirling darkness behind my eyes.

  When colors appear in the darkness, I focus on them with idle curiosity. Green-grey and grey-blue drift above a field of brown-gold. As I concen
trate, they begin to resolve themselves into twisted trees against a stormy sky growing from a dry field. Nearly as quickly as I recognize Van Gogh’s Olive Orchard, I realize that the picture is hanging on a wall painted a tasteful antique ivory. Beside the picture, a faintly proprietary expression on his face, is Jersey.

  But this is and is not the Jersey I know. The omnipresent stench of sour sweat is gone. He is more attractive, flab turned into muscle. His bald head glistens as if polished.

  “Welcome, Sarey,” he says, “to this cooperative hallucination. You look lovely—but you wouldn’t know, would you? Look here.”

  He turns and for the first time I notice that there is a full-length mirror with a silver gilt frame hanging on the wall. When I see my reflection, I gasp with surprise.

  “I have my hair!” I say and then clasp my throat in wonder, for the words are shaped just as I had thought them.

  Jersey laughs. “Yes. Guess you didn’t like losing it, for all so quiet you were about it.”

  I continue studying my reflection. My hair is not the only thing to have reappeared. When I reach to touch the heavy cream strands and reassure myself of their reality, I feel something tickle below my ear. Pushing back my hair, I see that my ivory wolf dangles in its usual place—it had been taken from me when I first awoke after my surrender and I had believed it forever lost. My clothing is unremarkable, jeans and shirt of the style that Abalone had given me.

  Yet, although fully dressed, I feel as if I am naked. Casting around to fill the loss, I see Betwixt and Between sitting on one of the comfortable-looking easy chairs. Athena perches on the back.

  Seeing me, Betwixt winks. “Can’t do without us, now, can you?”

  “You know it,” I say and then am instantly tongue-tied.

  I cover for this by picking up the dragons and perching Athena on my shoulder. She swivels her head to look at me and then begins to preen her feathers, chortling softly.

  Jersey is gaping at me. “You brought them through! This is unprecedented! I didn’t…”

  He trails off and looks so uncomfortable that I reach over and pat his arm.

  “I am a brother to dragons, a companion to owls,” I state simply. Then, afraid that the words will suddenly fail, “Where are we? What kind of place is this?”

  Jersey regains some of his composure and saunters over to one of the chairs. Leaning back in it and picking up a daiquiri from what I had believed was an empty table, he sips and sighs happily.

  “This place is in our minds, Sarey. Ours and the computer’s. Mine, mostly, since I did the set programming, but yours, too, which is why you look like you want to and, I guess, why your friends are with you.” He shakes his head. “Does that help?”

  “Not much,” I admit. “How come I can…talk?”

  “Because you can think in a coherent fashion and because you want to,” Jersey says simply. “It was pretty obvious that you weren’t just mimicking or reciting quotes at random, so it was a fair bet that if you were given a chance to say what you were thinking, you would be fine, and so here we are, chatting in a nice room.”

  “Why?” I ask, marveling that I can shape the simple monosyllable.

  Jersey puts his glass down. “Two words: Magical Thinking. Your ability is extraordinary, but you can’t talk to tell the doctors what you hear. So, I provide the bridge and over you walk.”

  “Why?” Between asks, stretching his neck toward a nice succulent plant growing next to my chair.

  Jersey pulls at his ear. “Did you say something?”

  “No, Between did,” I answer, puzzled that he cannot tell—the little dragon’s voice is definitely masculine.

  “Between?”

  “Between”—I point—“Betwixt. They’re quite different people—from the neck up, that is.”

  “Oh, boy.” Jersey grabs for his glass. “Sarey, I won’t say if you don’t, but I’ve got bad feelings about this.”

  “Say?” I laugh. “To whom? And what? Are Dr. Haas and Dr. Aldrich watching us?”

  “No.” Jersey relaxes some. “No way unless they link up with us and they don’t do that too often. There are potential…side effects.”

  I ignore his discomfort, enjoying this new freedom. Noticing a bowl of fruit on the table, I set Betwixt and Between down and they trundle forward and start decimating Bartlett pears. Athena seems content to sit on my shoulder for now.

  “We aren’t seeing exactly the same thing, are we?” I hazard.

  “Probably not, not on minor details, but part of what the computer is doing is picking up what is most—important—to you and to me and creating a consensus reality from them. Self-image is really important, so that holds, same with what we’re talking about, but the color of the walls or the style of furnishings wouldn’t be shared unless it was important that it was—like with the Van Gogh or that mirror.”

  “I understand,” I say, restraining myself from trying to make it important for him to see Betwixt and Between gobbling fresh fruit on his coffee table. “Somehow, I doubt all of this is to let me have a try at the spoken word. You started to explain before—it has something to do with magical thinking.”

  “Right.” Jersey looks unhappy for a moment. “You got the basics from Dr. Haas, I know. What you didn’t get is that the Institute has been supporting its ‘research’ through controlled use of magical thinking. It is almost too-potent stuff. I didn’t know Dylan until—after—but he was something else even then.”

  “After.” I lean forward. “After what?”

  “Dylan had an…accident.” Jersey flushes. “Damn, Sarey, I can’t tell you. Don’t ask me about him—ask anything else.”

  I am shocked; for a brief instant his image had flickered and he had become the overweight madman I knew. By the time he has control again, he also has my pity.

  “Okay,” I promise, “I won’t ask, but don’t forget that I want to know. He was my brother and I loved him even if I was a kid when we were separated.”

  “Family isn’t all it’s made out to be, Sarey,” Jersey answers. “Let’s get off this. You asked about why the Institute wanted you so bad. Simple. Magical thinking seems to break the rules most of us live by. Things talk to you—right?”

  “Right. Yes.” I smile. “You bet. Ten-four, good buddy.”

  Jersey chuckles. “Okay. Now, most of this world is based around the simple concept that things don’t talk. Security systems assume that codes and ciphers are safely hidden between our ears. Conferences assume that the places they are held can be made secure. There’s an old story about how a guy told a secret he couldn’t bear to keep to a hole in the ground and it would have been safe except that the reeds growing there picked up the words and whispered them to the world. You get the picture?”

  “Yes.” I nod, remembering a code pad happily chanting, I got a secret! “I understand. They’re using us to steal secrets.”

  “Yeah.” Jersey smiles sadly. “You catch on fast. Street-smarts, but what can I expect with what you’ve been doing?”

  I almost think he is going to say more, but he picks up his drink and sips the frosty thing. The level of ice never drops.

  “So, Sarey, Dr. Aldrich had taken money to learn some things for some—powerful—people. Hell, dangerous people. And then Dylan—died—and he was up a creek without a paddle. Then Aldrich remembered you and when he sent for you, you had been discharged. There was sixteen kinds of bitchiness until you were found. Now I’ve got to get you acclimated and they’ll pay off their debts and all.”

  “And I stay here?” I ask bluntly. “Forever.”

  “Yeah,” he nods. “I can’t see how they’d let you go.”

  Fourteen

  OUR NEXT SESSION IS MUCH LIKE THE FIRST. WHEN BEING brought in for the third, my guard is reaching to ring for admittance when suddenly he stops. I am about to try and ask why when I hear the faintest sound of voices raised in argument. Stretching my hearing, I am able to make out the words.

  “…endangering her!
” The voice is Jersey’s.

  “No, I am saving her and us.” Dr. Haas is cool. “If she doesn’t adapt to the interface quickly, our creditors will be very unhappy and if they get unhappy…Do I need to spell it out?”

  “No.” I can almost hear Jersey shake his head. “But…”

  The guard steers me away before I can hear more. When we come back five minutes later, Jersey is hooking himself up, his anger only subdued. Dr. Haas smiles her unfriendly smile and, with a few bright comments about the weather (which never changes in our climate-controlled building), hooks me up.

  Jersey is waiting across the white mist in the now-familiar room and barely gives me time to set down my dragons before speaking.

  “Okay, Sarey, today we start work. This is something of a test. I’m going to show you a variety of items and you are going to tell me what they say to you. Got it?”

  “You bet, boss.” I smile. “But how can I hear what not-real things are saying? Isn’t this place all in the mind?”

  “Yes, but Dr. Haas will be handing you the ‘real’ object at the same time. It should work. It has in the past.”

  I don’t need to ask: with Dylan. Instead, I nod.

  “Ready when you are, Jersey.”

  The first thing he hands to me is a book. The cover and spine are blank, but this hardly matters. We’d already learned that I cannot read here any better than I can outside of the interface. Apparently, skills cannot be merely wished for.

  Holding the book, I listen; the voice is soft at first, then easily understood, then even familiar. Tears spring to my eyes and I clasp the battered text to my breast.

  “Oh, Jersey! It’s Mary Poppins—the one my nurse read to me when I was small. I kept the book in my room and would listen even when she was gone. I thought it was lost!”

  Jersey makes a note on a computer keyboard identical to one I had seen in the annex.

  “Very good, Sarey. How about this?”