Brother to Dragons, Companion to Owls

by Jane Lindskold

  He hands me a small cedar block made of varitoned shades of wood, polished to a high finish. I caress its smooth sides and admire its red-gold color. As I do so, I hear a soft giggle.

  Betwixt and Between are busy eating a bowl of ice cream. Athena is chasing a moth by the ceiling.

  The giggle comes again and I focus on the cedar block.

  “Puzzle,” it giggles, “puzzle puzzle puzzle puzzle puzzle.”

  I giggle, too, for its delight is infectious.

  “It’s a puzzle box,” I tell Jersey. “Let’s see. To solve it…”

  Listening to the happy noise and the occasional groan, I press on the wood strips and in moments have revealed a small cavity large enough for a ring or a small deck of cards.

  Jersey applauds and writes down some more notes.

  “Tired, Sarey? Or can you do some more?”

  “I’m a little tired. Let me have a small rest and then I’ll try another. Am I doing okay?”

  “Just great.” Jersey leans back and reaches for a milkshake.

  “Jersey, what were you and Dr. Haas arguing about this morning?”

  He sputters into his shake. “How did you know?”

  “The guard brought me by when you were—I heard.”

  “But those rooms are soundproof. The guard looked in through the window on the door. I waved him off. You…”

  I shrug. “I am brother to dragons, a companion to owls. Tell me why you were arguing. You said I could ask about anything except Dylan.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly what I said.” He pauses. “Think about it. However, Dr. Haas has been mixing the drug that eases interface. I found she was going a bit heavy on some components in yours. We got into a fight and she reminded me of my place.”

  “Which is?”

  “Sarey, hon, you’ve lived in a fairly protected world. I don’t know all the details, but you’ve always had people looking out for you. Not so for me—my computer work is my world and yet I’ve had funding troubles all along.”

  Remembering his madness, I understand.

  “The Institute came when I was down. They said essentially: ‘Hey, you can get in people’s minds. We don’t care about how or anything. We just want in.’”

  “Wait, Jersey, you told me that the Institute had lost funding. How did they pay you? This couldn’t be cheap.”

  “Sarey, the ‘Institute’ you’re talking about is just one part of a much larger organization. I was working for them—research—and eventually they linked me up with Dr. Aldrich after Dylan’s accident…”

  He stops, aware that he’s said too much.

  “Accident?” I ask.

  “No, Sarey, don’t distract me. Now, what working with Aldrich was a chance at was legit research, y’know, with a big ‘L.’ I only learned too late all the crap that was going down and by then I would have had to give it all up and I couldn’t. Can’t.”

  He finishes and takes a long suck on his milkshake until the straw rattles against the bottom of the glass.

  “Rested?” he says. “Let’s try another.”

  We work for a while more. Some of the items are easy—others more difficult. One says nothing at all.

  When we come back from the interface, I am praised by doctors Aldrich and Haas. My score is perfect—even the no-reading had been right—a brand-new item with minimal associations.

  Despite my pride, I feel very drained and let them take me back to my room in a wheelchair. There I fall asleep almost at once and dream cryptic dreams.

  Upon awakening, I do not immediately get up, but instead roll onto my back, reviewing the past day’s events. My concern about what happened to Dylan had been muted by the excitement of learning to interface, discovering speech, making friends with Jersey. Now it comes back in full.

  What had Jersey said? I struggle to remember his exact word, “Don’t ask me about him—ask anything else.”

  I whisper the words, too softly for the monitors to catch.

  Between hears and yawns. “What did you say, Sarah?”

  I repeat myself, “Don’t ask me about him—ask anything else.”

  “Jersey said that, didn’t he,” Between says. “Funny way to put it.”

  “It’s a puzzle,” Betwixt cuts in excitedly. “Must be or he wouldn’t have told her to remember it exactly.”

  “Don’t ask me,” Between repeats slowly, stressing every syllable, “ask any-thing else.”

  I sit up suddenly and the motion detectors turn on the room lights. Blinking at the light, I run a hand through my nonexistent hair and wish for speech. Unable to explain myself, I hug Betwixt and Between and head for the shower.

  My guards, I have learned, are not precisely the Institute’s. Instead, they belong to the anonymous employer. Now that I have proven myself a cooperative patient, I am permitted to go around the building—although always with a guard in tow.

  Now, I ignore the blue uniform stalking discontentedly behind me and pace the corridors, linger in the common rooms. Finally, in the dripping heat of the roof garden, I find what I have been seeking. In an ornamental pool by a stone fountain shaped like a leaping carp, I find Dylan.

  Not Dylan, really, but a place where he went and where something of him still lingers just as my nurse remains in a favorite book or an artist in a painting.

  The guard draws back to the shelter of a doorway within the climate control zone. Instantly, I understand why Dylan liked this place. He effectively could be alone.

  Sitting on the edge of the fountain basin, I relax and let the random impressions form. The sweat beads under my wrap and rolls under my breasts, but I do not move. Slowly, less substantial than my reflection in the rippling waters, something is taking form. I reach out to it, confused by its silence.

  There are no words, but I do find something: pain. The man who sat here was fighting pain of body and spirit that intertwined like the vines in the jungle around us. Fearing what I will find, I reach deeper.

  My throat burns and I cup water from the fountain to cool it. The basin remembers another who did this, sputtering and choking each time with force enough to still the insects in the shrubs from their strident clamor.

  Pain. A throat burned speechless? Yes.

  The thing has told me all it can, but now I have some information to work from.

  When I return inside, I study the guard. Surely he knows the information I want to learn just as Jersey does, but will be equally bound not to tell. The very walls must have answers, but they will not have noticed, not unless Dylan put his mark on them.

  I carry my frustration with me, through my meal in my cell, through restless pacing and tossing and turning. No answer comes and when I finally sleep, I dream of the Jungle and its web of lines and hammocks.

  I awaken with a contradiction screaming at me. Maddeningly, I see neither Jersey nor either of the doctors, so there is no one to whom I can talk. Feeling truly mute for the first time in my life, I circle the complex restlessly, prompting a comment from my usually taciturn guard about her not being paid by the mile.

  The only thing I learn from my wanderings is a confirmation that certain areas, among them what I suspect were Dylan’s rooms, are off-limits to me.

  When I am finally taken to Jersey’s computer annex, I can barely keep from urging them to hook me in. Jersey seems concerned at this, but Dr. Haas is pleased.

  Dr. Aldrich enters just as the hookup is completed.

  “Sarah,” he says, just before Dr. Haas hands me my beaker, “you must get this precisely right. A great deal depends on it.”

  I nod.

  He shakes his index finger at me. “Precisely right.”

  Slurping down the liquid, I have only time to notice that the taste is somehow wrong. Then, without the comfortable sensation of drifting off to sleep, I feel myself being sucked out of my body. I am shifted and strained through something cold and impersonal, reduced to a strand of numbers, each screaming loudly for the others. When I see the grey-greens
of Jersey’s Van Gogh, I grab for them like a Cub grasping for a guideline.

  My self begins to re-form, numbers becoming pulse and bone, skin, hair, eyes. Eyes that I open to find myself sprawled whole and gasping on the carpet of Jersey’s sitting room.

  He reaches down and helps me into a chair, offers me coffee.

  I drink gratefully, notice that Betwixt and Between, staggering despite their four stocky legs, are nudging Athena to her feet. I pour them a pool of coffee to lap, not caring what it does to the table’s finish. From under a lampshade, I find a moth that I feed to Athena.

  Jersey watches curiously. “Feels like shit, don’t it, Sarey? But I wouldn’t bitch to Dr. Haas even so. Y’see, I did it.”

  “You? What?” Words, I am learning, are not always a help.

  “Babe, I’ve decided to come down on the side of the angels.” He winks. “That’s you. Look, the whole trick to this interface of mine—well, not the whole trick, but one of the big ones—is in that potion you slug down. Does funny things to brain waves that let a properly set up bit of equipment read ’em. In a sense, Sarey, this ain’t a virtual reality; it’s real reality ’cause you know it is, right down where you are. Get me?”

  “Sort of.” I rub my head. “You did that to me?”

  “Yeah.” Jersey looks shamed, but only for a moment. “You see, the problem with my ‘potion’ is that it really hurts to be broken down that way, even if you know you’ll get built up again. Do it too much and it can drive you crazy. So I played around with some other things until I found a mixture that eased the transition without ruining the effectiveness of the first drug. One problem.”

  “What?”

  “It screws up the internal organs and is addictive as hell. Honey”—he looks me in the eyes—“when I perfected the telepathic interface, I really looked like you see me here. What you see out there is a result of the stuff I’ve been taking. Dr. Haas has been upping your dose—today, when she was distracted, I switched it for a more neutral one, but I didn’t get the buffer quite right.”

  In the pain and confusion, I had almost forgotten my earlier suspicions. “She hates me. Why, Jersey?”

  “Hates you?” Jersey looks puzzled. “I think she just wants the project to go down fine. I don’t think she hates you.”

  “No,” I flounder. “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold. I mean, things just don’t fit.”

  “Hey, relax, Sarey. What doesn’t fit?”

  “You told me that after Dylan died, the Institute tried to find me, only to learn that I’d been discharged from the Home.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. I remember Dr. Aldrich’s cursing and swearing when he heard. For a while there, he thought we’d have to use the third sibling. I got the impression that he knew where to find her, but that she wasn’t as good.”

  “Fine. But, Jersey, the doctor who insisted on discharging me from the Home was Dr. Haas.”

  “You sure?”

  “Could I make a mistake on something like that?”

  Jersey shakes his head. “No, I guess not.”

  An odd look comes over his face. “Time to work, Sarey.”

  He reached into a chest by his chair and pulls out a small rectangular box of black plastic.

  “This is a key box,” he says, handing it to me. “We have the box, but not the key. We want you to tell us what it is.”

  Accepting the key box, I feel it carefully, finding that the four corners each depress slightly; one bears an almost imperceptible dimple.

  A faint sigh of anticipation comes to me as I touch the corners. Glancing up at Jersey, I see his expression has not changed. The sigh then…I focus again on the black plastic box.

  “There is an order in which these need to be pressed,” I say, more to myself than to Jersey. “If I get it wrong…”

  I stretch my senses; the feeling from the box is glee? And sorrow? Odd. Making as if I am about to press a sequence, I clearly mark the emotions, find them shaping into words.

  “This is the end…” the box hums.

  I remember Abalone and the safeguards on her tappety-tap.

  “This thing destroys itself if the sequence is done wrong!”

  “Yeah,” Jersey says. “That’s why we need to be kinda careful—it won’t take any conventional tampering and the gal who knew the code series isn’t exactly in a position to tell.”

  “Oh.” I don’t like the image that flickers into my mind. “Let me see if I can get it to tell me. There’s one problem.”

  “What?”

  “I think it kinda wants to blow up.”

  “A kamikaze key box? Give it up, Sarey.”

  “No, Jersey, things are, but I read them in part because of their associations. That’s why some things are null to me.”

  “So if the person who associated with this didn’t give a shit about dying, then this might not either?”

  “Yeah.” I bite my lip. “I never thought that much about it before, but that feels right.”

  “Do what you can”—he leans back—“and be careful.”

  Again, I concentrate, shutting out Jersey, the room, everything except the key box. This I hold in my left hand, positioned so that the dimple is in the upper left-hand corner. When I feel again the presence of the humming, I lower a finger toward the upper left corner. The humming does not change, even when I abort the move at the last second.

  Disgruntled, I sit back. If it doesn’t care, how can I fool it into telling me? Most inanimates do have an ego of sorts; this, though, doesn’t seem to. Or does it? When I first tried, it did seem to react; therefore, this behavior now must be a feint.

  Tossing it onto the coffee table, I grin at Jersey.

  “Got it?” he asks excitedly.

  “Nope”—I smile, trying to radiate indifference—“and I don’t even care to try and find out.”

  Is it my imagination or do I hear a faint squeal of indignation from the box? Betwixt and Between tilt their heads, hearing it also. With an effort, I ignore the box, putting all my energy into projecting my view of our consensus universe, trying to force Jersey to see things the way I do.

  When he rubs his eyes and stares up at where Athena is chasing a moth around a ceiling light fixture, I know I have won.

  “What the hell…” he mutters, then, “You’re doing this, aren’t you, Sarey? Why? Why aren’t you working on deciphering the box?”

  “I have my reasons.” I smile. “Who cares about a silly code anyhow? Jersey, we can have anything here. Why are we sitting snacking in a living room?”

  Jersey looks shocked and even Betwixt and Between look from the bowl of corn chips they are decimating. But the whine from the box is so clear that even Jersey hears it.

  “You may have something,” he says a bit stiffly, noticing apparently for the first time that the stocky blue dragon on the table is no longer inanimate rubber. “What do you want?”

  “I want to go home,” I reply, the longing in my voice stronger than I’d intended. “Look!”

  I point dramatically overhead where a miracle has taken place. Gone is the ceiling, gone the light. Athena is sweeping up into the rope-webbed spaces within curving grey metal walls. A rope ladder drops and swings slightly, alluringly, in front of us.

  “It’s the Jungle, Jersey,” I say, “the best place I’ve ever lived. The Free People are away, I see, so it must be night. C’mon, let’s go. If we anchor the ladder, the climb won’t be so bad.”

  Jersey hesitates and I sense him trying to overcome my reordering of our reality, but he has no power over my homesick and guilt-torn heart. What had started as a ploy is becoming only too real and I can barely keep from climbing away.

  I pick Betwixt and Between up, brushing chip crumbs from my shirt, feeling their claws anchoring them firmly to my side. Athena swoops and circles to my left shoulder. Jersey seems insubstantial, the Jungle more and more real by the moment.

  “Coming?” I say, my foot on the ladder’s first rung.

&nbs
p; “Sarey, I…” Jersey is saying when a shrill voice from the table screams, “Up left! Down right! Again! Again! Again! Up right! Down left! Again! End.”

  I quickly repeat the code. Jersey grabs his computer pad and hammers in the instructions.

  Then suddenly the world is torn away from me and I slump in the annex, crying wildly, my hands still curled to grasp the ladder and climb away.

  Fifteen

  DR. HAAS TRIES TO KILL ME THE NEXT MORNING. I GO OUT TO the fountain to sit with Dylan’s too-silent presence as has become my custom. I am sitting there, trying yet again to make sense of why all I get from this spot is a sensation of pain, when I notice something sparkling among the pebbles on the fountain bottom.

  Idly, I dip my fingers into the water to fish it out.

  A strong, humming jolt comes from the water. My arm bones quiver as if suddenly the bone has been stripped away and only the marrow remains. Leaping back, I stumble, crashing into my guard, who has rushed from her customary place in the cooler doorway.

  “Sarah, what’s wrong!” she cries, catching me before I fall.

  “He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword,” I reply, cursing inwardly that I cannot be more precise.

  “What?” she says, setting me on my feet and going to look at the water. “Something cut you? Hey, what’s that?”

  “No!” I grab her arm back from the water’s edge and she stares at me as if recalling that I am mad.

  “Easy, Sarah, take it easy. I just wanted to see what was shining down there in the water, that bright silver thing.”

  I continue shaking my head, refusing to release her arm. “I do not see the hanged man, fear death by water.”

  She wrinkles her brows. “You’re saying the water’s dangerous, amiga? Not something in it?”

  I nod. She is close enough to the truth and won’t just dip her hand in. Still, I try to clarify.

  “The fateful lightning,” I repeat.

  “Lightning?”

  I nod eagerly and she puzzles for a moment.

  “Lightning’s in the water?”

  “Bingo!” I cheer, trying to applaud, but finding my right hand still trembles deep within.