The Dream Widow

by Stephen Colegrove

  “Your Grace–”

  “I know what you’re going to say. There are plenty left to take back to the capital. I don’t need to save every single one.”

  “Of course you don’t,” said Darius with a smile. “I’m simply concerned about your health. Please don’t stress yourself over these strange and unfamiliar devices. When we reach the capital and have more resources at our disposal, I’m certain you can discover the secrets of this old machinery.”

  The Consul sighed. “Maybe you’re right.” She waved at a table scattered with dozens of yellow and white implants of different sizes. “I haven’t learned much from these.”

  Darius lifted the corner of cloth covering the face. A short stubble of gray hair grew on the man’s head and chin. It was a weather-beaten face and lined with years of stress, Darius thought.

  “What was his name?”

  The Consul looked up at the display. “Simpson ... Doctor Eileen Simpson.”

  YISHAI SAT IN THE BATHROOM and pretended to use the toilet.

  The guards made him leave the door open but most of the time they didn’t want to watch, and unless the slab-faced gorillas stood in front of the door they could only see his knees and feet. The stupid guard that was inside now constantly shuffled a dog-eared pack of square playing cards. Yishai wondered what bounced around that thick skull.

  Thick Skull had been on duty for half a day. The evening meal approached, and time for a message, if there was one.

  Yishai leaned back and felt along the wall beneath the white toilet. He felt something in the crack and pulled out a small glass tube wrapped in paper.

  “After the signal rub this on yourself head to toe,” read the blocky script on the note.

  Yishai crammed the note into his mouth and held up the transparent tube full of yellow oil. Thick Skull shuffled his cards loudly and Yishai stuffed the tube into his pocket.

  BADGER SQUEEZED SIDEWAYS through the narrow space behind the rooms, trying not to jostle wiring or vibrate the pipes of plumbing. To even fit in the tiny gap she’d had to strip to her underwear and bare feet.

  She lay sideways, stuck her arm through the wall, and left the final tube above a toilet fixture.

  As she stood up her toes crunched on the body of a huge spider, as dry and brittle as a dead leaf. Badger pushed it away with her foot and kept sliding along.

  After a few minutes of quiet shuffling through the utility space, a metal grate blocked her way. She carefully lifted and pushed it to the right, then crawled on her side through a long concrete shaft to another grate.

  Zhang waited in the dark tunnel outside.

  “Holy spit, Kira,” he whispered. “You’re filthy.”

  “Quiet.”

  Badger brushed dust and thick cobwebs from her arms and legs. The tiny scars on her skin still showed even with all the grime.

  She wiped her eyes and mouth with Zhang’s handkerchief. He looked away as Badger pulled on her trousers and leather jacket and buckled a knife belt around her waist. She pulled the wedding bracelet from her jacket and slipped it on her wrist.

  With one hand on the wall she followed Zhang down the pitch-black corridor. He turned a corner and metal snapped near the floor.

  Zhang inhaled sharply. “Trap–”

  The grenade shattered and he flew backwards across the corridor into Badger. The back of her head struck concrete.

  A second or minutes later, she opened her eyes halfway, confused by the darkness and ringing in her ears. The air smelled of red-hot metal and dust. A heavy weight pressed on her arms and warm liquid covered her neck and chest.

  She grunted and pushed Zhang to the side, and his slack limbs tumbled on the rocks of the corridor. Badger searched the darkness and found his neck––no pulse.

  Although she couldn’t hear, she felt vibration through the concrete. A mass of red lights bounced toward her from the far end of the corridor.

  Badger scrambled to her feet and ran.

  She’d been chased through the tunnels before, but never deaf, alone, and with such a headache. Pain stabbed hard between her eyes and made the darkness sparkle.

  After feeling the edge of several corners in the dark, she found the entrance of a stairwell and ran down a dozen levels before finding a door, only to discover it was jammed shut.

  She squatted in a corner and felt the blood on her face and neck. None of it seemed to be hers. Badger thought that over as her hearing came back slowly.

  The top of the stairwell glowed red. Badger thought she heard scrapes and a bark. She pulled with all her strength at the handle and the metal door cracked wide enough for her to squeeze through.

  The air smelled stagnant, like a pond covered in green scum. Water roared in the darkness.

  Badger brushed the wall to her right and chose each step carefully. The walls of smooth concrete changed to damp, broken rock and droplets of water misted on her face.

  Her right foot dropped into empty space and Badger jerked back. She knelt and slid her hands across the slime-covered rock in all directions.

  Ahead lay nothing but spraying water. To her right Badger felt the jagged corner of the wall and a narrow ledge.

  The dog’s bark echoed from the stairwell. A voice yelled in the tribal dialect and something smashed against the metal door.

  Badger stood and inched along the ledge toward the increasing spray of warm water. Wilson had said not to get it wet, so she pulled the sleeve of her jacket over the wedding bracelet.

  The door groaned and scraped and crimson strobed through the dark tunnel. From the dim flashes of light, Badger saw a torrent of water pouring over the wall to her right. She followed the path of the water down with her eyes and sucked in a sharp breath. Tiny droplets froze in the Circle lamps and cascaded into a pit fifteen meters below.

  The voices of the soldiers blocked the way back, and the only way forward lay over the ledge and the sheet of water. If she made it to the other side, the dogs would lose her scent and she could wait for them to leave.

  But the wedding bracelet would be soaked.

  Badger closed her eyes. “Sorry, dear,” she whispered.

  She held onto slick cracks with the nubs of her fingernails and crept through the waterfall. It poured over her head and soaked her clothes in a stench of sulfur. On the other side the ledge widened and she crouched against a wall, away from the bouncing red light.

  Even though the water was as warm as fresh blood Badger shivered, her arms crossed and knees bouncing.

  A brilliant light pulsed at her wrist. She pulled up the sleeve of her jacket and saw the bracelet throb with a white glow, like a lantern that breathed. She tried to pull it off her wrist but couldn’t. Either her hand had swollen or the bracelet had shrunk. Badger pulled down the sleeve and stuck it inside her jacket for good measure.

  The ledge beyond the waterfall echoed with the deep voices of men and the barking of a tracker dog.

  “Ni scias vin estas,” yelled one of the soldiers over the roar of water. “So come out already!”

  A dark figure crept closer to the red-lit cascade of water. Bader bit her lower lip and made the cross-sign.

  “Just a few more hours,” she whispered. “This one time ... just help me.”

  The silver wedding band vibrated against her chest. She stared as the delicate lines brightened in a rotating kaleidoscope. A voice dripped through her mind like molten wax.

  “Startup completed,” said the male voice. “Prepare for calibration.”

  A whisper of sound grew into a smashing mess of noise and Badger held her hands over her ears.

  “Whatever you are ... stop,” she whispered with clenched teeth.

  “Calibration stopped. Returning to first query. Owner Name, do you need assistance?”

  The figure pushed through the waterfall. The light gleamed off a short pistol in his hands.

  Badger held her palms apart. “Mi kapitulati,” she yelled over the sound of the water.

  The soldier came c
loser, mesmerized by the carousel of light on Badger’s wrist.

  She slammed his arm against the wall and grabbed the pistol. It fired once and she pushed the soldier off the ledge. A long scream ended in a splash.

  She opened the cylinder of the wet pistol and touched the chambers––five rounds left. When the second figure pushed through the water she shot him and squeezed back against the wall. He tried to stumble back along the ledge but the pouring water tumbled him into the pit.

  Badger watched the dancing red lights beyond the waterfall. She held the pistol with both hands and carefully shot three times. The light stopped dancing and the soldiers stopped coming but she could still hear the shouts and the barking over the waterfall.

  She guessed why they wanted her alive.

  Shivering from adrenaline and soaked clothing, she raised the pistol to her temple. The mouth of the barrel singed her skin and she gasped, remembering Darius and the hot circles of iron on her skin.

  The male voice flowed through her mind again. “Repeating query: Owner Name, do you require assistance?”

  Something curved through the water and clattered near her feet––a green metal cylinder. Before Badger could kick it away the cylinder popped with the smell of fresh hay.

  Badger took a gulp of air and grabbed the hissing can. She pulled her arm back to throw it through the waterfall, but instead felt her arms and legs go limp. She slumped on the ledge and the cylinder rolled into the dark.

  SIXTEEN

  In front of a mirror tarnished with black splotches, Wilson poured cold water over his shaved head.

  He dried with a threadbare cloth and stared at his reflection, rubbing the stubble and pink scars on his head. Incense sticks had burned two lines of three dots at the apex of his skull.

  He ate a cold breakfast of fried bread and leftover porridge at the tiny sideboard of his one-room apartment. When he finished, he dressed in a gold cotton jacket and pants, white gaiters, and flat cotton sandals with rolled black strings that crisscrossed to his knees. He wrapped himself in scarlet robes and pulled a woolen hat over his ears.

  Mist filled the narrow alleys of the monastery and frosted him with tiny droplets. Wilson nodded as always to the old woman at the gate and followed the twisting road down the mountain. As the sun rose higher, fog eddied at the curves of the road and clung to the river below like a morning dream reluctant to leave.

  Wilson passed through the larger houses at the outskirts. Calmly and with his head down he made his way to the west side of town. Some villagers greeted him as he passed by; others pulled at the sleeves of their companions and pointed.

  Wilson crossed the street and narrowly dodged a small blue vehicle that whirred past with a sound like mourning doves in flight.

  From the murmurs reflected off the brick buildings he knew the crowd was big. He approached a treeless park, every inch packed with a wild menagerie of people. Not people––memory fragments––he reminded himself. If he stared too long their faces would flicker and ripple like a stepped-in puddle.

  Wilson pressed his palms together and the crowd parted, the breeze of their whispers increasing to gale force. In the center Jack waited in a fur hat and Chinese army overcoat that brushed the top of his boots. Beside him stood the young boy Rogspo. A tent had been set up that contained a golden buddha surrounded by peonies of bright vermillion.

  Jack bowed. “Morning, Wilfred.”

  “I don’t know why you keep calling me that,” said Wilson.

  “Relax, it’s a joke. Ready for the last show?”

  “I’ve been ready for weeks,” said Wilson, under the noise of the crowd.

  “You don’t look so good. Trouble sleeping?”

  “I’m just tired. A month here––”

  “––feels like a lifetime, I know,” said Jack, rubbing his chin. “Well, the festival is tomorrow and that’ll be the end of it.”

  “One way or another.”

  Jack handed him three incense sticks and Wilson lit the tips in a small urn of red coals. He pressed the sticks to his forehead, bowed in front of the golden buddha, and placed them in an urn filled with sand directly below the buddha.

  The demonstration proceeded as planned, like the previous shows during the past four weeks. Jack gave an abbreviated explanation in English of what the crowd would experience. By this time many in the crowd had seen it multiple times. The young boy translated the speech into the local dialect.

  After an amount of pomp appropriate for a wandering monk, Wilson used the implant tricks to stun the audience. A squadron of men pulled an iron anvil on a cart and Wilson tossed it in the air. He leaped to the top of a nearby building. He cut a shallow incision in the palm of his hand and the crowd gasped as it healed before their eyes. For the final trick he stood against a wall and dodged a bullet shot by Jack’s revolver.

  Following the demonstration Wilson sat on a chair outside the tent. As a line of memory fragments passed in front, he made the sign of the cross and touched their outstretched hands. Each contact with a new memory fragment jolted his fingers like a spark of static electricity. Although Parvati said the data was almost complete Wilson didn’t feel any different and the static shocked him every time.

  After the last fragment had left, he helped Jack and the boy pack up the gear.

  “What do you get up to, Jack, when we’re not doing these demonstrations?”

  “Nothing special. I gave up looking for good prime rib a long time ago. I mostly give the PLA security a bad time.”

  “How?”

  “I shoot a few or blow up their headquarters. Don’t worry, they always come back. That’s something you can take to the bank.”

  “Take to the bank?”

  Jack sighed. “You’ve never heard of a bank? Well, that’s probably a good thing.”

  Wilson helped him strap the rolled-up tent onto Rogspo’s donkey, then made the long trek back to the monastery for a day of quiet contemplation.

  SEVENTEEN

  Carter threw an empty can of beans against the wall and the spoon clattered into a corner. He slapped his hands on the table and stood up.

  “We have to do it now!”

  “Calm down,” said Mast. He paced on the other side of the table. “What if she’s told them everything?”

  “You realize you’re talking about Badger, right?”

  Mast rolled his eyes. “I’d ask the same question if it was you. If it was any of us.”

  “Listen, we won’t get another chance at this. They know we’re planning something, and now they’re probably making her––”

  Mast held up his hand. “Stop! We have to wait for dark or too many people would get hurt.”

  Carter slumped onto the metal bench. “It was stupid to think it would work anyway.”

  Mast paced wall-to-wall across the tiny room.

  “It will work,” he said. “It’s our last chance.”

  FREEZING WATER POURED over Badger’s shoulders.

  She couldn’t see and for a second panicked, thinking that she’d tumbled into the black water at the bottom of the pit. Her arms were stretched above her head and when she tried to move them she realized the truth.

  Her wrists were bound and supported the weight of her body. A rough wooden surface scraped the bare skin over her spine and the back of her thighs. Water dripped to her ankles, tied close enough that her toes touched.

  Someone pulled off the wet fabric covering her head and Badger winced at the light.

  “My, my, my,” said Darius. “The she-demon finally wakes up.”

  Badger said nothing and kept her eyes squeezed shut.

  “I thought she’d be shorter,” said a woman’s voice––a dry, scraping baritone. “From all the horrible things you’ve said I expected hair and claws. She’s actually quite attractive, apart from those burn marks you gave her in the summer.”

  “The eye that alters, alters all,” said Darius sadly. “But I agree, a woman with a body like that should never be as
hamed of her nakedness.”

  “It’s hard to tell,” said the Consul. “But from the expression on her face, I’d say she’s feeling disgust and hate toward the pair of us rather than shame. Life in the wilderness would have worn away any scraps of human decency.”

  Badger’s eyes adjusted to the light. The walls and floor were tiled and a drain gurgled below her feet. She recognized the small shower room of the rectory.

  Darius stood in the doorway beside a middle-aged woman in short, brunette hair and black leather. Her eyes didn’t move or blink, like the painted eyes of a wooden doll.

  “I thought we were going to lose her,” said Darius. “Vital signs were low for several hours.”

  The woman smirked. “So you do care.” She pointed at Badger. “You two were made for each other––I can see it in her face.”

  Badger stared at the woman’s red-painted fingernails.

  “Consul Nahid, you’re always perceptive,” said Darius. He flicked his tongue over his lips as he watched Badger. “My fate and the life of this savage girl are twisted together––of course I couldn’t let her die peacefully. Not the girl of my dreams, the one who got away. Those tiny burns on her skin bring back such memories ... but I’m certain she doesn’t want to hear about that. We’re planning a theatrical production for the capital and you’ll be the star attraction. A girl who fights like a wild bear, hunts like a mountain cat, and carves up men like a sculptor?”

  “She has an unrefined, wild beauty in her face,” said the Consul. “If it weren’t for those scars on her cheeks she could squeeze into an evening dress and pass for any of the royalty. The clowns in Albu City will trample their own mothers to see her. I’ll be the richest woman alive.”

  Badger shivered from the cold water on her bare skin and clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

  Darius tilted his head as he watched her shake. “You’re thinking in your tiny, brutish mind that you’ll never be a performing monkey, not in a million years. We’ll see how long that resolve lasts when I have a knife to the throat of your other half. Don’t worry––I’ve enough gas to capture him alive too. I’m very considerate that way.” He rubbed his gloved hands. “Right about now you’re probably getting some feeling back. That’s good, because I worried that the chemical concentration was too high. Luckily I had a few of your friends to test my combinations on. ‘Had’ is the appropriate word.”