Nest of Worlds

by Marek S. Huberath

  Aurelia, the nurse on duty, was the first to come running. She was young, thin-lipped, skinny.

  “Please stand by the window and wait,” he told her in a voice of authority. He didn’t want them to confer before they spoke to him.

  A little later, Saalstein ran in, his lab coat flapping.

  “I’ll explain in a moment,” Gavein said. “Please wait over there,” he added, pointing. “And button up your coat.”

  Two more came running: a young physician he didn’t know, wearing glasses and with a pinched rodent face, and Nurse Nylund, the only white nurse he had seen so far at the DS. Slender and tall, she had white eyebrows, pink skin, and a hundred freckles.

  Pinched Mouth started to say something, but Gavein silenced him with a gesture.

  “I’ll explain in a moment. Where is Dr. Ezzir?”

  “He got a cold. Tomorrow his leave is up,” said Saalstein. “Are you—?” he began, but Gavein interrupted.

  “Will one of you please explain the telephone tape cassettes to me, or must I call Siskin or Thompson?”

  “What cassettes? I don’t understand,” said the physician.

  “And you are?”

  “Dr. Barth.”

  “The last telephone recording of my wife, Dr. Barth, was a fabrication. I want to hear the actual recording. Do you have authorization to make that happen, or do I need to talk with your superiors? But perhaps someone else will come.”

  Gavein felt that he had hit a nerve.

  Dr. Barth began to stammer.

  “No point,” Saalstein said to him. “We should tell him the truth.”

  Pinched Mouth underwent a transformation, as if touched by a wand. He turned very red. “If you insist, Saalstein. But it’s on your head. “

  The last statement was absurd. Gavein was surprised that the DS had put such a nonentity in charge.

  “The first thing I want to know,” he said, turning to Saalstein, ignoring Dr. Barth, “is if Ra Mahleiné is still alive.”

  “She is.”

  Gavein heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s no sicker than she was before. Dr. Nott is taking care of her. That’s not what this is about.”

  “Good. What is this about?”

  “A crime was committed. Zef Eisler and Laila Hougassian are dead.”

  “They . . . ? Even they.”

  “You wanted the truth. Around the Eisler house is an abandoned area cordoned off by the military. But no one was forced to evacuate, and a few stayed on. Zef and Laila must have gone out. They were found on the sidewalk. Zef had been stabbed about twenty times with a knife. Laila was gang-raped, then drowned in a bucket. They had taped her mouth shut and pulled off most of the bandages. The methods used suggest that the murderers knew the Significant Names of their victims. Now you know what Medved’s people know, because he’s on the case. Your wife’s recordings were faked so that you would have no contact with the outside. Some think that the murders were triggered by the telephone recording in which Ra Mahleiné mentioned the victims. That focusing your mind on them increased the probability of their death.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I think of many people, all the time. Saalstein, I’ve just come to a decision: I agree to that operation. You people can cut me open and have a look inside, on the condition that the operation concludes my stay at the DS. I doubt you’ll find anything, but I want to get home.”

  “I’ll notify Dr. Siskin immediately,” said Dr. Barth, officially accepting Gavein’s offer. “He’ll be most pleased.”

  Saalstein looked at the man with disgust.

  “The nurses may leave,” said Dr. Barth. The man had regained his confidence. “We don’t need them.”

  We don’t need you, Gavein thought.

  “One more condition,” he said to Dr. Barth.

  He had the physician’s full attention.

  “I must speak personally with my wife. Without that, no operation.”

  “That won’t be possible,” said Saalstein. “Her last statement, recorded earlier, has become important evidence in the investigation. It was your Magda who found the bodies on her outing. Miss de Grouvert was pushing her.”

  Curious, Gavein thought. Lorraine is the one who usually pushes her.

  “I insist on speaking with my wife. The conversation will only supply you with more evidence for your investigation.”

  51

  That same day he was informed that both Thompson and Boggs agreed to his terms. The conversation would be monitored and could be broken off at any moment by the police censor listening in.

  In the evening there was a series of weak aftershocks. The main buildings of the DS had been erected like concrete cages, so they rode the quakes well. More plaster crumbled down, that was all. The smaller structures were propped by wooden beams.

  Gavein’s phone call took place the following day. The quality of the sound was good enough for him to recognize her voice. Both had been warned to avoid certain subjects.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “I hardly ever get up from the armchair. Anabel helps when I wash. I’ve been nicer to her.”

  “And the operation?”

  “The preparation for it is dragging out. Dr. Nott sends different powders. I take everything. I miss you. Lorraine wanted to borrow Nest of Worlds, but I said no, because you told me you planned to read it through when you got back.”

  “So Dr. Nott hasn’t actually scheduled the operation?”

  “Things have changed. They’re giving me medicine for my nerves, after what happened to Zef and Laila. It was horrible to look at . . . like a butcher’s shop . . .”

  Ra Mahleiné was cut off.

  52

  First thing in the morning, they began prepping him for the radio tomography. This time the cart that Aurelia brought in was electric. She gave him an injection. She was the youngest nurse. Efficient and calm, she had a sweet though empty face, short gray hair, a bulbous nose, and a voice that was too high.

  Her face widened, then narrowed, and the black bands on her nurse’s cap rippled.

  “I feel like I’m on a turntable,” he said.

  “I administered a sedative, to put you in a better mood. Dr. Barth’s orders.”

  “Then let’s be off. Dr. Throzz’s orders are a ride down the hall, wheels first and the rear bringing up the rear.”

  “It will pass in a minute. You’ll just be sleepy.”

  In the radio tomography room, even the usual cold that came from the white tiles was not unpleasant. The smells were different here, not hospital smells: high-tech, electronic. The main piece of furniture in the room was the two-meter torus of the electromagnet, with an impressive console whose various indicators, monitors, and lights winked cheerfully at Gavein.

  Behind a desk stood a man in a white coat buttoned in the back. He squinted over his glasses. He had a big head.

  “Please move yourself onto this,” he said, pointing to a gurney that could be wheeled inside the magnet.

  Gavein obediently rolled from one cart to the other. He was getting out of shape, he felt, from not enough activity. But the DS hospital’s rules didn’t allow exercise. A technician held the probe, which was encased in plastic insulation and connected by cable to the machine. Gavein looked out a window and saw a row of faces observing him through the glass. The faces were formed from the parts of the window frame, from the clouds, but sometimes they simply swam out of the blue sky. The moment he thought of the sky as blue, it began to change. Briefly, it was a blue bird that looked in at him.

  Dr. Barth appeared. Gavein had never liked that sly face and slimy manner. The face seemed twice as sly now, the manner twice as slimy. When Aurelia breathed in, her bosom moved forward and her bottom retreated; when she breathed out, those parts of the body r
eturned to their proper places.

  “How is it going, Lee?” asked Dr. Barth.

  “Fine. I’m upping the transformer so we can see fifteen centimeters inside.”

  “When do we begin? I want to call Siskin.”

  “In a few minutes.”

  Dr. Barth picked up the receiver, but something peculiar happened to Lee: He yelled, then he was flapping like a fish out of water. He was trying to say something but was unable to, because his jaw chattered in syncopation. Dr. Barth shouted something into the phone, Aurelia stood frozen in place, and Gavein watched as one watches actors on a stage. He wanted to applaud and cry, “Encore!” Lee, jerking, slid from the chair to the floor and kept jerking. Aurelia screamed that she couldn’t disconnect the machine, while Dr. Barth screamed that she shouldn’t touch Lee. Birds looked in through the window off and on. Some of them gave Gavein a knowing nod. After a time, strange people wearing green uniforms came in. Gavein dozed off as Nurse Nylund carted him back to his room. He wondered as he fell asleep why Aurelia wasn’t pushing him.

  Later he learned that all these things had actually happened. Lee had been electrocuted by a high-tension line, failing to notice the break in the plastic around the probe. His hand grasped the spot, and he received the current for several minutes. With an alternating current that changed polarity several times a second in irregular intervals, his heart didn’t have a chance.

  53

  Weak aftershocks continued over the next two days. The rift widened. A temporary bridge of aluminum was thrown up across it. Study was renewed on the David Throzz Effect, the name now given to the phenomenon of correlated deaths. It was admitted that so far all attempts to explain the effect had failed dismally. Only Colonel Medved’s group had anything to show for its labor: the fact that for every death in Davabel there was either an “unquestionable” or “highly probable” connection to the person of Gavein. The tally every day showed zero in all other columns, and the total grew.

  Gavein was not permitted to call Ra Mahleiné again. The deal he had made with the DS was for one conversation only. There should not have been this delay. Saalstein, Ezzir, and even Dr. Barth assured him that telephone contact was made with his wife every day and that she was all right. Because the investigation into the murders of Zef and Laila was ongoing, the content of their conversations with Ra Mahleiné had to be kept secret. Gavein didn’t believe them but didn’t argue. He waited. He had been at the Division of Science three weeks now.

  They’ll slice me open like a pig for the good of humanity, he thought. The surgery would reveal nothing, he was sure.

  Siskin promised that the incisions would heal in two weeks, so the prospect of going home was not that distant. The radio tomography was abandoned: no one could be found to administer it.

  In the company of Saalstein and Dr. Barth, Gavein ate a full and delicious breakfast. Dr. Barth personally took his blood pressure, asked him how he felt. All three of them knew that the DS had been getting nowhere. Gavein expressed surprise that they were allowing him to eat before the operation. Dr. Barth said that they would not be entering his stomach or intestines, so food was not counterindicated. He would have no appetite afterward, so why not stock up now? Gavein asked that Ra Mahleiné not be called until after his operation. Saalstein said he would see to that.

  That afternoon Aurelia took him to the hospital shower. He went on foot, barefoot, because they wanted him to exert himself a little. Perhaps to reduce the chance of his getting a hospital infection. Unfortunately Aurelia hadn’t brought slippers. He left his blue hospital gown in the dressing room and proceeded to the preoperation room. They would be opening him up in several places. A kind of autopsy, except that he would be living through it. After he laid down on the gurney and was covered with a sheet, Aurelia came back and gave him an injection.

  Doped up and defenseless again, he thought bitterly. A humiliating ritual.

  “Another sedative?” he asked.

  “That’s given in your rear end, in the muscle,” she answered with a smile. “This goes directly in the vein. Dr. Barth’s orders.”

  Dr. Barth himself came in, with Siskin, several doctors Gavein didn’t know, Saalstein, Ezzir, and even General Thompson.

  What do they think to find inside me, the sons of bitches? he thought. It’s in his hand, not in his vital organs, that Death holds the scythe.

  “He received the medication?” asked Dr. Barth.

  Aurelia nodded.

  “Excellent. Let us begin.”

  Nylund wheeled in a cart that held a row of ampules and vials.

  “Where is Boggs?” asked Thompson. “He wanted to be here too.”

  “I told his secretary,” said Dr. Barth. “He’ll be here any minute.”

  Someone fixed a basket of encephalograph wires into position over Gavein’s head, and someone else attached EKG electrodes to him.

  Dr. Barth prepared another injection. “You left the needle in the vein?” he asked the nurse.

  She said yes.

  “What’s this?” asked Siskin.

  “The first dose. In five minutes I give the next. After another five, the last.”

  Slowly he pressed the contents of the syringe into Gavein’s vein. The monitor that recorded Gavein’s life signs started beeping quietly.

  Gavein grew lighter, brighter somehow. His surroundings took on color, and things weaved even more than they had with the sedative. Dr. Barth’s nose increased to ludicrous proportions. Thompson’s meaty face gleamed pink and more and more resembled the snout of a pig. Gavein looked at Siskin: the man’s thin face was surrounded by a halo of flame. Making a great effort, Gavein saw that it was only the man’s red hair. By straining his mind and focusing, he could reduce the hallucinations.

  “Where are the notes?” Bogg’s voice rang like a bell.

  The answer didn’t reach Gavein’s ears.

  “The next dose now,” said Dr. Barth, turning to Siskin. As he spoke, his tongue touched and moved the end of his extremely long nose, from left to right and back. Aurelia spread the white wings of her lab coat and took to the air, floating where the wall met the ceiling. The windows expanded and contracted, having assumed the outline of a woman’s lips. The curtains reminded Gavein of Ra Mahleiné’s uneven teeth. He looked more carefully at the fluttering figure in white and found that it wasn’t Aurelia at all but his wife. Ra Mahleiné looked good in a white dress and wings. Gavein felt Dr. Barth tugging with his fingers at a vein. No doubt the physician wanted to stick his nose in, to smell out the secret of why only those who had crossed the path of David Death died.

  “He’s received the second dose. Everything is proceeding according to plan. I told you that this was the only way.”

  Near the ceiling Gavein saw a dark shape beside Ra Mahleiné. He couldn’t focus on it. Finally he focused. It was himself floating next to her. He was in a black fake-leather jumpsuit with skulls embroidered on it. Each skull had glittering red gems for eyes. On the back of the jacket was the biggest skull, silver, and beneath it two crossed bones.

  If I’m looking at myself from the front, how can I see what’s on my back? he wondered.

  “His pulse is up, but the responses are all normal.”

  His pulse was a small chubby cupid flitting about the room, faster and faster. From Ra Mahleiné’s eyes came yellow sunbeams. Gold in her eyes, he thought, means she’s angry.

  “Stop breathing in so greedily, there won’t be air for others,” Ra Mahleiné barked. She was indeed furious. “Washing yourself in the shower, you splashed so much, I couldn’t sleep. You could have done it more quietly.”

  Wilcox rushed past, all gray. And bent curiously, like a stork.

  “Be careful he doesn’t suck out your veins,” Ra Mahleiné warned. “He’s collecting blood for Brenda, because she slit her wrists and it all came out.”

  Wilcox str
aightened. He was extraordinarily tall and so wide he took up half the room. His face was like a piece of rumpled cloth, the eyes, nose, and mouth painted on.

  “I think he’s still conscious,” Wilcox said. “He reacts to light.”

  “Yes, senator,” said Dr. Barth, and with his tongue moved the tip of his nose from his left ear to his right. “But after the third dose now, he’ll sleep.”

  A turtle rode around the room. On its shell stood little vials of alcohol and fluids: yellow, clear, and reddish. The shell was flat, the legs high, the feet wheels.

  “Just don’t go and get a chill,” said Ra Mahleiné, shaking a finger. “They hardly covered you with a sheet.”

  Wilcox sucked the blood from his vein.

  If it’s for Brenda, Gavein thought, then I guess he can have a little.

  Wilcox wiped his mouth with a sleeve and tied the vein in a looped knot.

  “And after the third dose?” asked Siskin, whose head bounced on a spring as he looked at Gavein from a height.

  The room pulsed and gave off rainbow rings. Inside the rings, as inside the frame of a painting, were Ra Mahleiné, Wilcox, himself in the black jumpsuit, Dr. Barth, Siskin, Thompson, and a white turtle with a cylindrical head.

  “The pupils no longer react. He must be out.”

  “This time, finally, we should succeed,” stated a hog in the voice of General Thompson. “So much effort, so many victims.”

  “His field is narrowing now. When the body is completely without feeling, we give the gas,” hissed Dr. Barth.

  “What is his Significant Name?” asked Wilcox. “Yacrod? Myzzt?”

  “Aeriel.”

  “So, then, there won’t be an operation?” Wilcox asked further, in the voice of Boggs.

  It seemed to Gavein that he was a television set, showing all the action but unable to act himself.

  “The autopsy,” said Dr. Barth with a grim chuckle, “will be very thorough.”