“No more,” she growled.
Mourning Dove hadn’t recovered from Claire. She delayed a moment in crushing me, long enough for Ray to charge up and ram into her back, sending the homicidal heroine stumbling away.
Tires screeched. My parents’ car jerked to a halt at the curb, and Mom jumped out. “What’s going on?” she demanded in a quick, authoritative demand that even got the zombie’s attention.
“Mourning Dove is trying to kill Robot Penny!” shrieked Claire.
The zombie heroine disappeared in a cloud of black again. This time, she reappeared in front of Claire, grabbing her by the forehead. “You are interfering. Sleep.”
Claire glowered up at her, lip thrust out, childishly petulant. Again they froze, eyes locked. Ray ran back to them, but Mourning Dove wasn’t actually paralyzed, and her hand darted up to grab the top of his head as well.
She had them, but her powers didn’t activate. She stared into Claire’s eyes, struggling to overcome that last little barrier to release her vampirism and drain them both unconscious.
Ray grabbed her wrist and tugged, but it was no good. She was as fast and strong as him.
They made a nearly still tableau, Mourning Dove frozen between my two friends, long enough for Mom to walk briskly up to the three of them, and punch Mourning Dove in the chest.
Okay, not a punch exactly. More like a two-fingered jab. But something clanked and snapped under the white leather costume, and Mourning Dove went limp, collapsing to the ground.
Ray and Claire gaped at my mother in awe. Mom hunched over, and her shoulders shook so hard I could see it from here. Her voice quavered with the same aftershock of fear as she said, “Studying Mourning Dove’s weaknesses was the first thing I did upon becoming a hero. The odds that I could still pull off that move were low. Too low. I had to take the chance.”
As I watched her, I noticed a mass of white paper gripped ferociously in her other hand. My letters. I’d never gotten them back from Miss Lutra.
“I know how to do that!” chirped Meatbag Penny beside me.
Oops. I’d forgotten about her, and it was a miracle of luck I’d survived the mistake.
Or maybe not. She looked happily spaced-out, and had reconfigured the tuning fork device, the bits wired around the handle visibly rearranged. Standing over me, she said, “Okay, first, no glass,” and pushed the fork’s button.
It rang, like tuning forks are supposed to, but at a very high pitch. The sugar tank on my hip cracked, and the bottom half fell off, shattering against the ground in a splattered puddle of harmless cola. Claire let out a yelp, yanking off her glasses, and the Meatbag Penny took off her own goggles more calmly as their lenses broke.
I took a page from her book, and rolled onto my stomach so she couldn’t see me pulling the X Device out of my faux-corset. It felt intact. All I had to do was touch both of us, right?
The tuning fork has a dial as well as a button. She rotated the former, then pressed the latter. Now the chime that came out was deep, very deep.
I didn’t have much attention to spare placing it. Pain that made the bombs seem like nothing stabbed through me. I heard the cracking, all over. Now parts of my body were broken. I wasn’t sure which. Everything hurt.
Meatbag Penny rolled me over with her foot, bent down, and pulled the X Device out of my grip. I tried to stop her, but something snapped in my left arm, and my hand went limp.
She held the two linked arrows up, tilting them around to study from every angle. Blandly, paying no one else any real attention, she said, “Fascinating. I can see inside it, you know. The shaft forms an electronic null zone where the emergent patterns of thought are pulled in by lack of resistance, suctioned catastrophe toward eversion staff lunar potato energy level potential orbit ollie ollie oxenfree.”
No one else moved. I could guarantee Mom didn’t have calculations on how to deal with this. Since my double was ignoring me, I squirted her with my wand. It had hardly any juice left thanks to the broken tank, but enough splashed onto her leg to lock over her knee and start growing across the other.
Still cheerfully vague, she smiled down at me. “Hey, thanks!” She drew a purple, particularly small bomb out of its pouch, a kind I hadn’t seen before. Then she took a little metal thing with prongs that looked an awful lot like an ancient transistor from a pouch. Sticking them together, she slapped the combination onto the sugar shell.
It blew up, not hard, but launching chunks into the air to rain down over the recess ground. They weren’t falling fast enough to look dangerous, but wherever they landed, they melted into a puddle, which sank into the asphalt and turned orange-red. In seconds, the floor had become lava, or at least littered with pools. Mom pulled Ray and Claire away. Ferocious heat radiated from even being near them.
So much for both my underground lairs.
“You know what’s great? I can spread them. I can reduce the planet to a molten—no!” Her ditzy ramble broke off into a whine. Other Me doubled over, grabbing the sides of her head and grimacing.
She still had the X Device in one of those hands, and wasn’t paying me any attention. Eyes screwed shut, she babbled, “Aether punctures forming temporal spirals recycle energy to avert heat death. Automatic, more efficient than transmutation of astral layer distortions formed with fuelless exothermics by adolescent forward lymbic system spikes. Avoids feedback loops predetermining failure until astral detonation feedback transforms and spacially subverts the organic matter. Morality? What is morality? AH HA HA HA HA HA!”
I didn’t know what to do any better than the others. What parts of me were even able to move?
A distant thumping I’d been too distracted to notice got closer, louder, loud enough I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Gerty, in her massive lumbering glory, came galloping around the corner of the school, knocking out bricks as she bumped against it in the process. “My Gerty Girls are in trouble!” she wailed.
Other Me spun around, her struggle gone, replaced by a beatific smile. “If you could only see inside you, Gerty. Do you know how many conceptual loops you are? Each one like a signature, linked by the ideal permanence with which you stamp and are stamped.”
Gerty’s hands shot out on cables, grabbing hold of our costumes and yanking us into the air. We sailed across the lot to land almost gently in her arms, wrapped in a hug. She rocked us from side to side, whispering, “My poor, good girls, Gerty is here and everything will be okay.”
Her grip was mostly around our middles. I wriggled my right arm free. Other than a little clumsiness and some shooting pains, it still seemed functional.
Other Me knew what I intended. Maybe our power told her. Maybe just because she knew me. Maybe it was obvious. Holding the X Device up and out of my reach, she teased, “You want this? Oopsy doopsy!”
With a playful flick, she tossed it at one of the pools of lava.
Mom jerked forward, then stopped, which meant she had no time to reach it. No one could.
So, I was very surprised when the mind transfer arrows stopped in midair a foot above the blazing goop, and instead sailed through the air back towards the school, to land in Ampexia’s grip. Oh, yeah, she did have that gimmick in her gloves that pulled small objects to her. And a tendency, like Claire, to let everyone forget about her until she saw her chance.
“Gerty, your left arm’s on fire!” shouted my teammate. Gerty gasped, and flapped that arm. Since it happened to be the one holding me, I dropped onto my feet. My right foot bent underneath me, and my hips wobbled, but I stayed upright.
Meatbag Penny had forgotten all about me. She chattered at Gerty, “Ideal permanence is a clever method of adaptive indestructibility, don’t you think? Did you know it has weaknesses? What would be the best way to break you, do you think? I could think. I could do it with thought. Maybe I should?”
Ampexia tossed me the X Device, and I caught it in my good right hand. This was it. My double was so insane she couldn’t identify threats, or reality on a human scale
. Except… there wasn’t anything to go back to. She’d broken my brain. Other Me didn’t have the focus or strength of will to force my power under control, and make it fix me.
Besides, she was tied closer to my power, which was now totally out of control. Transferring her into my body might tear her personality in half, for all real purposes killing her. Then I would be in my head, alone with my power. That thought terrified me.
I had to rescue myself.
“Machine!” I shouted. He wasn’t even far away. Maybe he’d been following us around. He crawled up to my foot, and I grabbed him with my right hand. My left hand at least had enough strength to loosely hold the X Device.
“Cut!” The Machine obeyed, and I used him to slice the arrows of the X Device free of each other.
They had a triangular point on one end, and a suction-cup shaped cone on the other. How to use them could not be more obvious.
Yanking on my shirt, I ripped the buttons free, baring the hatch in my chest. With all the cracks, that fell off as I tried to open it, exposing my Heart of Steel. It hurt, but I still had the range of movement in my right arm to reach back and pull out the Heart of Gold.
I didn’t want to do this. It was suicide, erasing myself as an individual. Heart of Gold would be proud of me, because it was the right thing to do and I did it anyway. Pressing the cup ends of the arrows against both Hearts, I leaned forward and jabbed them against Other Me’s leg.
Pictures. Blueprints. Mesh outlines and spinning atoms and elaborately detailed models that I could see inside and out.
No. I did this so I could look away from them.
There was nothing to look away to. They described the world. They were the world, and I was seeing it properly now. The beautiful, infinitely possible world.
Then I would see the world improperly. I remembered how to do that, right? With vision, with sound, with the impressions they gave rather than how they actually worked?
Besides, I was talking. I might as well say something useful.
“Gerty, I’m sick. The white-haired lady can help me.”
The goat lumbered over to Mom, my friends, and the unconscious Mourning Dove. We left the twisted, now-empty robot shell lying on the ground. Good riddance. Animatronic goat feet splashed through lava puddles without even noticing them.
Dad was here. I’d been too busy to notice his arrival. I focused on him, and on words. “Fix her. You can use the tape in my leg pocket to hold the chip together. It will work.”
I could see it. I drifted off into the pictures, watching my father open up the dented box in Mourning Dove’s chest, and reattach her wires, the ones Mom had jolted out of place. Patterns of understanding danced through his brain. He knew most of how she worked. It would be easy to make something like her, but…
No no no. I had to concentrate, long enough to tell the awakening zombie, “You know what I need.”
And because I said it, she did. She stood up, and placed her hand on the back of my head.
woke up in my own wonderful bed, in my own wonderful bedroom. My body ached. Not the sharp pain of that broken robotic shell, the stiffness of overworked muscles. Or was this normal? I was out of practice.
No, I remembered waking up this morning, and I hadn’t felt like this then.
I did need to go to the bathroom. Whoops. There’s a sensation I’d forgotten came with living bodies.
The discomfort wasn’t so bad I couldn’t lie here, enjoying the peace and being where I belonged, safe and in danger of losing everything. One of my sets of memories didn’t need to go through potty training again, so I wasn’t worried about all the weird sensations, like breathing and blinking. And shrugging. Shoulders! Oh, real working shoulders, how I’d missed you.
I looked back at the last couple of months. Three sets of memories. No, four. I did remember being the first Heart of Steel, confused and outraged and liberated by knowing I was a fake. I hadn’t been able to handle it. I could barely manage being real and stuck in a robot. How had I managed it as Heart of Gold?
Even looking back, I couldn’t tell. There hadn’t been any choice.
What a mess. I’d done some pretty crazy stuff in my flesh-and-blood body. Criminy, Penny, get some self-control. The robot me’s anger was not pleasant to remember.
But everything was fine, now. I’d won. I’d defeated my own super power.
My bedroom door creaked, opening enough for Claire and Ray’s faces to peek through.
“Your mom said you’re awake. Don’t ask me how she knew,” said Claire.
“Come on in,” I invited, making no move to leave the comfortable warmth under my covers.
They did, crowding up to the edge of my bed.
Ray leaned over me, blue eyes solemn, expressive mouth tilted with worry, eyebrows as sandy as his hair pressed together. “How are you?” Today had been too intense for joking.
An important thought, and relevant to an important question. Let’s see, two plus two was four. Eight times eight was sixty-four. A right triangle with a base of three and a height of five would have a hypotenuse of… square root of thirty-four, slightly under six. Okay, math worked. For speculation, what kind of lifeforms would exist on Pluto, and how would Harvy and Juliet interact with them? Something that didn’t move much, since it was stupid cold out there, and while lights and ground-traveling sound were available, let’s face it—Harvy would just use telepathy.
“I detect no cognitive deficiencies,” I reported.
They looked relieved. Claire asked next, “What about your super power?”
Well, my brain didn’t hurt. There wasn’t a sensation of emptiness, or anything. I did owe Lucyfar a dark matter hair dryer, didn’t I? That would be crazy.
No images formed in my head. Not even the ticklish feeling of inspiration lurking but unformed.
Sighing, I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling. “Gone.”
“It was the right thing to do,” said Claire, taking my hand.
“It was the Penny thing to do,” said Ray, putting his hands over hers.
Heh. I had to grin, because you know what was so wonderful about these two? They were just as likely to have switched lines. It was so wonderful to have them back, and to not have worry about losing them anymore.
I think I’d handled this mess as well as anyone could.
Well, Ray and Claire were here. Curious, I asked, “Where is Ampexia?”
Dryly, Claire answered, “She said you were as big a doofus as the rest of us and walked off.”
Yeah, that’s the ending Ampexia would have wanted.
Claire leaned closer, watching my expression. “Are there three of you in there, now?”
I shook my head. “Naah. Just one, and I’ll be fine by the time we get back to school. Oh criminy, we’ve only got a couple of weeks of summer left, don’t we? I officially hate camp. I am never going to camp again.”
They both snickered. Claire must have shown Ray the letters.
Those faces. I just could not get tired of watching them. Two sets of memories had way too little Ray and Claire in them. Still smiling, I said, “When we get back to school, I’ll want to hang out with other people a little more, but not much. I don’t think this has changed me, or us. We’re still the Inscrutable Machine. Just without super-powered adventures.”
They lifted me into a sitting position, and hugged me together. Ray, his voice quiet but emphatic, said, “You have the talent, and can get ahold of mad science. You don’t have to make them yourself.”
They let me go, and I lay back onto my soft, wonderful pillow. It felt different with a human head and real hair.
Ray watched me for a few seconds, and put his hand on Claire’s shoulder. “She wants time to think about it.”
He knew me so well. It was wonderful.
They shuffled out, leaving me to think.
He had a point. My cleverness, determination, and freaky tactical talent defeated my legendary-level super power. I certainly had what i
t took to be a heroine or villainess without a power.
But I’d loved, loved having one.
Oh, well.
A random inspiration hit me. What had happened to Gerty Goat? I knew what would happen to her. If I could find her again, I’d donate her to the fire department. Rescuing people would make her happy, and she’d have constant companionship.
This was all nice, but I didn’t actually hurt enough to bother with, so I might as well get up and sneak into the bathroom. The familiarity and strangeness of being in my bedroom settled into a weird but entertaining feeling of déjà vu as I walked to my door.
My desk sat next to it, with my computer. Good to have you back, buddy, and hey, now I’d played both the Vengeance and Sacrifice routes of Princess of the Closet Monsters! Yeah, Vengeance had totally been more fun.
Also on my desk, pushed up against the wall, was a disassembled clock, one of the old round ones with hands on the front to tell time. Half its cogs lay around it. What in Tesla’s name…?
Oh, yeah. When I first came up with those power-enhancing pills, I’d hoped they would finally nudge my super power into being able to repair things. Nope, it did what it wanted, and that was always to chase something new. I was able to talk to it way more consciously after the personality split, and it still didn’t actually do what it was told. Sheesh.
I missed that.
Well, I hardly needed a super power to fix this. The electrical motor might be beyond me, but for the rest I just needed to attach the two stalks for the hands to this…
The knowledge slipped out of my hands. For a few seconds it had all made sense.
Wait.
I’d had this sensation before. Several times, when for a little while I understood clockwork and mechanical devices intuitively. I’d assumed that was part of my super power, but that worked in fugue states, with a knowledge beyond the human brain. The sensations were nothing alike.
I’d had two super powers all along, and I still had one of them.
Exactly the power my parents had originally believed I had, in fact. At exactly the level of development, to judge by that flash.
You Believe Her Page 37
