Hart & Boot & Other Stories

by Pratt, Tim

  “Ally! What are you doing here?”

  “You gave me those books,” she said, “and they all talk about Citizen Kane by Orson Welles, how it transformed cinema.” She punched him gently in the shoulder. “But you didn’t give me the DVD!”

  “But... Everyone’s seen Citizen Kane!”

  “Not where I’m from. The print was destroyed. Hearst knew the movie was based on his life, and he made a deal with the studio, the guards looked the other way, and someone destroyed the film. Welles had to start over from nothing, and he made Jason and the Argonauts instead. But you’ve got Citizen Kane! How could I not come see it?”

  “But Ally... you might not be able to go back.”

  She laughed, then leaned her head on his shoulder. “I don’t plan to go back. There’s nothing for me there.”

  Pete felt a fist of panic clench in his chest. “This isn’t a movie,” he said.

  “No,” Ally said. “It’s better than that. It’s my life.”

  “I just don’t know—”

  Ally patted his leg. “Relax, Pete. I’m not asking you to take me in. Unlike Blanche DuBois—played by Jessica Tandy, not Vivien Leigh, where I’m from—I don’t depend on the kindness of strangers. I ran away from home when I was fifteen, and never looked back. I’ve started from nothing before, with no friends or prospects or ID, and I can do it again.”

  “You’re not starting from nothing,” Pete said, putting his arm around her. “Definitely not.” The lights weren’t going to come up, the curtain wasn’t coming down; this wasn’t the end of a movie. For once, Pete liked his life better than the vivid continuous dream of the screen. “Come on. Let’s go watch Citizen Kane.”

  They stood and walked together. “Just out of curiosity,” he said. “Which movies did you watch on the laptop?”

  “Oh, none of them. I thought it would be more fun watching them with you.”

  Pete laughed. “Ally, I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “You sound like you’re quoting something,” she said, “but I don’t know what.”

  “We’ve got a lot of watching to do,” he said.

  “We’ve got a lot of everything to do,” Ally replied.

  Lachrymose and the Golden Egg

  The woman in the wood was fair-skinned, white-gowned, and altogether lovely, but I didn’t let her beauty lull me. In the Forest of Intangibles, things are seldom what they seem. That might be the fundamental truth of doing Vision, of coming to this place—you’re lying on a couch somewhere, dying, but in your mind you live life richly in peril and beauty.

  The woman stepped from the shadows onto that winding, redwood-crowded path, close enough for me to see the iridescence of her eyes and to smell the roses on her breath, which made me suspicious, because what kind of woman eats roses? She looked fuzzy, like a soft-focus photograph. She had red hair. They often do.

  “Foul temptress?” I said, stepping back, clanking in my armor. A suit of plate mail often appears when I’m startled. I wished the armor away and replaced it with soft green leggings and a deerskin shirt. “Wily seductress?”

  “Damsel in distress.” She leaned against a tree, hands clasped before her.

  I clutched my stick and looked around. “Immediate distress, or general distress?” I worried about ogres, or killbots. They often menace damsels, and when the wind’s wrong, you can’t smell them coming, neither rotten meat nor engine oil. It’s hard to hurt an ogre or a killbot with a staff, but I’m useless with a sword. I used a blade on my first few outings, but after chopping off my feet six times, I switched to a stick.

  “General distress. I seek an artifact. If I do not find it, I will die.”

  “What sort of artifact?” I’d just finished a war, so a quest sounded fun. “A heavy one, I bet, and you need me to carry it for you.”

  She glared, straightening. Her image sharpened. Women here come in two varieties: Princess Beautiful and Hag Ugly. Only hair color and the number of warts vary. My damsel fell into the first category.

  “I seek the golden egg. I am quite capable of carrying it myself. I hoped to enlist your aid as a warrior.”

  “Rogue warrior and occasional thief, actually,” I said. “My name is Lachrymose.”

  She covered her mouth in surprise. “Lachrymose! The Lachrymose?”

  I bowed. “None other. And I will gladly join you, my fair—”

  ***

  “Get up, Larry!” my sister Franny said, slapping my face. Back to the real world, I blinked and groaned. She put down the hypodermic she’d just used to inject me with anti-Vision, neutralizing my drug, my therapy, my escape.

  “What? I just started a new thread!”

  “You’ve been under for two days. It’s almost time for your appointment.” She took the IV needle from my elbow.

  I covered my eyes. The dingy walls, the pebbly plaster, and the misshapen hook-rugs depressed me after the glories of the Forest of Intangibles. “I can miss it this time. I’ll go next week.”

  “You’re nearabout out of money,” she said.

  My stomach rumbled. I uncovered my eyes. Franny handed me a tube of vitamin-packed protein mush. “All right,” I said. “I’ll go. What’ve you been doing?”

  “Nothing.” Franny’s in her twenties, but she can pass for fifteen, and she gave me an innocent blue-eyed look. “Sitting around. Anything interesting happen this outing?”

  “There’s always something interesting. You should try it.”

  She shook her head. “No thanks. I value my brain cells.”

  “I defeated the Barbarian Chieftain of the Plains of Squalor. His people call me ‘He Who Lacks Remorse.’ I had just met up with a sexy damsel when you woke me.”

  She giggled. “I looked up ‘lachrymose’ in the dictionary this weekend. It means ‘weepy.’ ‘Given to shedding tears.’ Lachrymose, rogue crybaby.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, I know what it means. I must’ve read it years ago, without knowing what it meant, and my subconscious thought it would make a good name. It doesn’t mean weepy when I’m out, though. It’s just my name, striking fear into the hearts and all that.”

  She ignored me. “Eat your mush and get to your appointment on time, or I’ll get fired.”

  “I won’t fire you.”

  “They randomly monitor us, you know. Dr. Hammond can dismiss me, get my license revoked, and you couldn’t do anything about it.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah.” I stood, unkinking my muscles. “I shouldn’t have given you this job.”

  “No other nurse would let you go out on Vision so much.”

  “True. I guess I’ll keep you.” I did a few jumping jacks, then started jogging in place.

  “What’s this?” Franny said. She lifted a long wooden staff, like a dowel, from the corner.

  I stopped jogging. “A quarterstaff. How’d it get here? I use one when I’m out, it’s Lachrymose’s weapon.” I took it, feeling the heft. I’d never held one before, really.

  “Are there gaps in your memory?” Franny asked, suddenly nurse-professional.

  I laughed, uneasy, and looked at the floor. “Don’t know. Can’t remember. I guess so, since I don’t remember getting this.” I leaned the stick in the corner.

  “I don’t remember seeing it before,” she said.

  I shrugged. “I’ll get a regenerative shot today, grow some new brain cells. Don’t worry.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t do so much Vision,” she said. “The deterioration wouldn’t happen so fast if you didn’t compound it—”

  I held up my hand. I didn’t say anything, but she stopped talking. I got my jacket and left for the clinic. I could sense Franny watching me with worried eyes.

  ***

  “How’s the leech business, Doc?” I asked.

  Dr. Montressor laughed dutifully and hung the blood bag on a hook. He gave me a rubber ball to squeeze while my blood (worth more, per ounce, than gold) dripped out.
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  “Relax,” he said. “You always get so tense.” He went to his desk and sat down. “We lost two producers over the weekend, so the market rate’s gone up. You’ll get a bigger check than usual.”

  “Great news,” I said, fake-smiling. I don’t know why he tells me when another producer dies. Reminders of impending death can’t be good for my mental health.

  “You won’t last much longer yourself if you keep using Vision,” he said.

  Doc’s built like a side of beef, only flabbier. He probably played football when the world was young. Now he runs the Hammond’s Disease Research Institute, a Very Important Man. He’d never let Vision or any other pollutant into his bloodstream. But he doesn’t need to escape reality like we producers do.

  “I don’t have much longer either way,” I said. “I’m thirty-three.” In five or six more years, Hammond’s would get to my involuntary functions, and I’d forget how to breathe. Not something I liked to think about. “How goes the quest for a cure?”

  “We’re making progress.” He wrote something on a clipboard.

  “How about the synthetic Serum?”

  “Lots of promising work being done.”

  The usual answers. Some say the Institute isn’t looking for a cure at all, or that they’ve found one and won’t release it until they can synthesize the Serum. I don’t know. Doc’s not friendly, but I can’t believe he’d watch us die just to keep the Serum supply coming.

  “Tell me—”

  “Let me ask the questions. Have you had any symptoms?”

  I thought about the mysterious quarterstaff. “Forgetting stuff, maybe, losing time. I’m not sure.”

  He grunted. “The Vision does that. Memory loss is only a symptom in late-stage Hammond’s. You might have hallucinations at this point, but anything else is due to Vision. You should stop using it. People depend on you.”

  “People depend on the Serum.” I wiggled the tube in my arm. “Other people have Hammond’s, they’re churning out super-antibodies. Let them stay sober.” I looked away. Normally I’m easygoing, but finding the quarterstaff made me edgy. I hadn’t suffered any symptoms before, of Hammond’s disease or Vision killing my brain cells. I thought I’d adjusted years ago to the idea of dying young, but maybe I just avoided thinking about it. Going out on Vision helps you avoid thinking about things. “Stop bugging me. Vision gets me through.”

  “Your entire life is ruled by chemicals, Larry. The one we get from your blood, that saves lives, and the one you shoot into your arm, to help hide you from life. It’s funny.”

  “Yeah, hilarious. I should take my show on the road.”

  Doc withdrew the needle and put the blood bag in his silver refrigeration unit. They do something to the blood, extract the Serum from it, and send it to save the world. The Serum cures Parkinson’s disease and, with regular administration, stops epilepsy. It halts a dozen different cancers and speeds up human metabolism. They’re still finding uses for it.

  My jacked-up immune system works almost flawlessly. I don’t get colds or infections or anything. Just Hammond’s disease, gradually turning my gray matter to mush. Having Hammond’s is like finding the fountain of youth and realizing it’s running through lead pipes, poisoned.

  I took my money and walked home, ready for another Vision-shot. That’s the wonder drug if you ask me, and it comes from Colombian laboratories, not some guy’s bloodstream. It doesn’t keep me alive, but it keeps me from wanting to die.

  ***

  Back in the Forest, with the damsel. The background wavered for a moment, then came into focus. I’ve used Vision for a long time, and believing in the world comes naturally. Vision induces a prolonged dream state, but the dreams are lucid and more vivid than opium fantasies. I can exercise some control over the environment, but not much. My subconscious crafts the world. I read fantasy and horror stories to get material, but sometimes unexpected stuff rises from memory-depths I can’t consciously access.

  “—lady, in your quest,” I finished.

  “There are many travails ahead, Lachrymose.”

  “I have a stout stick and a strong heart. Let’s begin.” She nodded, and we walked. “Why do you require the egg? Are you under a curse only its touch can cure? Will you be killed by a bad fairy if you don’t find it?”

  “No, no. The golden egg bestows immortality, and without that, I will surely die.”

  I stopped twirling my stick. “What do you mean?”

  Patiently, as if explaining to a child, “If I do not obtain immortality, my life is forfeit, for eventually I will die.”

  “But not anytime soon. So you aren’t a damsel in distress after all.”

  “Not immediate distress, no.”

  So. A very forward-thinking damsel.

  A day later, after a few typical altercations with monsters and brigands, we came to a castle. Normally reality doesn’t intrude when I’m on an outing (Lachrymose the Rogue acts in the moment), but I wished I could achieve immortality as easily in the real world as I could here.

  “This is the home of Montrose, the evil Ninja King,” she said.

  I tried not to giggle. This wasn’t the first time my subconscious had mixed together incompatible elements. Once I’d fought dinosaurs and aliens in the same outing, and another time I’d battled Electrified Robots and the Slime God, working together for my destruction. Now I faced a Ninja King in a black gothic castle. “He has the egg?”

  “Yes, but surely hidden away.”

  “Then we’ll have to find it.” I twirled my staff.

  “You will have to kill him first. And, having the golden egg, he may be immortal.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” I went to the massive iron doors and banged on them with my quarterstaff. The door rang like a gong. “Montrose! Let us in, villain, and face your death!” I waited.

  The doors didn’t open, but a black, hairy man jumped from a high window. He landed in a crouch and grinned at me, yellow teeth in a furred face. He snarled, half-gorilla, half-werewolf. He whipped out a wickedly sharp katana. He wore a red headband, and his eyes wept pus.

  “Montrose!” I shouted, lifting my staff to a defensive position.

  “No,” my damsel said. “That is Griffonious, the Ninja King’s bodyguard and chief lieutenant.”

  The big ape came at me with his sword, and I whipped my staff down across his—

  ***

  “Your timing sucks!” I shouted at Franny when I woke.

  “Wasn’t me.” She didn’t look up from her magazine. “It wore off naturally. I think your new supplier cut this batch with something, you were only under for about thirty hours.”

  I buy Vision in unusually (illegally) strong doses, and I’d hooked up with a new dealer for this batch. It was sufficiently strong, cutting out bleed-through from the real world, but it lasted only half as long as usual. I’d have to go back to my old supplier.

  “Were you about to get lucky with your damsel?”

  “No. I was fighting a ninja were-gorilla.”

  “Mmm. You hear about this ‘Applied Psychomechanics’ stuff?”

  “No.”

  She flipped to a page in her magazine. “Some researchers think Hammond’s disease activates latent psychic powers. That people who have the disease or use the Serum can be telepathic, telekinetic, stuff like that.”

  “Jesus. I’ve got enough trouble inside my own head. Why would I want to see into someone else’s?”

  Franny grunted. “Could you go to the store and get some milk, since you’re up? The walk would do you good.”

  I grumbled. “Nurse’s orders,” she said. “You don’t exercise enough.”

  “Last time I try to help out somebody in the family. I could pay a regular nurse to leave me alone.”

  “You wish.”

  We Serum-producers, being so valuable to the medical community, have to be attended by a live-in nurse. The doc pays for it, and I pulled some strings to get Franny hired. It’s nice having a friendly face ar
ound, even if she does get weepy sometimes, thinking how I’m going to die.

  I walked two blocks and stopped. When I’d passed by a few days ago, an empty lot bordered this street. Now a big black castle filled the space. The castle, only half-complete, resembled Montrose’s, from my outing. Workers on scaffolding mortared stones. “What the hell’s this?” I called.

  “Some rich doctor’s new house!” a stonemason called back. “Ain’t it the damnedest thing?”

  I went to the store, got the milk, and came back by a different route. First the quarterstaff shows up, and now the castle. Hallucinations? But other people saw this stuff, too. Unless I was hallucinating their reactions.

  Time to take more Vision. I couldn’t handle the real world in large doses, especially when reality wasn’t behaving like it should.

  ***

  —blade, spinning it from his hands. Griffonious growled and somersaulted toward me. I threw my staff, jumped over him, and did a handspring. I landed perfectly. As he stood, I snatched up my staff and struck him behind the knees, producing a nice crack, and he fell face-down.

  The damsel lifted the hem of her dress and stepped on Griffonious’s head. She drove his face into the dirt, which suddenly turned to mud. Griffonious struggled and grunted, but she held him down, seemingly without effort, until he stopped moving.

  Impressive. “Nice trick with the mud.”

  “You’re not the only one with magic, Lachrymose.” She cocked her head. “I’ve always wondered, how did you get your name? You don’t strike me as the crying type.”

  Before I could invent a suitably apocryphal answer, someone bellowed from the castle. A black-clad ninja stood on the ramparts. “Who dares attack my keep?” he shouted. His voice was muffled by his mask, but still seemed familiar. I couldn’t place it.

  “Lachrymose the Rogue and, uh...” I looked to the damsel for her name, but she didn’t say anything, just put her hands on her hips and glared.

  “We’ve come for the egg, Montrose,” she said.