by Linda Nagata
The dog lunged. Sandor twisted aside, but it struck him with its head, a glancing blow to the chest that knocked him to the ground. He tried to roll away, but the animal was quicker. It pinned him, its great jaws clamped snugly around his throat. Mortal fear caused his anger to collapse like a bubble under pressure. This is not the Commonwealth. Here the police charter was meaningless. Here, he had no civil rights. The dog could kill him.
He thought of Fox. Dad had been bitter when he’d left Summer House. Earth was the same as Hell, in his mind. But Sandor had gone anyway, leaving his original body lying in cold storage in the Summer House mausoleum. If Fox had to revive that body, he’d see to it that the House never let Sandor Earth-side again.
Nature, the House would never let him stay Earth-side. Not after this run-in with the cops. Copy two was washed up. What happened to it now didn’t really matter. He’d like to preserve the memory of this trip, and yet. . . . “Fuck off,” he said, employing language he’d first heard a few weeks ago on the drilling platform. He stared into the beast’s mechanical eyes. “You’re violating my civil rights.”
The dog remained motionless for what seemed like an eternity, but finally it released its grip on his throat and stepped back.
Amazed, Sandor rolled to his feet, one hand rubbing at his bruised throat. For a moment he considered launching another kick at the dog. Then his gaze fell as the significance of this moment hit him. He’d never committed an act of violence in his life . . . until today. What had happened?
“Move on, Sandor,” Nikko commanded. “Just move on.”
He took the ghost’s advice, because he didn’t know what else to do. Turning his back on the dog, he started again down the corridor, pretending not to see the sympathetic stares of other travelers. He tried to understand what had happened. The House warned violence was contagious. Guess so. Suddenly, being sent back to Summer House didn’t seem such a bad idea.
He wandered aimlessly, until he spotted a door that opened onto daylight. He headed for it.
As he passed through the door, humidity enfolded him like a warm, wet blanket. He sucked in a heavy breath. Taxis lined the curb; agents shouted at him. The sun glinted fiercely off the wet pavement. In the distance he could see the city’s towers, their summits almost touching the bellies of broken black clouds still heavy with rain. Curiosity stirred in him. “Don’t even think about it,” Nikko growled.
“Mr. Tibayan? Sandor Jiang-Tibayan?”
He turned, startled to hear his name. Two men, both dressed in green uniforms consisting of a short-sleeved tailored shirt and knee-length pants, looked him over. One had a very fair face, with Asian features. “You are Mr. Tibayan?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.” Sandor glanced from one to the other nervously.
“We are officers of the municipal police.” He flashed an ID card.
Sandor glanced at it and Nikko nodded. “Looks authentic,” he said.
“Mr. Tibayan, you are under arrest for interfering with the official duties of an airport security guard, and for attempting to vandalize an authorized security device.”
“You mean the dog?”
The light-skinned officer nodded. His companion stepped forward, a flexible wand in one hand. On Sandor’s shoulder, Nikko cursed. “Preparing distress packet,” he muttered. “Authorize send, Sandy, right now.”
Sandor’s jaw dropped in confusion. But Nikko was his guide; he did as he was told. The message went out. “What’s going on, Nikko? What—?”
The second officer raised the wand and gently touched it against his head. Instinctively, Sandor stepped back. Nikko said: “Kem-wand, kid. Been nice to know you.” And a thousand tiny fires ignited in his head. He screamed. His legs buckled. His head hit the pavement with a thunderous crack!
A voice spoke out of the dark, a voice that purred soft, threatening reassurance. “You’re coming out of it now, aren’t you? There, there. A naturalizing Maker shouldn’t have hit you that hard. What have you got inside that pretty skull? Not legal wiring, I’ll bet.”
A blood-red light suddenly blazed in his eyes. He blinked and the color thinned. Pink. Blinked again, and a white glare burned his retina. Behind his eyes his skull throbbed. His shoulders were on fire: his arms had been bound behind his back. He hung suspended from his wrists in a dark, stinking room, with a white light blazing in his eyes. He could barely breathe.
“Nikko?” he asked softly. He felt as if his brain had been packed in foam, set aside for storage. And one of his senses had failed him. “Nikko!” he called, more urgently.
He could see, he could hear, he could taste . . . blood in his mouth. Sweat beaded on his bare chest, his abdomen, his naked groin. He’d been stripped. And he’d lost one of his senses. “Nikko!” he screamed.
“He’s gone.”
The voice in the dark. He tried to lift his head to see. A sharp thawk! and his back exploded in pain. He groaned, his muscles cramping. Another blow across his back and the soft voice spoke. “Why are you here?”
“Goin’ to India!” Sandor gasped. So hard to breathe with his arms pinioned behind him; and he needed air to bleed this pain away. “Call home. Let them know—”
Thawk! “What is your business here?”
“Nothing! Who—?”
Thawk! “Why did you leave the terminal?”
Desperately: “Air.”
“You had a rendezvous.”
“No.”
“With whom?”
“No one!” Someone threw a switch. The blazing light flickered as an electric shock nearly doubled his body over. It passed and he wanted to scream. But he had no breath left. Couldn’t breathe. What was happening to him? “Nikko.”
“We have a picture of you. You came here to buy a stolen Maker. But these instruments of Satan are illegal in Sunda.” He chuckled softly, perhaps amused by his own hypocrisy. The government in Sunda remained in power only because of the advantages conferred by their Makers. “We have friends who’ve advised us about your activities. They say you’re only a foolish child, and that we should spare you. But first you must tell us: where is the original thief?”
“I don’t—” An electric shock interrupted him. His teeth fused together, biting his tongue. Blood flowed in his mouth. When the shock ended, he gasped for breath, aspirating the blood. He choked, his body writhing for air. He blacked out for a few seconds.
“We would like to let you live,” the soft voice said, pulling him back to consciousness. “Wouldn’t you like to return to your home? You can. Just tell us why you came to Sunda.”
Sandor tried to nod, eager to tell them anything. “Install . . . security. On a . . . platform.”
“You belong to Summer House.”
“Yesss. . . .”
“Where were you supposed to meet the thief?”
They didn’t believe him! They thought he was somebody else. The realization horrified him. He couldn’t tell them what he didn’t know.
“Where did you intend to meet?” the soft voice repeated.
“Nowhere!” Sandor screamed. “I don’t know—” Another electric shock racked his body. His muscles spasmed so hard he thought his bones would break. He started to black out again, but the sharp sting of a needle inoculated him with a terrible, detailed awareness. He could hear everyone in the room; smell his own piss on the floor.
He could not sense the atrium. It would not respond to his entreaties. He couldn’t call out, couldn’t summon data, couldn’t summon Nikko. “My mind is dead,” he whispered.
“Ah, but your body is very much alive. Sometimes a body can be a burden.”
Another electric shock, touching every cell, confirming the awful diagnosis. “Alive . . . ?”
“Tell me,” his torturer crooned. “Tell me. We’d love to send you home.”
The House skirted the legal boundaries of molecular technology. Subtle advantages could be mingled almost imperceptibly in the complex human system. Most had to be controlled through the atrium;
but one had been developed as a last resort that would function even after the atrium was gone. “Not alive,” Sandor whispered. “Don’t hurt when . . . not alive.”
He powered down. Voluntary control of the autonomic nervous system. He stopped his heartbeat. Terminated all motor function. His last breath eased noisily out of his lungs and his bowel failed. His ears he kept alive. And his brain.
Loud scuffling in the dark. Voices spoke, but Sandor didn’t know the language. Someone shouted in rage. His head thudded against the floor. The dull wallop of fist against flesh as they tried to restart his heart. Cursing.
Silence.
He let himself breathe, imperceptibly. His heart squeezed out a hundred beats.
Later, four men removed his body. Shoosh of a car door, soft hum of its engines. A long time. He breathes occasionally; lets his heart run. The car stops. Shoosh. Hum of crowd voices not too far away. After a time, voices soft with tension. The door closes; the car proceeds. Only a few minutes this time before they stop again. Groans and curses. His body’s moved. Rippling sound of water flowing. More voices. A great shout! Then—
The fizz of bubbles filled his ears and all the street sounds vanished. Something crunched under his head with awful clarity, sound that moved too fast. In a panic he released his heart. It thundered in his chest. He opened his mouth to suck in a lungful of air. Water choked his throat. Motor function swept back into his limbs and he thrashed. His arms were strapped to his sides. He bumped along underwater, driven by a fierce current, pinned to the bottom by an awful weight that nearly crushed his shoulders. He twisted, thrashed. Finally got his feet under him and pushed. His head broke the surface. Sunlight blinded him. He kicked frantically, coughed, spluttered, caught a breath then plunged to the bottom again.
What had they weighted him with? He had to get it off, get it off. He could bend his arms at the elbow. He groped with his fingers. Felt insulated wire wrapped securely around his chest. He pulled at it. Yanked, fought, struggled. Shot to the surface again for another breath of air.
On the bottom again. He realized the wire had loosened. Had a knot slipped? Had he simply shifted position? He tugged at it and it moved an inch up his arms. He ducked and twisted, lungs burning as he fought the wire.
It snapped. The weight vanished. He rolled free in the current. Which way was up? For a moment he didn’t know. Then he felt the bottom under his head. He rolled over and pushed, bursting from the water in a fountain of spray.
Chapter
9
Somewhere along the walk back to the warehouse, Phousita and Arif had come to an unspoken agreement. She should not return to the clan with him, at least not now. The children would be better off if they didn’t see her in transition. Plague could be a horrible thing. Even if it turned out all right in the end, the hungers of transition could consume a personality. They’d all seen it: playmates eroding both in mind and body as the disease progressed. Phousita wouldn’t subject them to that again.
So at the edge of the market district she said good-bye to Arif and set out on her own. Pedestrian traffic in the crowded street moved slowly, held back by the fierce heat of the late morning sun as it steamed through the remnants of the rain clouds that had soaked the city earlier that morning.
Phousita moved at the leisurely pace of the crowd, and as she walked, she found herself examining the faces around her, looking for one with fair skin and blond hair who might be the angel. He seemed to be always in her thoughts. He was the only memory the evil sorcerer had brought to her. She didn’t know if he was good or evil, or what his purpose might be, but she wanted to find out. The spirit inside her wanted to know. Twice she thought she saw him, and she hurried forward, only to draw up abruptly in disappointment as she realized her mistake.
Here in the marketplace only foot traffic could negotiate the narrow streets. People wandered from stall to stall, examining piles of merchandise, haggling, cursing, moving on. Vendors shouted the quality of their wares. Laborers groaned and coughed under the weight of goods to be transported on their backs. Phousita moved carefully through the maze, down the street of the jewelers, on to those selling cloth and spectacles, past the electronics alley and the tea shops. The commotion fascinated her. It seemed familiar and foreign all at once, as if she knew it well, but not in this life.
She looked in all the stalls. Stopped to finger the merchandise until the vendors cursed her and told her to move on. She was on sensual overload: the sights, sounds, smells—all gave pleasure to her. At a fruit stand she took out her last coin and purchased two bananas and a drink of river water.
She stood, slowly chewing, savoring the intense flavor of the fruit. Her eye delighted in its gross structure. Her tongue went further. With a sense she had never before possessed, she explored the essential structure of the fruit: the arrangement of its tissue, the careful order of its cells, the precise structure of its component molecules. As her vision shrank, her vocabulary vanished. She had no names for the treasures she discovered. No interest in their meaning or their use. She existed only to observe. And when she understood the most intimate details of the fruit’s construction, she retreated until she stood once again amidst the jostling crowds.
Her chin lifted. She looked about, nostrils flaring as she sorted the myriad scents born on the searing air. The Chinese doctor had opened his office. The crowd noises that had roared so ebulliently in her ears only moments before now seemed muted. Her gaze no longer wandered. She had a goal.
She glided easily through the throng, as if her sharp eyes could see, a moment before it happened, just where the crowd would part. She crossed the last street of stalls and entered a new section of the market. Here the buildings were planned, permanent structures, made of wood and preserved with a stabilizing resin. In the windows, brightly painted signs beckoned to the passers-by. Phousita could read none of them, but then, she didn’t have to. She knew what each shop sold.
She came to Zeke Choy’s shop. A line of customers already hung out the door. They were mostly women, mostly well dressed, with jewelry on their arms. Phousita took a place at the end of the line and stood cock-hipped, waiting patiently in the sun. The old woman stood at her side. Phousita started in surprise at her kindly face. Decades of sun had dried and bronzed the old woman’s skin; her frail shoulders stooped with age. She wore her thin black hair in a tight bun held in place by tiny bone picks, and she’d carefully arranged her sarong to hide all sign of repair. She smiled at Phousita, revealing blackened gums sparsely occupied by teeth. Phousita clung to her skirts and sobbed. She was terrified. She was a waif, a freak, she had no right to be here with these finely dressed women. The old woman caressed her shoulder, mumbling unintelligible encouragement. In the pocket of her sarong she carried the money she’d saved over the past year from her business of selling charms and potions. Enough to buy the services of the Chinese doctor. Such a powerful man! Phousita quailed in fear. I want to go home. I don’t want to grow up. Please, Mother! Though of course the old woman wasn’t really her mother. But Phousita was eight years old in mind and body and could remember no other parent. She’d been eight years old for thirteen years, poisoned by her pimp because he didn’t want her charm spoiled by maturity. But today the Chinese doctor would command her body to grow. She looked up, her vision blurred with tears. Who would she be tomorrow?
She reached for the old woman’s hand, but there was no one there. She spun around, searching. Behind her stood a man with raw red sores on his face. Behind him, a pretty woman cradling a tiny baby in her arms. They waited in line, as she did. The old woman was a ghost, dead now several years.
And Phousita had matured. She had the body of an adult woman now, though she’d never gained in height. A toy woman. That’s how she sold herself. The line crept forward. Zeke Choy was a very busy man.
Late in the morning, Phousita grew suddenly restless. A realization had come upon her: the angel was nearby. Somehow, she was aware of his presence. How could that be? She had
n’t scented him. She looked all around, but he was nowhere to be seen. She chewed her lip nervously, wondering how far away he might be. How satisfying it would be to find him, to discover why the evil sorcerer had given her this vision of his face. Yet she couldn’t search for him now. She must see the Chinese doctor. That was urgent. She needed his advice, his knowledge. She craned her neck to gauge the length of the line ahead of her. Ah, not so long now. Only another two or three hours. Good. She would search for the angel tonight.
At noon the shop closed. All the customers who’d been waiting in the cool interior retreated to the streets, forming a neat line beside those who continued to wait outside. Last of all, the doctor came out. He seemed very tired. People smiled at him and murmured honored sir. He acknowledged them in a distant way as his gaze swept down the line. He seemed ready to turn away, hurry off to his lunch, but he hesitated. “Phousita?” he called softly. He stepped toward her.
She bowed her head deeply. “Tuan.”
“You’ve changed. You look different. More . . . vigorous?” He seemed suddenly aware of the many people who listened. “Come,” he said, crooking a finger. And she left her place in line to follow him down the street.
“Tuan,” she said, hurrying after him. “I have changed. I think I’m becoming a witch. I see many things I never saw before. The old woman’s spirit comes to visit me now. I think she’s pleased.”
Zeke snorted. “How many times do I have to tell you there are no such things as witches?”
Phousita nodded patiently. “Yes, tuan.” The doctor would always insist on that. “Still, I’ve come to ask your advice. Though there are no such things as witches, there are many here who practice the trade. And some of them are very rich and very fat. Since I’ve developed some talents, I too would like to practice the witch’s trade. Though of course,” she added hastily, “there are no such things as witches.”
