Falling was not like falling, more like drifting, as if he were inside a cabinet again, ensconced, his thoughts and concerns swept away. He had not felt this way since the creatures that hunted him had infiltrated his dream, and he’d drowned in the cold fluid. Though he wondered if monsters would appear again as he drifted, or if he were currently filled, unawares, to brimming, with viscous liquid. He tried to keep his eyes closed and his thoughts subdued, to make the best of this relative peace.
He could breathe quite comfortably. The atmosphere, though, was a bit chilly, and whatever quality gave it the unpleasant smell also made his lungs ache when the air got inside him and was distributed throughout.
Later, he brought his hands close to his face, and saw them, in their tattered sheaths, as pale, disembodied forms, nothing else—an impenetrable blackness all around. His body was nothing. No wind against his uniform, no feeling that some unforgiving surface of ancient composite or even metal at the bottom of the world was rushing up to meet him, to sunder his body, snuff out his life, an explosion of guts and broken bones—
Hadn’t that been a desire? Just moments ago?
Keeping his hands in front of his face became an effort, so he stopped.
At this point, Crospinal had another vision of his father, standing before him, straight and youthful, tethered to his gate. The way Crospinal remembered his father from his earliest memories: healthy, strong, newly connected. Hopeful.
Crospinal wanted to ask why he had been told untruths, but he was beginning to understand that his father had only been trying to protect him, and that truth was subjective. One could hope for glimmers in life, pieces that could be arrayed into a semblance of pattern but upon which order or coherence or satisfactory conclusions could never be imposed.
He looked into his father’s eyes again, saw other worlds, their faint majesty.
Life, and the struggle to make sense of it, had not always been this way.
He wanted to resolve the image of his father, let memories go, and forgive, because falling in this void was the most pleasant interlude Crospinal had experienced in some time—
Until he was punched, that is, in the ribs.
Pleasantries vanished as he curled, winded, around the fist. Another dirty, pale hand (not his own) hit him, again in the stomach, managing to grab the tough fabric of his cruddy old uniform and tug him sharply aside while he gasped. He could do nothing to defend himself. He tried to suck in air as yet another hand appeared, moving under his head, supporting him while clenching his collar and pulling: his lungs had stopped working.
As he opened his mouth to complain or scream or maybe rasp out his death rattle, a hard, blunt object was forced violently between his lips, and down, into his mouth; he struggled and gagged against this indignity but fingers pinched his nose shut and whatever was in his mouth moved as if alive, heading deeper; he felt a blast inside his body, white heat, reviving, and he heard faint voices—
Hauled out of the darkness, Crospinal flopped on a catwalk’s illuminated grille. The tube down his throat blew him full of air. Gagging, he tried to clear the obstruction but was prevented by a series of insistent hands, holding him flat, so he had little choice but to lay there, breathing heavy a few more times.
Ringed above him were three faces. The expressions hard, creased, wearing crude masks with goggles, and each had a luminescent halo. Something wrong with their mouths. Crouching over Crospinal.
His words came out gargled, a mealy mess; he choked on his own spit.
The tube led from inside him, up his throat, between his lips, to behind the back of the nearest man. (He decided.) An amber tube, with distinct bends in it. There was a sucking sound, and that blowing into his trachea, which made the core of heat in his chest, spreading through his limbs—
Three sudden grins exposed brown, broken sets of pegs, and darker gaps where there were no teeth at all. Crospinal blinked. He could not see any eyes behind the reflections off the lenses, just scales of light, flashing at him. The halo of each man glowed with pale blue. There was a row of halogens beyond them, recessed into the low ceiling. More shadow fell harshly down the grinning faces.
“Your teeth,” Crospinal tried to say, for rotten teeth was not even a possibility, unimaginable, since water swam with every additive teeth needed to stay healthy, dentites and nanites and calcium. Teeth fixed themselves, with water. But there was something even stranger about the glowing halos, which extended down the backs of their heads, and were attached around each bust with the bent tubes, one of which extended all the way—
Only when a tube shifted position in the corner of one man’s mouth, clenching of its own accord, did Crospinal understand that the strange headgear was alive, biological, a blue-glowing creature riding on their backs. The tubes were legs. One of which, coming from the creature’s flattened body, vanished into the corner of each mouth, while another bridged across, into Crospinal’s—
This time he managed to yank the hollow limb clear, grunting, wiping at his mouth, for his actions had seared his throat and torn bile and mucus up from his stomach. He coughed and grasped at his neck.
The men laughed, lenses flashing. Their open mouths, the ruined teeth, were an affront, and the symbiotic beasts seemed to flow forward, to better see and illuminate Crospinal’s distress.
“Why didn’t you let me fall?” he moaned.
In conference, they whispered, hissing, consonants sharp against ruined bicuspids and incisors, a language Crospinal could not understand. Most characters in his father’s escapes who spoke tongues other than what his father had spoken could never be trusted, but maybe it was Crospinal who could not be trusted, not out here, shared language or not. He searched the thin band of the creature resting about the nearest man’s head, looking for features he could relate to—eyes, a mouth—but saw very little of the sort, just a tangle of collapsed mandibles, churning together.
“Dressed like a sailor’s asshole,” the closest man said, his cheek hooked back by the leg of the creature. “Crew.” Ejected like a bad word, but he grinned large, breath terrible. Grubby fingers rubbed at Crospinal’s uniform, testing it, pulling at the burnt fabric and crumbling neoprene.
The other men laughed and sprayed spittle.
“You can speak? My language?”
Fingers on the fabric stopped. The goggles went blank. “Sure,” the first man said. “The language of assholes.”
“You should’ve let me fall.” Crospinal’s throat was raw; talking hurt.
The man had taken Crospinal’s arm, turning his wrist. He saw areas of flesh through the ruined sleeve. In his cheek, the symbiote’s leg made a gurgling sound. He unhooked Crospinal’s mitt and pushed the sleeve high as the elbow, and then the slack lining, sliding the tip of his finger over the exposed scars. Crospinal felt cold all over, as if dead. Looking askance at his companions, the man said something else Crospinal could not understand—to which the companions did not reply. They were no longer laughing.
“What?” said Crospinal.
“You weren’t falling.” Turning back, shifting the leg in his mouth with a twitch of his cheek, he said: “You were floating.” His words came out sibilant and wet. “See? Not enough air. No oxygen. No gravity. Understand? Drifting in the pylon. No helmet, no mite. About to die. Maybe dead already.”
Crospinal yanked his hand free, reattaching the useless mitt, doing his best to cover himself back up.
“How’d you get there, sailor boy? How’d this happen? Someone toss you in?” He gestured toward Crospinal’s arm. “And what happened there? Where you from?”
The harsh, dirty faces were creased with lines almost as deep as those that had appeared on his father’s face in the final stages of life, but there was another quality Crospinal could not quite define, a raw vitality his father had never exuded, nor had any others Crospinal met, even though the skin of these men was blotched, asymmetrically blemished, and unprotected by any sort of supplementary system.
He sat up. The hands moved aside to release him, make room. “I’m no sailor. I know what that means. I’m a boy, in the year of long walks.”
Laughter all around, which he tried to ignore.
“What happens to your urine?” Crospinal asked. He saw the tiny bulge of their genitalia, uncathetered, as shadows between their legs. He pointed. “You just let it dribble out? Waste the enzymes? What happens if you get sick? What happened to your teeth?”
They seemed amused by his barrage of questions; they were not as smart as they thought.
The masks were composed of scraps of plastic, poor quality mostly, the goggles just broken lenses, from a porthole maybe, and held together by twisted wires.
“And why do you have . . . animals on your backs?”
Moving then, as if registering Crospinal’s words, the symbiotes’ legs wrapped tighter around bare chests and necks, one leg pulling aside a cheek. Three trails of drool down three filthy chins. Flat bodies, covered with a thin shell, in segmented plates, hung halfway down the men’s backs, where a short, pointed tail dangled. Eight legs—only the front two formed the long tubes that went down inside, clenched. He watched the glowing beasts adjust, settle, adjust.
“We don’t eat pellets,” said the man, at last. “Or drink from a spigot. But you know that.” He flicked at the tattered cuff of Crospinal’s uniform. “And we don’t dress up, though they tried to get us to. You piss in your own mouth, sailor. You eat your own shit. Is that enlightened? I don’t know what’s worse: sailors, crew, or remaining a mindless dolt.” Showing his poor teeth, to make a point, he spat. The other two stared, bodies tense. “Were you trying to kill yourself?” Lips and tongue worked around the hollow leg. “How did you end up in the pylon? Can’t go in there like that. We can toss you back, if you’d like. Finish the job.”
Though the three men laughed again, Crospinal seriously considered this offer. “I fell in,” he said, and they laughed even more.
Beyond, he saw the coarse grilles he rested on extending toward a warren of tunnels in a moderately smooth wall, with composite deposits like a honeycomb over subsumed beams. Each tunnel entrance was ringed by a cluster of lights, flickering semaphores, indicating depth and function, and giving directives. Crospinal had never learned the code, nor could he see any details within to judge for himself the depth or content.
Perched here, over the abyss, with a quiet, flowing silence coming up from the bottom of the world, he looked down. The blackness from which he had been pulled was absolute, and it called to him. Had he wanted to end his life? How long, he wondered, had he drifted?
“We look for treasures,” said the man, “but we never caught someone in there. Not alive, anyhow.” The laughter was quieter, wet as the words. Dark saliva bubbled around the leg of the symbiote. When the man tried to take Crospinal’s wrist again, Crospinal made a fist and pulled back.
“Leave me be.”
“There are three kinds of people in the world,” the man said, assessing the potential of getting hit, and deciding chances were low. “And you aren’t any of them.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
The pale aura of the animal’s glow illuminated traces of the inlays, shimmering under the flesh of their stringy forearms, which were held out to him now, just like the girl and the cowled boys from the train station had done. The inlays were where his own would have been, had his father not unstitched them from his veins. When he looked back up, the lenses were intent upon him. He was expected to speak.
“If you don’t eat pellets, how can you survive? And if you don’t drink water, well, your teeth will rot.”
“We’ve come out the other side, asshole. You can’t turn your back on flesh provided, nor water. You can’t live without them. But you can, sailor boy. You can break away. You’ve woken up now, and you can decide.”
“I carry my father’s light,” Crospinal said.
Shifting on his knuckles to lift a hand, and poking Crospinal, the man hissed: “No sermon can save you. Tell me, sailor boy, do you believe the world is travelling through a void, and one day we’ll arrive?”
“What?”
“Isn’t that what sailors think? Though they’re too messed up to know it. The destination is where they came from. The great circle.”
“I told you I’m not a sailor. I was born in the pen. I never heard anything like that.”
Above the goggles, an eyebrow arced up. That finger jabbed him again. “We started from the same place, me and you. Different years, different guardians, but the same hub. Maybe you think we’re rolling across the wasteland, under a big, red sun, waning, inside an ancient vehicle supported by wheels as big as the moon.”
Crospinal almost touched the man’s arm but could not bring himself to contact the dirty flesh with his own. He was pretty sure the man would not have permitted it anyhow. These theories had struck him, and in a strange way, reminded him of his father’s trances and speeches, and had made Crospinal think of mountains. Images the words evoked were strong. “I’ve seen it,” he said. “I’ve seen the orb, and the windblown dust.”
“That’s why you’re an asshole.” Smiling that jagged smile. “It’s all lies. All beliefs, theory. When you see that sun, you’re looking at a file. A picture. Right now is all there is. There’s no void outside—only here, in the pylon. Sailors are fanatics.” The words echoed, but the echo was silenced instantly by the dark pylon behind them. “We bring supplies. That crusty old shit in the back room, he hijacked a collection of misfits—” the man spat again “—before he discovered the ampoules. I spent some time there myself, but I figured it out. We all did. Saw the light, as you would say. Who would die for a sailor? And who would wear a suit that takes away humanity? But his suits are gone now. His train hardly flies anymore. There’s no saviour and never was, and nobody can change the course of the world. Sooner you break from your ideas of saving everyone the better.” Tones of anger had crept into the man’s voice. A bare arm swept out, toward the darkness. “You eat your magic pellets, and drink your poisoned water. You suck it until you’re plump and as stupid as they are.” Holding out his arms again, the integrated wires or filaments under his grubby skin were clear, climbing up under a bracelet of copper strapping, to fade near his elbow.
This time, Crospinal could not resist touching him, fingers on the warm, dry skin. Were he and these men ever the same beast?
“We live in the pylon. They said no one could live there.” The man pointed with his chin. “And we don’t believe in nothing.”
“We saved your life, sailor boy,” said one in the back, who had not previously spoken, startling Crospinal. “But we can’t save you from the shit inside your own head.”
And the third added: “If you wasn’t so filled with preservatives, you’d make a fine meal. But none of us want to live forever.”
Laughter returned, unanimous, uproarious, the three mouths open, lenses glinting, dark drool spraying. Even the symbiotes twitched and clenched, attempting to stay perched on the bobbing heads.
Crospinal was clapped on the shoulder by a firm hand.
“Okay, asshole, go back where you came from now. Crawl on home.”
“I can’t.”
The hand remained, moving down, clenching Crospinal’s upper arm in a powerful grip.
“Hey—”
They had turned suddenly, as one, toward the tunnels. Was there a sound? Crospinal squinted but saw nothing amiss, heard no approach. Lights around the openings flashed their code.
Frowning, Crospinal pulled free easily, as if he’d been forgotten already.
The men stood. They were about as skinny as he was. The one who’d spoken first smiled down upon Crospinal with his rotten smile. “Good luck, asshole,” he said, then he reached to tap the creature on his back—which puffed and tightened—and, with the distorted grin still on his face, launched himself backward, a flip out into the darkness, and vanished.
His associates followed, engulfed one by one like apparitions, or haptics collapsing. They might never have existed.
Crospinal sat for a long while on that platform, over the abyss, the stale breath of the world rising up around him. He hugged himself and he rocked. There was no other movement, no sounds, from any direction. He thought briefly, obliquely, as was his wont, about stepping off the brink, taking up where he had left off, but instead he got up and headed toward the closest tunnel opening, across a sloping array of strange, hard tiles, and entered the delicate ring of semaphored lights.
A malfunctioning icon crackled in the air before his face and was gone. No controller to greet him.
Ambients swelled with his passage. The narrow hall was choked with old deposits and polymers, drifting in clusters. Nothing of note, no clue as to what had frightened the men off, if indeed they had been frightened. Perhaps the men had merely finished lecturing him, and had wanted to leave on a dramatic note. Crospinal nearly smiled, then wondered if he’d lost his mind. Running fingertips along the texture of the wall, he walked, expecting dogs to appear, barking, excited to know of his return, but of course none did; this tunnel did not lead home
He came to a junction, where an assortment of what looked like concrete ephemera were scattered in a rough heap. He stopped, surprised by this incongruity. There were tiny metal tools; what looked like styrene toys, from a children’s haptic; a polymethyl fan blade, cracked in two. He crouched, tingling and, without touching anything, looked about.
In the low, domed ceiling, directly above a blackened mark on the floor, not far from the pile, was a sort of vent with hard edges, as if the frame had been cleared of any build up. He rose, moving cautiously. His bare foot felt granular residue, and warmth. A fire . . .
Inspecting the perimeter of the junction area, Crospinal eventually located two small, primitive devices—a cowering food dispenser, and a pharmacy—wedged into a recess with an opening just large enough for his hand to enter. He struggled to catch and remove the devices, which had begun protesting weakly, but they couldn’t resist for long. When he turned the food dispenser over, liquid spilled onto the floor. (Slowly absorbed, with a nasty stench.) The skin of the devices was scratched, marked with crude glyphs.
“Are you smart at all?” Crospinal whispered. “Can you understand me? Who did this to you? Is there a father nearby?”
More liquid dripped. He released the dispenser, and it scrambled quickly away, back into the recess.
Just off a short connecting hall, he found a soft pile of padding on the floor tiles—mostly insulation, torn from a metallic panel, like the ones the crew cabins had been built from, and the wheelroom back home. Carried here? Or was this all once a pen? Maybe the father had died of cancer. How many children, if any, had lived here? The idea of having a single doppelganger, once so clear, now seemed an almost absurd concept. His girlfriend could have been summoned away by anyone putting their hands into a console, though he tried to convince himself that she would not be as attracted to others as she had been to him, and was staying away for awful reasons he could neither fathom nor change. He was mildly surprised to find that this notion brought little comfort. Her reasons for liking him in the first place, for returning so often in the early days of their relationship when they had fallen in love, were most likely the same emotions that had made him climb the seven ladders to porthole of the harrier, day after day, and lie awake at night, unable to stop thinking of her.
Crospinal sniffed. Where the tiles curved up to become the wall, in a slow grade, he detected the scent of feces, as if a processor had broken down or leaked.
Pushing at the accumulation of padding and arcane trinkets with his foot exposed tiny scavengers, scurrying for shelter. Like in a garden, he thought, frowning. Were there nutrient tiles nearby?
And the walls were scarred with subtle pictures, etched into the polymer deposits with a substance the composite could not eradicate, though toluene stained the areas purple. Crospinal imagined some of these crude depictions might be images of people, but he could discern no real likeness when he inspected them closer.
Two dead rats—biological rats, flesh and blood—lay in a steel fusion box, side by side, black, half immersed in thick liquid. Their skin was loose, coming off, their yellow teeth exposed. Each corpse had a visible wound where life had drained out. Crospinal slowly lifted one of the bodies, held it aloft, inspecting the glazed eyes, the bared teeth, trying to assure himself that no essence could possibly linger after a heart stops. Endtime . . .
He bit down with his sharp teeth, filling his mouth with wet fur and the sweet, sickly fluid that burst from the flesh and made him gag. The small bones were harder to break than he had expected, but he persisted, tearing off a mouthful. His stomach protested and he only managed to cram the rat back into the box before vomiting onto the floor and over his own hands, spattering his ruined uniform.
Trying to stand, pulling at the tabs down the front of his tricot—because the ambient temperature had suddenly doubled—but his stomach clenched again, heaved and heaved, until it could heave no longer, and he was left dry-retching on all fours.
When he was finally able to straighten, feeling weak and slightly astonished by what he had attempted, a timid controller hovered before him, at eye level. The device had seen better days. “You okay?”
“Where were you?” Crospinal said, wiping at his mouth. The dead rats appeared to be laughing soundlessly at him from their box. The one he had tried to eat was half out of the liquid, escaping. His stomach flipped. There was no sustenance left inside him. “A real food dispenser, and real water. A full spigot. There’s just broken things here.”
“Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right?”
The controller hesitated before leading him toward an obscured wall unit, which, hissing open, crumbling the layer that had encrusted it into the structure, revealed a dormant food dispenser that appeared, when it woke, to be quite terrified.
“You have a customer,” said the controller. “Don’t worry. The coast’s clear.”
Rumbling, the dispenser, active now, extended its neck to peer about before quickly dropping a pellet into Crospinal’s mitt. Behind the dispenser, a spigot cowered, trying to remain hidden. Crospinal was about to take a water bulb, to drain it, gargle, feel the rush, the cure, but he paused, staring at the still warm food in his hand, sinuses filled with bland scents, recalling so many meals with his father, the lectures of proteins and sustenance, prayers of thankfulness for what they were about to receive, the generosity of this world.
Turning his hand on end, he let the pellet fall, uneaten, to the floor.
“Waste not, want not,” scolded the controller. “What’s wrong with you? Everybody’s nuts. All I ever wanted to do was run a nice station. Attract some crew. That’s all. Why’d you do that?”
“I guess I’m not hungry.” He watched the pellet slowly dissolving into the dirty tiles, back to whence it had come. Flesh of the world to flesh of the world. . . .
“Are you feeling better now that you’ve wasted resources?”
“Yes . . .”
When the pellet had vanished completely, Crospinal tugged again at the front tab of his uniform, then at the lateral tabs, deciding which way was best to remove a battered tricot—which way would be least painful—but his groin crawled in anticipation of the discomfort that pulling out a catheter brought. He had peeled his pale shoulder free and that was it. The broken collar refused to unlatch altogether; the comm jack and the monitor scope fizzled briefly.
“Uh,” said the controller, “there’s no means to dispose of suits in that condition here, so please stop trying to take it off. Jumpsuits are point-of-generation waste. They can’t be recycled here.”
“There must be a dispenser nearby.” But Crospinal had given up on the half-baked idea of taking his uniform off.
“There used to be, when a complement lived here. None left in these parts at all. They were destroyed. I’ve never even seen one before, because I got transferred here. No amenities any more, I’m afraid.”
Crospinal shrugged. “Maybe they’re hiding?”
“We have no reason to hide from each other. You know the boots of that jumpsuit are breached? There are holes in the fabric, the helmet interface is bent and shorted, and the processor’s exhausted. That suit’s doing you more harm than good. You should probably get yourself to an active station, dispose of everything correctly, and don a fresh one. Do you still have the helmet?”
“You know what? How about if I ask you questions? I got a lot of questions. You’re supposed to be helping me.”
“What sort of questions?”
“About the bays, for one.”
“What about the bays?”
“Elementals work out there. Machines, as big as me. Smart ones. And little smart machines, too, like the rats that fix people up. And standing ones, who don’t say very much.”
“What’s your point? You haven’t asked a question yet.”
“What motivates them? Do they work for us?”
“Who’s us?”
“Humans.”
“Crew, you mean? Look, I’ve never even been to a bay. Those sorts of machines don’t frequent these halls. There’s not many of them left anywhere, as far as I understand. I think the answer you’re looking for is chaos. Chaos controls them. Same as you.”
“I asked one to open a cabin door. I knew that shouldn’t be possible, but the door opened, and the machine went through. There was a . . . conspiracy, to hurt me. But I’ve never even—”
Rudely interrupting, the controller darted closer: “You should know,” it said, “that the child is watching you.”
Crospinal went cold. “What child?”
“The one who lives here.”
“Another boy?”
“He likes to watch people.” The controller was oblivious to Crospinal’s cataplexy. “He likes your suit, but he seldom comes out—”
However, from behind a scale in the wall, unclean, wearing nothing but a shawl made of two insulating sheets, bound by rusted cable ties, a young child did indeed emerge.
“Ah,” said the controller, backing off.
This was not the other boy, not the one who might have reflected Crospinal, but a much younger child, perhaps in the year of cognitive leaps, or of independent thinking, with large, green eyes and long, lank hair. If the controller had not brought up gender, Crospinal would have thought the child a girl. He had not seen green eyes before and they were disconcerting. The boy stared for a long while, but then a quick smile revealed rotten teeth, just like those of the men who’d saved Crospinal from floating in the pylon. Holding out tiny arms—marked with the clear, intricate underlay—the boy came forward.
“Hello,” said Crospinal, nervous. “I, uh, I don’t really like contact. I don’t hug.”
Yet the child continued, until he was embracing Crospinal’s legs and holding on tight. When Crospinal finally touched the child in return (because he did not know what else to do, though he wanted to push the kid away), the crude plastic clothes rustled, and he felt beneath them prominent bones, larger than the rat’s, but which he could break just as easily, nonetheless, if he tried. There was nothing to this boy. Over the kid’s large head, which was pressed against his thigh, he mouthed to the controller: Who is this?
“He, uh, doesn’t talk. Can’t talk. No capacity for it. Not like the others. He doesn’t have a formed larynx. He doesn’t hear so good, either.”
Crospinal patted the boy on the head; the hair was matted and dry. “Why are they afraid?”
“Why is who afraid?”
“The men who live in the pylon, or whatever they called it. The three men out there. And the sustenance dispensers. They’re afraid.”
Truthfully, Crospinal was fed up with the vagaries and duplicities of devices, machines, and people alike. He was prepared for denial and lies. No one lives in the pylon. What men? What are you saying? But the controller merely said, “They feed this boy. They bring him treats. He put ideas into them.”
“How could that be, if he can’t talk?”
The child had stopped hugging Crospinal and seemed bored now. Tottering, looking down, he hopped a few steps, stopped, and extended his arms, like a crow’s wings, trying to balance on one foot. Glancing at Crospinal, the boy bent to retrieve a tiny styrene cap from the detritus piled near the wall. He put the cap in his mouth. Spit it out again. Resumed his hopping around, hands extended.
“Did you raise him?”
“I’m still raising him. He’s my ward.”
“Why didn’t you teach him to speak?”
“He’s a reject. Year of miracles. But he doesn’t eat the sustenance anyhow.”
Considering cripples, rejects, and controllers that seemed as smart as elementals and maybe as deceitful, Crospinal walked over to the hidden entranceway from which the child had entered the hall; a thick flake of composite exposed a narrow, arched hallway, which extended toward a larger area and continued, well-lit, curving around, out of sight. The air was warm and smelled like recycling. He could see the console from here. A large room, full console with holes, a periscope, and active thumb plates. The icon of the hands burning above.
Gone lightheaded, trying not to react, Crospinal said, “When I was little, two elementals took me to the garden for a walk. My father was tethered, so he could never go anywhere, not in the flesh.”
“Yes,” said the device, perplexed. “A passenger. Connected to a bank. Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m going to take this child for a walk.”
“Pardon me?”
“Me and him are going for a little walk.”
“I have to come with you.”
“No, you don’t. You’re going to stay here. I’ll bring him back.”
The controller considered this. “Please don’t hurt him. I feel responsible. Even though he doesn’t use my amenities. I’ve grown quite fond of the child.”
Crospinal’s heart pounded. He went over to the child—who was kneeling now, rolling a carbon tube between his palm and the floor, over and over, making an annoying, rumbling sound. Crospinal touched the boy’s naked shoulder, which stopped the repetitive movements, and the boy turned his face. Astonishing to look into the green eyes from so close. How could this be a boy’s face? His mouth had gone dry. He let a few drops from the siphon moisten his tongue. Searching the features to see if this child felt a mysterious wonder, like his sister had in the haptics, he judged by what he saw in the open candour, the expression, the trust, that this might be the case. Was Crospinal the only person who had not experienced wonder? Had this also been, like his inlays, removed by his father? Unaltered, what might he have been? He held out an open hand.
Tiny, hot fingers locked into his own. Trapped material of his mitt fizzled gently. He helped the boy to his feet. He weighed more than Crospinal had expected. When Crospinal had been this age, his legs were bowed like the frame of a transfer tube.
Crippled, and the damaged.
Clenching his jaw, he took the boy down the hidden hall. The child displayed no hint of dismay thus far and continued to frolic; when Crospinal looked over his shoulder, he saw the controller in the archway, backlit by ambients, peering in.
“There was two machines that worked in pen,” Crospinal said quietly, as if praying. “And a bunch of controllers, like yours, where I grew up. I had a father. He could project dogs and spirits and ghosts.” Crospinal laughed briefly, awkwardly loud, because he had thought at first that he was just going to talk for the sake of it, to calm the boy, but these words actually meant something to him, like a convocation, initiating mechanisms and pulling forth emotions within his body that enabled him; he needed to tell the boy about his past, before things went too far. He needed to tell the boy, in order to continue. “I named the machines. Though my father didn’t want me to. They had red eyes. Do you have any friends?” Crospinal thought about the dirty, crouching trio, their nudity, their horrible teeth, the beasts on their backs that were parasitical and leering and keeping them alive.
Swinging forward, the boy kicked at nothing Crospinal could see. He did not answer, but neither did he let go of Crospinal’s hand. He seemed so happy. Where their flesh contacted, moisture had reached uncomfortable levels. The Dacron was totally useless. Fecal matter and snot and every other repugnancy from the happy child was crawling inside his sleeve.
“Most of my friends were apparitions.” Crospinal looked at his long legs, in the burnt uniform, and gauged the steps of them both, he and the boy, side by side in this composite hall. There was a tight core in his gut from, he supposed, trying to eat the rat. He peed a bit, felt the processor struggling. “Apparitions drifted about the pen. Dogs mostly. Some showed up in haptics. The characters in the escapes weren’t like dogs, because my father didn’t send them out. They were from the world, from the banks, where pellets and water comes from. Where uniforms came from. But you don’t like that stuff, do you?”
The boy paid him no attention. They had reached the console. Crospinal stopped before it and the boy looked straight ahead, wondering. With his free hand—which was shaking—Crospinal lifted the flap, uncovering the pair of holes. He felt the hum already, in his molars.
“Look,” he said. “Want to see better? Want to see what’s at the bottom?”
Bending at the waist, to pick the boy up, but now the boy was frowning.
“It’s okay,” said Crospinal. He took the child by the waist and had to tighten his grip when the lithe boy started fighting. “I’m not going to hurt you!” Clearly alarmed, the boy twisted away, surprisingly strong, and Crospinal nearly lost his balance.
“I just want to see what happens!” he shouted. “Put your arms in these holes, just for a second!” He yanked the child closer, trying to hold onto the tiny torso, but struggling. “I just want to see what happens!”
Turning on him suddenly, green eyes flashing, hair flinging forward, the child lunged, and Crospinal did fall, the boy upon him, attacking.
“You little fuck—”
Broken teeth found his thumb, and bit hard, crunching into his flesh. Crospinal screamed. Above him, the controller appeared in his narrowing sight, having travelled quickly to resolve the matter, or save the boy. But Crospinal had already lost this fight.
There was a lot of blood.