Part Eight- Home
'I'm fine.'
'Blow into this, please.'
'Ffffff. I'm fine.'
'Okay, now say ah.'
'Ahhh. I'm fine.'
'Good. Just pop this in your mouth for a moment.'
'Mm fnnmph!'
'Good girl. Now this'll only sting a little-'
'I'm fine! OW!'
Escher grabbed her arm, glaring at the woman in the long white coat who had just punctured it. 'Leave me alone, will you? I told you, there's nothing wrong with me!'
'Shhh, sweetie.' Her mother, who was sitting anxiously in a chair alongside the examining table, reached for her hand. In the chaotic jumble of events that had so far followed Escher's return, Suzanne Griffin had found herself unable to stop touching her daughter, just to reassure herself that she was really there. The last day and a half had been a dark dream that no mother should ever have to endure. And then, two hours ago now, the knock on the door…
A miracle. Her Escher, scratched and grimy but otherwise unhurt, with a sheepish smile and two beaming policewomen in tow. Suzanne had drifted through the whirlwind of hugs, questions, statements and advice in a sort of daze of happiness, one which showed no signs of abating even now, in the sobering surroundings of the emergency wing of Marybride Central Hospital.
A sandy-haired uniformed man who had been introduced to her as 'Detective Inspector Ramierez, Juvenile Liason Officer' stood by the consulting room door. The doctors, despite Escher's protestations, had given her a careful examination as she sat on the cold metal checkup table. And throughout the entire procedure, Escher kept up an indignant mantra, that she was fine…
Suzanne was glad her daughter felt fine. She just wanted to be sure. She couldn't imagine the nightmare her little girl must have been through in the last thirty-six hours. She was not a vindictive woman, but she couldn't suppress the thought of what she would like to do with the…creature that had done this to her, to them…
'Wanna wanna Oreos!' Jamie, who up until that point had been eviscerating a teddy bear on the floor of the consultancy room, had spotted the vending machine in the hall. Suzanne looked imploringly up at D.I. Ramierez.
'Do you mind…?'
'Sure, ma'am. Come on, kiddo.' The tall officer pulled some change from his pockets and left the room. Like a small sugar-guided missile, Jamie followed his new best friend. The door clicked shut behind them.
The doctor, who had been listening to Escher's heartbeat, put down her stethoscope.
'Mrs. Griffin, may I have a word?'
Suzanne followed her under a curtain and into the office beyond. Escher was left alone in the room, kicking her trainers irritably against the metal supports of the table.
'Stop fussing, okay?' she called to nobody in particular. Something about the sterile white room made her feel watched. 'I'm fourteen. And I'm FINE!'
She was wearing a clean shirt and jeans that her mother had managed to grab from home before they left for the hospital, her own clothes bagged by the police. Her arm hurt, and the antiseptic on her grazed ribs stung. She was sick of being poked and prodded and questioned, and knew that it was far from over yet. All she wanted to do was to go home, and sleep.
'What do you mean, "traumatized"?!'
Her mother's voice rang out from the inner room, loud and slightly shrill. Escher had heard that tone of voice before, generally when some luckless CEO rang her up at home to tell her that sixteen hundred cases of perfume had been accidentally delivered to Bali instead of Birmingham. She sat up straighter on the chilly surface, and started to listen.
'Please, don't upset yourself, Mrs. Griffin. This is just a preliminary diagnosis. Physically, I'm happy to say, she is more or less absolutely fine, but…tell me, have you ever heard of P.T.S.D?'
'What, is it a time zone? You're the doctor! Just tell me what's wrong with Escher!'
'It stands for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, ma'am. It's an unfortunate complicationary condition, which-'
'Post-Traumatic…? Look, I know this must have been hard on her, but my daughter's a strong, sensible little girl. She's acting perfectly normally-'
'Yes, Mrs. Griffin, that's what's worrying me.' The doctor's tone was concilliatory, but firm. 'Don't you think, given the situation, that we could expect her to act something other than "perfectly normally"?' To be upset, or even hysterical?, Now, I don't want to distress you, but when we think of what might have happened to her…'
Escher tuned out at this point, as words like 'denial' and 'repression' continued to float from the office door. They didn't get it. She hadn't really expected them to, especially as she had only told them the bare bones of her experience. How could she possibly explain? She'd been abducted, almost scared out of her skin, nearly squashed like a bug, threatened, turned upside down, held over lethal heights, and seriously yelled at, and the worst she had suffered was a couple of bruises and progressively itchier eyes due to a lack of allergy medication. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder monkeys. She was F-I-N-E.
The door squeaked. She turned her head as the doctor reappeared, followed by her mother, who was holding something in her hand. Escher looked closer, and realised that the something was in fact a transparent plastic bottle of serious-looking white pills. Her stomach lurched.
'Escher, honey…' Suzanne Griffin was smiling, in a way that suggested she was trying to deliver her lines correctly. 'Dr. Lawrence says you're okay to go home, isn't that wonderful?'
'What are those, Mom?' said Escher, warily.
'Oh, they're just a little something to help you relax and sleep better.' interjected Dr. Lawrence, cheerfully. 'But, like your mom says, you can leave.' Behind her, Jamie hurtled past the doorway, trailing cookie crumbs. His head was mostly hidden by a large policeman's hat, and he was making a noise that sounded like a stuck pig but was probably intended to be a siren. Dr. Lawrence winced. 'Soon.'
'Sleep? Sleeping pills? You're going to sedate me?' said Escher, incredulously. 'I don't need drugs! Mom, tell her!'
'Don't be so silly, young lady.' said her mother. 'Dr. Lawrence knows what's best for you. The last thing you need is to be having bad dreams because of that…that…'
'He didn't do anything to me!' yelled Escher. 'He was-' She stopped, abruptly. D.I. Ramierez had appeared in the doorway, and appeared to be suddenly listening very closely.
'…anyway, I don't really remember much.' she mumbled. Her mother and the doctor exchanged a glance, compelling her to add;
'But I'm not "repressing" anything!'
'Of course you're not, honey.' said her mother, unscrewing the bottle's safety lid. 'Now take one of these, and then we can go home.'
The night was freshening. Stars were coming out, slipping through the few remaining tatters of cloud. As the hours trickled towards midnight, a bloated moon appeared, waning and distorted like a nibbled chocolate coin. It shone mildly in the sky, casting long, benevolent shadows across the affluent mid-town Manhattan street below. Here, in a world of wide sidewalks and gravel-circled trees, it was easy to believe that nothing out of the ordinary could ever darken the stately doorsteps of the big, attractive apartment buildings that lined the road.
If anyone had happened to be standing at the mouth of a small side-street across the way, however, their illusion would have been quickly shattered. First came a strange, hazardous scent; not a smell so much as a change in the feeling of the air, a thick charged haze that hinted of danger. Or possibly of a faulty microwave oven.
Then, part of the shadow that obscured the alleymouth shifted, and detatched. Leaning heavily against the fine stone panels of the nearest wall, Otto slowly felt his way along until he came up against the rounded balustrade of one of the building's entrances. This appeared to present more of an obstacle than he was capable of navigating at the present, and he started to sag.
Only one of his smart arms was able to do anything to help. The top right was still protecting the reinforced case, and another was fully occupied trying to keep its crippled twin off the ground and out of harm's way. The fact was, without the ability to move and manage its own weight and balance, the damaged tentacle was nothing more than a lump of dead metal. A hideously heavy one at that, exhausting its host with the task of dragging it along. After several blocks of inefficient, arduous progress, one of the lower claws had finally reached over and lifted the wrecked arm by the 'throat' holding it up in a manner rather like that of an eagle's beak gripping its brokenbacked prey.
Movement was easier now, but no less exhausting. Still semi-stunned, burned and bleeding, Otto wasn't really in any condition to be doing anything, least of all wandering aimlessly through the city on what was becoming an increasingly chilly night, with only one smart arm to act as a guard and, more and more as time passed, a prop. Worse still, he was vaguely beginning to realise that some of the shrapnel that had exploded from his tentacle seemed to have done a number of unpleasant things to his left side, arm, and shoulder. Small rivulets of red seeped from below his ripped coat sleeve, collecting at his fingertips and spattering quietly on the ground.
Otto had no idea where he was, or where he was headed. But the tentacles did.
There was only one place they knew of, their swift reasoning ran, where parts could be obtained to fix the damage. The arms had not been in the vicinity of this place for a long time, but they knew it nonetheless. For a long time, in fact, it had been all they had known. Whatever reasons their creator had for failing to revisit it for so long were nullified against the urgency of the current situation. And now they had arrived, and their creator needed to be informed. The sooner the better, because he was leaking in the way organic beings seemed to whenever they malfunctioned, and against all logic seemed to be trying to fall asleep.
We're here.
Otto managed to open his eyes, fighting the pull of drowsiness that threatened to claim him.
Where?
Shielding his face from the invasive streetlights, he took a couple of faltering steps backwards and stared dazedly up at the building in front of him. It was a tall, impressive edifice of dark stone, rising up several floors and studded towards the top with a series of large, curved windows. The street-level doorway was raised on a flight of grey steps, under a scrolling archway set into the handsome brick porch. And there, framed between the top of the arch and a decorative ridge of carved masonry, shapes that looked like words…
He blinked, trying to shake the gathering mist from his vision, trying to focus on the dark, letter-like shapes, and trying, above all, to dispel the feeling of dread that was building at the sight of them. Yes, they were letters, standing out starkly in the streetlight, flowing metal characters running over the arch. Three words.
NOSCE TE IPSUM
The door proved the first problem. The free arm could have torn it in half within seconds, but something made it halt. It wavered, confused.
'No.' said Otto, almost indetectably. 'Just…open it.'
Obediently, the head snaked out, the segments opening slightly like the bloom of a flower. It nosed the keyhole, angling for easier access. Tiny silvery things extended from the claw tips, clicking industriously to themselves as they probed into the lock. After a couple of moments, there was a complicated little noise and the right-hand door swung gently inwards. The arm withdrew, and its lower counterpart pushed the gap wider, propelling their host over the threshold and into the darkness beyond.
The hallway was warm, close, and, as the weighted doors closed themselves, completely pitch black. Without a thought, Otto reached up to a place on the wall next to the door.
Click.
As the room flooded with light, the arms flicked around and headed purposefully for the tall staircase at the far end. Their creator lingered, or at least tried to, staring at the pictures that hung in their frames on the finished brick and plaster walls. Finally, his three functioning tentacles had to practically drag him up the ironworked steps like an unwilling child.
After this minor holdup, Otto climbed the four flights with surprisingly little help from his 'assistants'; since entering the building, he appeared to have found an extra reserve of strength somewhere. At the top of the fourth flight, a faded piece of yellow-and-black police tape sagged from the stair-rail to the wall. He shrugged it aside, and a claw ducked under the falling length, finding the door ahead and applying itself animatedly to picking the lock. A few seconds, and it yielded, leaving a clear line of sight through to the devastation beyond.
With the care of someone trying to tread on the paper-thin ice of a frozen lake, Otto walked forwards, down the wide steps. His footsteps, and the scanning movements of his tentacles, made strange, dopplering echoes in the church-like room. High above his head, massive brickwork arches spanned the length of the floor, creating a huge open-plan space reminiscent of a 1930's factory workroom. Where these met the walls, a series of semicircular windows, trimmed with Art Deco iron frames, allowed the pale light to fall in stretched, patterned beams across the floor. The structure had been modified along one wall to create a split-level anteroom, raised from the main floor by long steps. Everywhere you looked, the chamber was elegant, functional, and utterly, utterly wrecked.
Metal panels hung from the walls. At some point they had been fixed, square to square, covering most of the walls and floor. Now, only a few were still fully attached, and great sheaths of them were twisted and buckled away from the pitted brick beneath. Some had been dislodged entirely, and lay strewn across the floor. Throughout the room, the warped alloys reflected the moonlight like a hundred funhouse mirrors.
The brick arches were scarred, chunks of rubble spilling across the ground underneath the exposed girders. Lines of impact showed where heavy objects had struck the architecture, travelling inwards with unimaginable force. By the window, what metal remained on the littered floor was discoloured by the effects of rainwater that had blown in over the months, blown in through the windows where every single pane of glass had shattered as the iron frames had been dragged away…
…glass, sharp shards flying in the golden firestorm light, a thousand lethal silicate birds drifting in a lazy cloud, spinning, flashing.
A single scream-
Abruptly, Otto's arms let out an impatient sussurus, dragging him back to the present. He allowed them to distract him, letting his mind fill with their blessed, anaesthetizing insistence. In these familliar surroundings, every individual thought and memory he could possibly have was as unbearable as if the fissile blade of one of his creations's claws had been rammed forcibly into his own heart. So much easier to shut it away, switch off, and let the A.I do the thinking.
Directed by their urgent instructions, he climbed the steps at the far end, past scattered parts of overturned tables and the remains of electrical equipment and machinery. This had been the control centre, the computerized heart of the lab. Now, it was a desecrated technological graveyard. Shards and fragments of plastic, metal, glass and wires crunched underfoot with each step.
Here, there was a metal-panelled wall which for the most part didn't appear to have suffered like the others. On closer inspection, this was revealed to be because the panels, in a wide area about three by five metres square, were much thicker and heavier, sunk deep into the surrounding brick. In the centre of this sleek concealed feature was tiny square of duller metal, and it was to this that the arms led their creator. As if on some kind of automatic pilot, he thumbed the little panel aside, revealing a keypad of faintly glowing blue lights. The right upper arm, curving up over his shoulder, opened its head obligingly to illuminate the keys further as Otto typed.
SssssshhhhhhhhhhhhKA-CLUNK.
Compressed air hissed as the secret doorway swung open, the space beyond automatically filling with pure, bright ion-free radience. The white light shone like an open refrigerator in the unlit chamber, casting the harsh unnatural silhouette created by the arms and their host back across the littered floor behind them. The cavity that had been concealed was a tall inset display rack, made from a tough opaque plastic, backlit so that the material itself seemed to be glowing.
Lining the upper three shelves, dozens of identical shapes about the size of an open palm sat in neat rows, each upright on its own static-free stand, glistening under a thin protective coating of oil. The shapes resembled chunky three-leaf clovers, with two outer ridges marked with a bright yellow, the rest of the surface being a polished gunmetal grey. The inner edges bristled with connectors and tiny wires, every one tipped with a silicate cap to keep the fragile ends preserved. The lower shelves contained a selection of other parts, from thick lengths of high-tensile wire, to a number of delicate circuitboards of unique design. An array of tools hung on the inside of the door, pliers, heavy-duty adjusters, and other implements with heads so minute that they looked like they could be used to repair watches…belonging to ants.
The three functioning smart arms darted towards these items as if they were the Holy Grail. Otto knew that they had a blueprint of their own build stored in their memory, and in his current condition they were far more capable than he was of the required work. As the arms juggled with parts and tools, he slid down the wall with his back to the white light, arms folded loosely on his knees above the heavy band of the spinal brace.
His home; the site of his greatest failure, and the very last place in the whole hateful world that he wanted to be. Otto had never been one to believe in fate, but the fact that circumstance had forced him to return to this museum of painful memories still pretty much confirmed for him the theory that had been shaping itself in his mind through the long months since the accident; that life was nothing more than a sick joke, and death was the punchline.
Behind him, his smart arms worked busily on their inert counterpart. Extending it to its full length, they had laid it across the floor in the brightest area of glow from the shelves, stretched out thirteen feet from its origin point mounted on the cumbersome, flesh-fused brace. The charred, contorted sections were removed, replaced with the new segments in a fast balletic sequence of welds, connections, tweaks and links. Meanwhile, another claw had removed the cover on the damaged head's 'nerve centre', and tiny sparks flew and scattered as it checked, repaired and recallibrated the intricate circuitry within.
Lulled by the industrious sounds at his back, Otto's head began to droop. He was tired out, he had lost a fair amount of blood, and even the feel of the cold metal case by his side didn't make up for the suffocating helplessness of being here, this haunted shell of a place where, once upon a time, his entire world had fallen apart in front of his eyes.
Eyes. His eyes hurt. Hoping the stinging might fade, Otto closed them…
…and woke up.
He was lying on his back on a soft surface, blinking up with startled eyes at a plastered light green ceiling. There was a small patch of damp there, a darker mottled area with a pattern he recognised. He was always meaning to do something about that, fix it up with some polyfiller or something before the whole lot fell in. They'd called in an expert once, to check up on the patch and the many little friends it seemed to have brought with it, and some not so little either. The man had said it was to be expected in a converted masonry structure of this size, and that all that was needed was a few minutes with a sander and some sealant. One of these days.
Hang on…
He was lying on his back on a soft surface.
He was lying on his back.
The revelation shot him upright, into an electrified sitting position, fingers groping blindly and simultaneously over for the nape of his neck and under for the small of his back. Finding nothing, nothing but clear skin and the subtle line of humps that suggested the path of his normal, unmarred spine.
What on earth…?
His first reaction, past the bewilderment, was that of fear. With so many enemies, had he been suddenly, impossibly deprived of the only things in the world that were on his side? All the power he posessed was in the strength of his creations. Without them to protect him, it was easy to predict that he would survive about as long as a frog in a blender. And how could this have happened in any case? The arms had long since told him everything they had learned as he had lain unconscious that day in Surgery 6, including the neurologist's diagnosis that molten threads of conductive metal had fused to the nerves of his spine. A labyrinth of freak-formed actuators, inextricable links that ferried information back and forth between his brain signals and the smart arm A.I. Completely, utterly irreversible. Anyone here take shop class?
Then the visual information that had been banging on the walls of his shellshocked mind ever since he had sat up finally got through. Exhaling deeply to try and calm himself, he looked up at his surroundings…and almost stopped breathing altogether.
He was in a room, a long, warm room full of gently curving archways like that of his laboratory, except the roof was much lower and the floor here was carpeted in pine flags instead of metal. The walls were plastered and the same serene light olive shade as the ceiling. A large, richly patterned red Indian rug covered most of the floor, and a distressed wooden sideboard in his left periphery was cluttered with dumpy onyx figurines and pictures of various sizes.
Artifacts such as these abounded in the room, which looked as if it had been ground zero at a very tidy explosion caused by a collision between an antique shop and a ethnic goods fair. Hand-carved hanging decorations were spread across the walls, in the few places left between the fine art prints and the large windows, which were shaded by simple hessian blinds. Sunlight filtered in through the little wooden slats, filling the room with a golden morning glow in which motes of dust danced and sparkled. It was a well-worn, well-loved, safe cocoon of a living space, and Otto knew it so well that he could have walked blindfold down the whole length of the embroidered rug to the far door without so much as brushing against a single object.
Wonderingly, sight-without-sense marvelling, he gazed around. Long-forgotten details passed his vision; the little silver trays full of seashells on the windowsill, the wobbly leg of the bedside table propped up with a book, the ivory linen sheets of the double bed on which he had woken, was sitting…
…the double bed…
Very, very slowly, Otto started to turn. The sheets rustled as he moved, shifting on shoulders that felt ridiculously light without the weight they had grown used to. Not wanting to, unable not to, he turned like a puppet towards the other side of the bed. The left side, the side against the wall. He turned…
The sheet was wrapped around her, the soft material covering her slender shape all save for a shoulder and the delicate arch of her neck. She was facing away from him, deeply asleep, her face hidden by the flowing waves of golden-hazel hair that fell across the pillow, spreading out like a halo. Under the snowy blanket, her side rose and fell in gentle rhythm.
Otto reached out, feeling the world drift to a lazy halt around this place and its golden-mote light. It was as if, at this moment, the whole of the universe existed only to contain his hand, and her shoulder, and nothing else. As his hand crept forwards, he felt the nightmare reflection that had claimed him since the accident begin to craze and crack away, a horrible reality crumbling under the pressure of this one, a truth that was both desired- craved- and far more real. I had a crazy dream last night, Rosie. I dreamed-
He touched her shoulder, felt warm, living skin beneath his, felt her stir…
…and woke up.
The smart arms had finished. With dilligent care, the upper right claw flexed its dextrous manipulators and replaced the cover at the base of its twin's head. A pause, and then with a hum that rose in pitch and was accompanied by a faint, vibrating rattle, a red light flickered at the heart of the mended digits. Smoothly, the arm rose into the air, stretching experimentally in all directions. It angled its head, tracking its surroundings as the camera eye came fully back online. The other tentacles discarded their tools, their task complete. To an observer, the way they turned to regard the fixed arm, the heads opening slightly to study its new movement, would have seemed satisfied, even slightly smug.
Strangely, their creator did not appear so gratified. The smart arms had been aware, after a while, of the mind with which they were connected entering a state of deep R.E.M sleep, which they had deigned unnecessary to disturb. Upon waking, however, his actions had been somewhat odd- he had gasped, heartrate soaring, and reached with both hands for his back as if compelled by a powerful reflex. Then, after feeling the neural interface ridges that ran from the brace up to just below his hairline, he had let his arms fall slowly back across his knees, leaning forwards into a hunched position from which he showed no signs of emerging.
The smart arms dipped towards their host, concerned by this strange behaviour. After a while, however, they stirred and reared back, hissing with alarmed aversion. They were mechanical, after all, and they did not like salt water.