Chapter 10. Abnormal Habits
It didn't take long, of course, for Aster to become addicted to codeine. All opium derivatives were highly addictive. It was easier to endure the horrors of life in the Maestro's palace, when you were drugged. The Maestro himself seemed to have no further interest in her, other than making her perform whatever degrading tasks he could think of, ranging from pouring his wine, to scrubbing the floor, to emptying his chamber pot. The latter answering in the negative the question Aster had once asked herself regarding whether or not anyone manufactured toilets large enough for the ten foot tall monster. In her drug induced haze, she no longer recalled asking herself that question. She was, however, eventually to remember.
She quickly ran out of the codeine that Doctor Llewellyn had given her, and returned to his hospital for a refill. And another. And several more. He always gave her more, without asking any questions. The 20th century War on Drugs had long since been burned away by Thermonuclear War.
Aster was raped, several more times. Generally by a particular group of guards whose unofficial leader was the sadistic Paul Rasse. It always hurt. After a while, she stopped minding. With her mind nearly constantly fogged by codeine, it didn't seem real, anymore. It was just one more unpleasant thing to endure, like having to feed and clean up after the animals at the zoo during bad weather.
The addiction of the once clever Aster to brain fogging narcotics did not go un-noticed by the Maestro's stable master, Daniel Wolfkiller. He had a very specific idea in mind as to how to get Aster to use that clever, brilliantly educated mind of hers to find some obscure weakness in the apparently invulnerable green monster. Or better yet, more than one.
Needing to have her in decent shape in order to do what he wanted her to do, the stable master waited a few months until the cast came off Aster's arm, and she stopped limping, then a few months more to make sure she had fully recovered. At least, as much as she was going to, as Doctor Llewellyn had told him that the poor girl had internal scarring that was probably never going to heal. Finally the day came when he was actually about to approach her, but changed his mind when he noticed her dull expression and slow reactions. Rather than say anything, he watched and listened to her at the next meal. She spoke very little, of course, but when she did, her vocabulary was several notches below what it had once been.
Stoned on something. He thought. Most of the women kept by the Maestro ended up drunk or stoned almost all the time. He really didn't care about the other women. Being partly oblivious to what was happening to them was a mercy for them. It was no doubt a mercy for Aster, as well, but he couldn't use the other women. He could use the girl.
Wolfkiller wasn't certain what Aster was on, or where she was getting it. Probably she kept it somewhere in whatever bed she used in the women's room, but the armed guard there did not let just anyone inside without the Maestro's express permission, and there were no duties that the stable master had that would give him any sort of plausible pretext for entering that room let alone searching through Aster's belongings. Possibly she was prostituting herself to get it, which would prove inconvenient, as he would then have to deal with whoever she had her arrangement with, and find a way to threaten or bribe him into breaking the arrangement without arousing his suspicions as to his real reasons why. Most likely he'd have to convey the impression that he wanted Aster to prostitute herself to him.
Still, there was one other possible source of whatever drugs Aster was taking, for Wolfkiller to investigate first. Wolfkiller went into the stables and closed a few of the windows that opened out of the paddocks. Then he threw half a bale of hay below one particular open window, and stuck a pitchfork in the ground below one particular closed window. It was a code. Wolfkiller took care to often have some windows open and some shut, in the stables, and to have hay, pitchforks, and other objects often strewn around. But the particular arrangement he had just made was a signal that he wanted to meet with the doctor. Doctor Llewellyn, in his turn, had a code with the stable master that involved reviewing patient notes during meals while wearing a particular tie and having his left shoe untied. The doctor would, of course, frequently do one or two of those things during meals, but to do all three in combination meant that he wanted to meet with Wolfkiller. The meeting place often changed as well. Last time it had been in a park. Now it was at a picnic table at a food vendor in Dystopia.
Later in the day, at the appointed time (which also frequently changed), Daniel Wolfkiller was eating a sandwich of indeterminate meat which was starting to go bad. He grimaced and forced himself to eat it anyways. About halfway through it, Doctor Llewellyn sat down near him, with a bowl of stew. The physician took several spoonfuls, and from the smell of it, Wolfkiller wished that he had ordered the stew rather than the sandwich.
"So…" said the doctor in a low voice after swallowing a spoonful of meat, carrots, and potatoes.
"The girl's on drugs." It wasn't necessary to specify who 'the girl' was. There was only one girl, other than his daughter, that Daniel Wolfkiller had any interest in. Besides which the rest of the females kept by the Maestro were, unlike Aster, at least physically mature, though some of them were nearly as young.
Doctor Llewellyn shrugged and took another bite of stew. "And?"
"Are you giving it to her? Or is she getting it from somewhere else?" Somewhere else in this case of course actually meaning someone else, whom the stable master would then have to decide how best to deal with.
"I gave her a bottle of codeine. For the pain of her injuries while they healed." The doctor said in an even voice. "I let her refill it when she needs more."
"When she needs more…" Irritation showed in Wolfkiller's sour expression. "It's been months since that bastard nearly killed her. Months since you took the cast off her arm. She doesn't limp any more. I'm sure she's been raped since, but what he did to her has long since healed. She's a god damned junkie, and you know it."
"Yes, I know. Most of those poor women are. What of it?"
"Stop giving her the stuff!" Wolfkiller demanded.
"No." The doctor shook his head. "I won't."
"I need her!" Fury was evident on the younger man's face.
"You need to use her, you mean." corrected Doctor Llewellyn.
"Yes, if that's how you want to put it. But I need her sober, not stoned to the gills. You knew that. Why'd you keep refilling the bottle for her? You must know that she's healed by now."
"Because I'm a doctor." the older man snapped. "And it's a mercy. You don't even know for sure if you CAN use her. If she CAN find anything out. If there even IS anything to find out. But I DO know for sure that she's going through seven kinds of hell, and the drugs at least can dull the pain for her."
"God damn it. She's the only one in a position to get close enough to that monster to spot any sort of weakness, with the mind to recognize it when she sees it. But only if she's sober. You talk about mercy? What about all the other girls he's going to rape to death. What about my wife? Did you care about mercy for her, when you did what you did?"
Doctor Llewellyn looked at the ground. "That's not fair. I didn't have a choice, and you know it. If it hadn't been me, he'd have just killed me and found someone else to do it."
"And yet you keep doing it. Well, now you have a choice. Stop giving her the stuff."
"It's not that simple." The Doctor sighed. "Addiction is a complicated thing. You can't force an addict to stop, unless they want to stop. If I cut her off, and she still wants the stuff, how long before she finds another source?"
Wolfkiller bit into his sandwich, so miffed that he didn't even notice the taste of the tainted meat. He thought for a while. He had meant to use pride to get Aster to cooperate with him. The girl had that in spades, he knew that much. Or at least, she once had. Did she still have it? Could he use that to make her want to stop numbing her pain, despite what she would suffer. Or if not pride, then perhaps hate. Because there was plenty of reason for her to feel that, as well.
"If I can get her off the stuff…" he said slowly. "Will you promise me not to try to get her back on it again?"
"If that bastard rapes her again," It wasn't necessary for him to specify which bastard. "I'm not going to leave her to suffer through that sort of pain without medication."
"Fine." Wolfkiller spread his hands. "Short of that, or her being badly injured elsewhere, will you promise me that if she stops taking the stuff, you won't try to push it back on her?"
Doctor Llewellyn thought about it. "If she's strong enough, and smart enough, to get herself clean, then she might be strong and smart enough to do what you want her to do, despite what it will cost her. So yes, you have my word on that."
"Good." Wolfkiller stood up, leaving the rest of his sandwich. He was starting to feel queasy. Perhaps he shouldn't have eaten it.
"Might being the operative word, mind you." Doctor Llewellyn emphasized. "She still may not be able to find anything. Or there may be nothing to find."
"I'll take that chance. It's still better than nothing."
So it was that a few days later, Wolfkiller waited in the Maestro's dining hall after a meal, until Aster had finished helping clean up the tables, and wandered off down the hallway with a dazed look on her face. He took several calculated seconds to finish eating one more bite of fried fish, then set on off down the hallway.
He caught up to Aster around two corners of the green tiled hallways. She was walking with one hand trailing along the wall.
Probably has a hard time balancing when she's stoned. Thought the man. It was something he had often seen before. He wasn't certain whether she was sober enough to remember what he was going to say to her. If not, he could always remind her of it later.
Best to get this over with. He didn't particularly relish the cruel thing he was now going to have to do, or what Aster would suffer if it worked. But it was a necessary thing. If there were any other way to find out if the Maestro had any weaknesses, he would have done it.
Wolfkiller went up to Aster, and blocked her progress by putting one arm in front of her.
"Hello, Betty." He said in a mocking tone.
Aster looked up at him, dully. That was her name now. Betty, Betty 23. The Maestro said so, and that was what everyone called her. Then she recognized Daniel Wolfkiller by his scarred face and dirty hair, and scowled slightly. Wolfkiller was pleased by the scowl. There was still someone at home in there.
But he didn't let the pleasure show. Instead he said with a sneer, "That is your name, now, isn't it? Betty 23. Not Aster Aversa any more, is it?"
"What do you want?" Tears formed in Aster's eyes. "To fuck me, like everyone else, here? You were always a dirty pig, even back at the zoo."
"Hmm. Betty it is." Wolfkiller forced himself to look smug. "Probably I'll take you up on that offer. In a few years, when you have some tits. Like I told you before, I like women, not little girls."
"Whyncha leave me alone." Aster slurred. "You got whatcha wanted, got me here, just for stealin' your crummy old bottle."
"Yes, that IS what I wanted." The man agreed. Aster tried to push past his arm, but he shoved her lightly back. "You always thought you were so smart. Well, now you see who's smart. The Maestro. Not you. You're nothing but a little stoned slut, just like all the rest of the Bettys here."
"I was smart…once." Aster started crying. "I was a real person, once. A long time ago."
A real person? Wolfkiller wasn't sure what that meant. Doctor Llewellyn could have explained to him that one of the worse results from repeated abuse was depersonalization, but the physician wasn't around for the stable master to ask, and he had to think on his feet, so he disregarded the comment, and forgot about it. Though he was later to remember it again.
"Well, you're not smart, now." Wolfkiller sneered. "You're going to be here forever, you know that? The Maestro will never let you go. What do you think you're going to do, fight him? The Hulk couldn't fight him, nobody in the Hall of Fallen Heroes could fight him. They tried, and they're all dead."
A distant memory from years ago occurred to Aster, but before she could fix on it, Wolfkiller went on. "Nobody can fight the Maestro. He's the strongest one there is. He hasn't got any weaknesses. Not one. You think you're so smart? Just try and see if you can find even one tiny weakness in him. Because you won't, there aren't any. Not one. And once you realize that, you'll realize just how stupid a little girl you are for trying to show off that you were smart, and ending up here. Then maybe you'll do me a favor and overdose on whatever junk you're taking, so I won't have to put up with you poking your stupid little smart girl nose into my private business ever again."
Despite the drugs in her system, Wolfkiller's obscene and mocking words finally penetrated through to what was left of Aster's emotions, and fury made her face turn red and her teeth grit. Good, thought Wolfkiller. Something was getting through to her.
"Enjoy yourself the next time you run into Rasse and his friends." He said with a final sneer, as he pulled back his arm, so Aster could leave. "If you're nice to them, maybe they'll give you some junk, if Doctor Llewellyn ever decides to cut you off."
With that, Daniel Wolfkiller turned and sauntered on down the hallway. Aster stood there for a moment, watching him furiously.
I hate him. I hate them all. Want to kill them.
The thought of killing brought back memories of holding her stuffed toy, Tony Tiger, the night after she had been raped by Paul Rasse and his nasty friends. Probably Wolfkiller was one of his friends, too, even though she had never seen them together. They probably met together in secret and all laughed at her.
Wolfkiller's combination of disparagement and implied threats made Aster feel nearly as dirty as when Paul Rasse and his friends would rape her. Worse, in a way, because the group of guards generally merely insulted her body, or supposed sexual morals. They had never insulted her mind and called her stupid the way the stable master had just now.
She made her way back to the women's quarters, absentmindedly checking in with the guard currently on duty as 'Betty 23' before going to the bathroom. After stripping off the usual sheer green dress she was wearing, Aster stood in the shower underneath a stream of water so hot she could barely stand it for a long while. After a long time, her skin began to get wrinkled, so she turned the water off, and just sat down, leaning against the green tiled wall. She dozed off for a few hours, easy despite being on a hard floor, because of the codeine in her system Then she got up again, her mouth dry.
Aster went to one of the row of sinks, took a cup from a shelf above it, and poured herself a large glass of water. Then another. That made her bladder start working, so she used the toilet. When she came back out, there was another one of the Bettys in the bathroom.
"You're up early." said the Betty, who Aster recognized as Betty 19. "It's barely dawn."
"I think I'm sick." Aster did her best to look slightly nauseated. "I snitched a few meat scraps from the kitchen last night - you won't tell, will you? But I think they were going bad. I don't think I can help serve breakfast today, I might throw up. Will you tell everyone for me?"
"Of course." Betty 19 nodded. Stealing, and illness - either real or feigned - were both common among the Maestro's women. They always covered for each other regarding both, and the Maestro did not seem to care if 'illness' caused one of them to be occasionally absent from serving him. Provided it was only occasionally and not too often.
"Good." Aster peered at herself in the mirror, and took another drink of water.
Show him STUPID. She thought sulkily in regards to the mean Daniel Wolfkiller. I'll find some weakness of his precious lord Maestro. Maybe more than one. Then he'll see who's stupid, that I can find out something by myself in a few days that he and all his sick friends couldn't find together in years.
It occurred to her that she wasn't going to be able to find any weaknesses of the Maestro if her brain was in a codeine induced fog, reducing her mind to the level of that of other people. Or maybe even below that level, for all she knew. Why was she even taking it anyways? She thought for a long time, while the other Bettys began coming into the bathroom for their usual morning ritual of using the toilet, showers, sinks, and mirrors. But she couldn't remember why. With her brain on drugs, the question as to why was too hard.
Aster eventually gave up on trying to remember why she was taking the codeine and asked herself a slightly different question.
Why am I supposed to be taking the codeine. Fact was easier than speculation. Slightly easier, at any rate. After a great deal of thought, Aster recalled that she was supposed to be taking the narcotic solution in order to help numb the pain of her broken bones and other injuries.
Ha. She thought once she finally recalled the reason why she was supposed to be taking the codeine. It was the first time she had been able to figure out anything mentally in months. But the answer led directly to another questions. If she was supposed to be taking the codeine to help with the pain of her injuries, then the obvious question was as to whether she did, in fact, still even have any pain from her injuries.
That was a hard question. She remembered that there had been horrible pain at first, inside her body between her legs, even worse than where her bones were broken. But that had been a long time ago, she hadn't thought about it much for months. Not since she started taking the codeine.
Is there still pain? She was still naked, and looked at her own nude body in the long bathroom mirror, especially at her ribs and left arm, where the bones had been broken. A few of the Bettys that were alongside her, applying makeup, gave her an odd look, but ignored her when one of the other Bettys whispered something about "Betty 23 is sick."
Aster stared blearily at her body. The bruises were gone. She couldn't see them. Still looking at her own reflection, she poked her finger into her ribs, and her own arm muscles. Softly at first, then harder. But there was still no pain. All she felt was her own pointy finger. She actually poked here and there for a few hours, not noticing the time, or that the other Bettys had all left. Eventually she decided that there was no pain, no matter where she poked. Not even when she poked a finger inside herself, underneath. She rinsed her finger off, took another drink of water, and looked back in the mirror.
So, if there isn't any pain anymore, if that's not why I'm taking the codeine, then why AM I still taking it?
It was the original question, the one she couldn't answer before, simply rephrased. But by this time, it had been over sixteen hours since she had last taken any codeine, before dinner the previous day. Time, rest, and the water she drank had flushed much of it out of her system. Not all of it, but a lot. Her mind was not back to it's peak performance, but it was working at a level above average for most people.
She thought for a long time, occasionally still poking at her own arm or ribs in the mirror, as if expecting them to start hurting again. The time for lunch came and went. A few Bettys sometimes came in to use the bathroom. Finally she decided that the reason she was taking the codeine, was to help her forget about the horrible things that the Maestro and Paul Rasse and his friends were doing to her.
Well, now we're getting somewhere! Came a sarcastic thought in her head, that reminded her of something the nasty stable master, Wolfkiller might say. So you're taking the junk so you don't have to think about the big bad nasty Maestro and being split apart by his cock.
Another question, in the same sarcastic tone, came almost immediately.
And do you think that that's a good enough reason to be taking this stuff, and turning yourself into a little addicted junky?
YES!Cried a little girl's voice in her. I LIKE the stuff. It gives me happy dreams, even when I'm awake. I close my eyes and I can dream that I'm back home at the zoo.
And there had been other dreams, as well, the past few months, that Aster would not admit to herself. Of being an older, grown up Aster, one who had never been snatched from her home by the horrible Maestro, and had become Zookeeper, and despite her ugly face, had gotten married to a man. A man who (of course) looked nothing at all like the giant, olive skinned, gray haired Maestro, but instead was a normal size, had pale skin, and dark, dark hair (emphatically not balding like the horrible Paul Rasse), and helped her run the Zoo while everyone cheered for her.
YES. The little girl in her cried again. It is a good reason. I hate being here. I WANT the dreams.
But there was another voice, too. That of an older Aster. Or perhaps the pride that Wolfkiller had so astutely seen in her.
No.
No matter how much she wanted and liked the dreams, how much she hated it here, it wasn't a good enough reason to be taking the codeine. To be shutting off her own brain.
Besides, how was she going to show Wolfkiller who was the real smart one, if she kept taking it? She would show him. Then he would be sorry.
It was, of course, an illogical chain of thought, since Aster wasn't very clear on just exactly how Wolfkiller would be sorry, other than a vague, nonsensical idea, of somehow stealing several more bottles from him. As if the stable master had some special hidden room somewhere, filled with nothing but bottles. But it was a useful illogical thought.
Aster wrapped a towel around herself for modest and warmth, and went back out to her bed alcove. She took the bottle of codeine from her dresser, went to the bathroom, and poured it all down the sink.
Fuck that shit, and fuck Wolfkiller and Rasse and everyone here.
She kept the bottle, not sure what she would do with it. But she liked bottles, and still had a vague idea in the back of her head of somehow stealing the imaginary bottle collection she had attributed to the stable master.
The rest of the day went by fairly well, and Aster helped to serve at supper. She felt decent, and fairly proud of herself at finally figuring things out. But, of course, it wasn't that easy. Addictions to anything did not simply go away without a price or a struggle. Aster was aware of that fact, of course, from the education her father had given her. But like all drug addicts, she somehow had managed to fool herself into thinking that the principle didn't apply to her. She had only been taking codeine for a few months, perhaps four or five, and it had as of yet had little effect on her body or mind. Nor was codeine as addictive as the more potent opium derivatives, such as morphine and heroin. The price she had to pay for not taking it was small. But small as it was, it still had to be paid.
The human body and mind is a remarkably adaptive thing. It is capable of achieving homeostasis, or what the body regards as the ideal state, despite all sorts of conditions trying to take the body away from homeostasis. Lower the temperature, and the body starts shivering to produce heat. Raise the temperature, and the body sweats to cool itself. Challenge it by lifting heavy weights, and the body responds by growing more muscle. Do something as drastic as removing an entire half of the brain, and the remaining half eventually takes over all the functions of the missing half. In Aster's case, she had been taking sedatives for months, and her body and mind had been attempting to compensate by producing more of the chemicals responsible for alertness and thought in the brain.
Though Aster had thrown the codeine down the sink early that afternoon, her body had no way of knowing that. It had become accustomed to the presence of the drug, and producing more of the chemicals that existed in the brain as a result. So far as her body was concerned, the presence of codeine had been the 'normal' state for some time, and there was no way for Aster to tell her body otherwise. The result was that, later that evening, rather than falling asleep, she became more and more awake. It was as if she had drunk several large cups of coffee.
I want to sleep. She thought. I need the codeine to help me sleep!
No. No codeine. She had made up her mind about that. Her mind was one advantage she had over most addicts. She was blessed and cursed with genius. Even when she had been on the codeine, her mind still functioned at levels that were close to what would be normal for most people. It was the only thing that allowed her the insight into her own addiction, when most other people in the same situation would have lacked the mental processing power to go through the train of thought that Aster had that morning. And it gave her the will not to go running to Doctor Llewellyn now, to ask him for more codeine.
Aster did not sleep that night. Or the night after. Despite not sleeping, she felt the way she had when she had once drunk a large cup of very black coffee at the market in Dystopia. So hyper she felt like running back and forth and jumping off the walls.
The third night, she still didn't sleep. However, despite having been awake for nearly 72 hours, she now felt slightly less hyper than she had previously. There was a limit to how long people could stay awake, and Aster had nearly reached it. Besides which her body was beginning to adapt to the new state of no longer having codeine in the bloodstream.
She thought she could, perhaps, be able to sleep part of the night, if she worked off some energy. Maybe she should take a walk. She went over to the door, and addressed the guard.
"I'm starving. I didn't eat supper tonight." she said. "I'm going to the kitchen for a snack."
"Name?" It was the usual routine.
"Betty 23." Aster knew the correct answer by now. She had even begun to believe it, under the influence of the drugs.
"Good enough." The guard made a note on his clipboard. It wasn't unusual for any of the Bettys to want to leave at odd hours to eat, or get some air on a balcony. So long as they weren't trying to meet a lover, or escape, the Maestro didn't really care what they did or when they did it.
Aster was wearing her usual tunic shaped green dress and the flat sandals, that were better for walking than either the slippers or the sandals with the high heels, and kept up a fairly brisk pace. The exercise seemed to work, in reducing her hyper energy level, and she made a sort of a math game of counting the intersections and thinking about what numbers they were divisible by.
Then she heard voices. Male voices.
Oh, hell. What if that's Rasse and his buddies?
There were three main parties she hated in the Palace, one being the Maestro himself, the other being Daniel Wolfkiller, and the third being Rasse and his friends. The particular party she hated the most usually depended on which was nearest to her at the time. Right now, that would be Rasse and his friends. If it was them. She wasn't sticking around to find out.
Quickly, she tried the nearest doors, not sure which of them, if any, would be open. Her insomniac wanderings had taken her to an unfamiliar part of the Maestro's palace, and she wasn't really sure where she was. Fortunately, the second door she tried was open, and she went in. It was a dark room, lit only by a red 'exit' sign above the door. She saw the shapes of shelves and stacks of crates in the ruddy light, and wrinkled her nose. The crates reminded her of the room where Paul Rasse and his sick friends had raped her the first time. Well, she didn't want a repeat of that. Worried that Rasse (or whoever it was that she had heard) might possibly come into the room, she scurried behind a row of crates near the back wall, and lay as quietly as she could, shivering from the cold of the floor and hoping that the owners of the voices would go away.
No such luck. The voices actually got closer, and then stopped very near the door of the room where she was hiding. She couldn't make out, through the door, what the voices were saying, but did here the distinct metallic tinkle of bottle caps hitting the tiled floor. Apparently the guards were drinking on duty, and likely would not move on until they finished whatever alcoholic beverage they had. Beer, most likely.
Aster listened carefully for any hint of the guards entering the room she was in. It seemed likely, because there was a strong smell of stale urine. Possibly the guards drank beer outside this room fairly often, then got rid of the results by peeing behind the crates here. Or it could be just rats. She wasn't sure. She quivered. It reminded her of the night, so long ago, when she and Thumb had hidden in the basement, terrified, while the Maestro fought the Hulk, who was actually a younger version of himself. She had been scared of rats then. Or was it Thumb who had been scared? It had been a long time ago, and she couldn't really remember it clearly any more. And it had been a long time since she had thought of Thumb, or home, as well. Not since before she had started taking the codeine. Maybe that meant her head was getting back to normal.
Laying there and listening, Aster gradually became aware of another sound. Some sort of rapid, tapping, clicking noise. It would sometimes stop for a few moments, then continue on.
What is that? Something one of the guards is doing? Tapping his foot? It doesn't sound like that.
She was wary of anything she didn't understand, here in the Maestro's castle. Anything unknown was probably bad (meaning that it would result in her being raped, or beaten, or both). She listened harder, struggling to understand what the strange noise was, before whatever it was somehow found her. Cocking her head from side to side, she eventually decided that the noise was not coming from the guards in the hallway, but rather, from a different direction, from a small vent set in the wall, barely two feet away from where she was laying. Now that she looked, and her eyes had adjusted to the dark, she saw that there was light coming through the vent, too. Whatever air duct was behind this room must have had vents opening into two rooms, back to back.
The odd noise continued. Tap, tappity tap.
What is that? The combination of her own innate curiosity, and the practical need to know any possible source of new danger, made Aster slide, very very slowly towards the vent. It was actually a foot or so past where the crates were piled, so she had to stick her head out beyond the crates in order to look through the vent. Nervously, she turned to look at the door, but although she still heard the sounds of the guards drinking, there was no sign of any of them trying to enter.
Finally, she put one eye to the vent. It was a small grating of strong metalwork in the shapes of diamonds, about a foot long and 6 inches high. Not even a small child would be able to fit through it, into the ventilation system, but she could see through it into the room behind this one.
What she saw didn't seem particularly interesting or alarming. It was an old man, maybe about Doctor Llewellyn's age, with straggly grey hair on a bald head, and a thick, grey beard. He was sitting at some sort of machine, that Aster recognized as a typewriter of some kind. She had seen and heard people using typewriters before, but they had always been manual typewriters, old even in pre-War times, and requiring a lot of force to use. This typewriter was electric, judging by the fact that the old man was barely touching the keys. The Maestro's castle, unlike other places in Dystopia, had plenty of electricity, but Aster had never really considered the consequences of that fact to something as mundane as typing, before. Though now it made sense, now that she saw it.
Or, perhaps, it didn't make sense. Now that she looked at it, there was something odd about the typewriter. It was just the letter keys, in a flat rectangle. There wasn't any paper. There was a sort of a glowing TV screen instead, set above the letter keys and about a foot away. Aster had seen old pre-War Tvs, but never a working one, and usually they had been partly cannibalized for the metal in them. This one was working, judging by the glow, and from the way the old man kept looking up at it, Aster guessed that whatever he was writing must somehow appear on the screen, rather than on paper like a regular typewriter.
A computer. She finally realized. She had seen pictures of them in old Pre-War books, and there were several non-working ones laying around at the Zoo. She had known, of course, that there were working computers in the Maestro's palace, she had often heard the guards and the Bettys mentioning them, and describing some of the nearly miraculous things they could do, like having thousands of books in a tiny box, but she had never seen one before.
Neat. Aster looked around the room the old man was in, wondering what other interesting stuff was in it, but was disappointed. Just some dusty books and papers. And an overly large door, like all of them in the palace, built to accommodate the Maestro if he wanted to enter a room. Other than that, the only unusual thing about the door is that there were at least six deadbolt locks on it, all drawn shut.
Paranoid much, old man? Aster had to suppress a giggle. Probably the old man, whoever he was, was afraid of someone stealing his computer. A fairly sensible fear, a working computer had to be pretty damn valuable.
But it was not the computer the old man was protecting.
Several minutes passed, and Aster grew rather bored watching a rather dull looking old man do apparently nothing but write his diary on a bit of pre-war technology. She was about to get back behind the crates, lest one of the guards in the hallway outside her room enter and spot her, when the old man turned off the computer and stood up. He was wearing nothing but an old bathrobe, which he unceremoniously stripped off, and lay on the back of the chair where he had sat.
Great. An old pervert. As if this place weren't full enough of them.
Not really wanting to see what some wrinkly old perverted creep would do, wank off most likely, Aster was about to slide back behind the crates, when she caught a glimpse of odd motion under the old man's skin. It was as if a balloon were being inflated inside his arm.
What the hell is that? She had never heard of the human body being capable of somehow inflating itself. She gaped. The inflation spread, the old man growing larger, twice his size. Larger still. His skin began darkening and turning green. The old man gasped, in obvious pain from whatever was happening. He bent double, then straightened, his head nearly reaching the high ceiling of the room he was in.
What WAS happening, anyways?
The process was over within a few minutes. Where the old man had stood, or maybe he was still standing there, since he had never left, just somehow changed like a caterpillar into a butterfly, or a werewolf from some of the old fairy tales, stood someone else.
Someone Aster knew well.
Someone Aster hated with every atom of her being.
The Maestro.
What the HELL! Aster had to use every bit of her will to keep from crying out, or gasping in amazement and fear. If her body hadn't been clean of the codeine for the past three days, she wouldn't have been able to manage it.
Done with whatever the hell sort of physical process had turned him from a rather ordinary, wrinkly looking old man into the ten foot tall green monstrosity she was familiar with, the Maestro took the oversized purple trousers and metal breastplate he usually war from a high shelf, where Aster had not really noticed them, and put them on. Then he slid back the deadbolts from the metal door of the room, one at a time, stepped out, and closed the door behind him.
A moment later, the light in the room went out.
What the bloody damned hell! Aster struggled to understand what she just saw. Somehow the old man had become the Maestro. Or he had become the old man, she wasn't sure. Obviously, he must have somehow turned himself into an old man, to use that computer thing, his real fingers would have been too big, and probably broken the keyboard the moment he touched it, as overly strong as he was. Then turned back when he was done.
Aster thought about it, so furious that she couldn't even mentally process the implications for over a minute. She had known, of course, as everyone in Dystopia did, that the Maestro had once been a man, and been turned into the huge green creature that he was, by being exposed to radiation of some sort from a bomb he had made. There had been other people like that, back before the war. And even now, the Abominable creature that stole from the farmers Outside was supposedly one. But she had assumed, like everyone did, that once he had been turned into a giant green monster, the Maestro had been stuck that way permanently. Now, it seemed, that was not the case.
He can turn back?!
He can turn back?!
HE CAN TURN BACK AND HE BLOODY WELL NEARLY SPLIT ME APART AND KILLED ME AND TORE ME UP INSIDE WITH THAT GIANT BLOODY THING OF HIS?!
Nearly blinded by her fury, Aster didn't even notice the pain when she bit through her own lip. The taste of her own blood, that had so often covered her body in the past months further infuriated her. Bloody hell, if only she had had a bow, or a gun, and had been able to shoot the bastard through the grating when he had been small and helpless.
The very thought that the Maestro was capable of turning himself back into a normal sized person was nearly intolerable to Aster. For a ten foot tall monster to want sex, and tear apart women in the process, because he was a perverted pig and wanted to get off, was, perhaps, slightly understandable, if not at all forgivable.
For the same ten foot tall monster to do some completely unnecessarily, when he could turn back to a normal size and at least commit rape without tearing his victims apart in the process, was absolutely beyond the pale.
Aster wasn't sure how long she lay there, quivering like a taut bow string in the worst fury she had ever felt in her life. She thought for a moment about going to Wolfkiller and proving how smart she was that she'd been able to find out that the Maestro was sometimes weak. That he could sometimes turn back into a regular person. Which implied, possibly, that maybe there was a way to MAKE him turn back. Nature could often be tricked. Her father had taught her that. The artificial insemination they often did on the animals at the zoo, had been described by her father as a dirty trick on nature, manipulating things to get the result they wanted.
But then she recalled all the locks on that door. She had thought at the time she saw them that the old man - the Maestro - had been paranoid. And so he was. But he wasn't protecting the computer. He was protecting himself. It was obvious from the locks that he did not want anyone to know - ever! - that he sometimes changed himself into a weak and vulnerable form.
Hell, she couldn't tell Wolfkiller what she had seen, to prove to him that she was smart. She couldn't tell anyone, ever. If the Maestro ever suspected that she knew, that she had seen what she had, he would kill her out of hand. And probably everyone he thought she might even possibly have told. Which, given his obvious insanity, would be half the palace, or half of Dystopia, for all she knew. Certainly it would include her father and sister.
No. She could never tell. She could never give anyone, especially the Maestro, a single hint that she knew. She could never even come back to this room, ever again.
But she knew one thing. Daniel Wolfkiller was wrong. The Maestro did have weaknesses. She had just seen what was probably the biggest one. But where one existed, there could be others. She was going to find out what every single one was.
Then she was going to find a way to use them.
Then she was going to kill him.