Dragons, Droids & Doom, page 21
Karen had to stop reading. It was the first sign of hope, and yet, just the thought of it somehow made her sick, she wanted to trash the email, get El from the nursing home, and just go—somewhere. Instead, she called Bob and told him they needed to arrange for nurses so they could take Eleanora on a trip.
They flew to a newly-constructed airport some fifteen miles from the Tree. There they hired a white limousine converted to a hospital room on wheels and traveled straight to the site. Crutches and other aids lined the road, many of them, the driver said, left by people who had not yet been healed, but who wanted to show their commitment. There were long lines of people standing (or sitting in wheelchairs) behind ropes with guards, but the limousines were allowed to pull to the front, for its passengers to mingle with the people who came off the private yachts in the river. No one seemed to mind. Almost everyone had come from far away, and there were performers to tell the Tale of the Tree, and food, and spiritual healers to pray over people and promise them health ("No connection to Tree" their leaflets read, apparently a legal requirement). Everyone seemed to believe they'd come to a place of safety, where sickness just stopped, as if it had given up and now just waited to be destroyed. They believed this even though they could see people faint in line, or cough blood, or worst of all, leave the Tree still covered in sores. Those people, they told themselves, didn't believe. They didn't want to be healed. It wasn't the Tree's fault.
When Eleanora and her family reached the front of the line, men in white nurses' uniforms offered to carry El to the trunk. No, Karen said, she would do it, she didn't need any help. But she just stood and stared at the Tree. It was so much bigger than she had thought it would be. The lilacs were in full bloom even though it was way after the season. The smell made her nauseous.
When Bob suggested they let the nurses do it, Karen lifted El into a tight embrace against her body and walked forward. Karen was wearing a long gray dress, with big pockets for medicine, and something in one of them pressed sharply against her thigh. The boat, she realized. She didn't remember taking it. I have to get rid of it, she thought. She and Eleanora would be safe if she could bury it some place, or just throw it away. But Eleanora felt so empty, if Karen set her down for just a moment a breeze might lift her right out of her body, to drop her in the river.
The river. There was something out there, among the crowded boats, something big, and gray, and patient. Don't look, Karen thought, look only at the Tree.
The branches waved, and a voice seemed to come from the rustling leaves. It spoke softly, only for Karen. "So," it said. "You've come."
Karen didn't know where the sound came from, or if others could hear it, but she didn't care. "Please," she said. "You have to help her. She is my life, my heart."
"You who are called Heartless in every tongue?"
"I don't understand what you mean." But as she spoke the words—or thought them, she wasn't sure—a fear swept through her that she was lying, that she knew exactly what the voice meant. Images came to her, endless mounds of colorless dirt, black stones, crowds and crowds of people with downcast eyes. And boats. Squat ferryboats on a dark river.
Karen turned her head, she couldn't stop herself. There it was, among the yachts and cruise ships, something only she could see, a gray ferryboat, heavy in the water, filled with more people than you would think it could hold yet none of them touching each other. Karen looked away but the image stayed. She could still see the one figure that stood out, a young man with slick black hair and ruby cufflinks.
"Please," Karen said to the Tree. El felt weightless against her now, an origami doll. "Heal her and we'll go away and never bother you again."
"You have a choice," the Tree said.
Hope lifted Karen's heart. "Tell me what to do."
"Either you go on the boat or she does."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. It's time to return."
The memories came clearer now. The hills, the shadows, the lines and lines of dead shuffling off the boats. She said, "I won't go back."
"Then she goes. I will heal her but only if you return. So you see, it is you who is killing her."
"Why are you doing this to me?"
"You wanted to be human. To escape. Why shouldn't you suffer what all humans suffer?"
Karen looked away. She could feel her body shift, become longer, freer in some terrible way. She remembered it all now, her sisters, the contest. "It wasn't my idea, I just lost a contest. That's all. And then I forgot."
The Tree said, "If you hadn't wanted to run away you would have remembered. You had the reminder, every day." Still holding El against her, Karen took the boat from her pocket, stared at it. The Tree said, "And now you have a choice."
Karen threw the boat at the Tree. It disappeared among the branches. "Choose," the Tree said.
"Why?"
"There is always a price. Choose."
For an instant she could see her life as Karen, everything that would come if she chose herself over Eleanora. El would die, and Karen would create a memorial. She would live a long time—a flicker of a moment, really, but it would feel like forever. She and Bob would entwine together, the memory of Eleanora kept warm between them. And then?
She set El down against the trunk. Immediately the branches bent down to form a cage around her. When Karen—Forever—tried to reach in and touch El one last time the branches stung her, like nettles. "Goodbye, my darling," she said. "You will live a good life and then I will see you again. I will wait for you. I promise."
But she knew it was a lie. As she stepped onto the ferryboat that waited in the river, as she accepted the white hand with its ruby cufflink, she knew that even if she might one day recognize an aged Eleanora she would feel nothing. How could she, for just one among so very many? As the boat slid away from the shore to take her home, she looked back one more time. She saw the cage of branches fill with light, and then it was gone. And everything was shadow.
© 2010 by Rachel Pollack
First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder, May/June 2010.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Feeling All Right
Richard Zwicker
His partner was missing, and PI Stamens didn't know how to feel, so he went to the local branch of the Emotion Store.
"Ninety minutes of Pensiveness, please," Stamens said to Jack Condon, the proprietor. "Actually, make that three hours." Stamens's tall, standoffish calm contrasted with the squirrely Condon's jerking movements. A tag hung on his chest that read: My name is Jack Condon. Feel the difference.
"Oh, you don't want that," Condon said. "I have some prime Exhilaration, which just happens to be on sale for—"
Stamens reached over the counter and grabbed him by the collar. "Why don't you sell me what I asked for?" Ninety minutes of Pensiveness cost a fraction of Exhilaration. "Then you can take the Exhilaration to console yourself for the difference in profit."
"No need to get sore, buddy," Condon said, straightening the folds on his shirt. "I could sell you that too, by the way."
"You're a funny guy. It's probably costing you a fortune in mirth." He held out his credit disk. "Pensiveness. In bottles." Liquid was more cumbersome, but Stamens didn't like to think of himself as a pill popper.
Condon retreated to a large dispenser that nearly filled the area behind the counter. Humming a light tune, he punched in some numbers. Two blue liter bottles appeared in the dispenser's window. He handed them to Stamens. "You're only as good as you feel."
Every time Condon said that, which was every time he sold something, Stamens resisted the urge to say, "Feel this." Condon brought out the worst in him, with his long, stringy hair and a top-of-the-head bald spot looking as if it were pressed with a cookie cutter. What also bothered Stamens was that Condon was right. You were only as good as you felt. Every so often Stamens tried to do his job without augmenting his regular government-subsidized cocktail of emotions, but the difference had become like night and total darkness. Without a little help, he just groped, putting him at a disadvantage with the bad guys. His partner, Flip Dumpheys, had been missing for two days and he needed to think.
He twisted the cap off his bottle, then glanced at Condon. "You don't mind if I take a hit right now, do you?"
Condon smiled. "Don't fight the feeling."
Stamens tossed back the tasteless liquid. He immediately felt yawning vistas of possibility filling his brain. "You haven't seen Nick Gorse lately, have you?"
Condon's eyes glazed with admiration. "What a guy! No, I am rarely honored with his presence."
Gorse controlled the distribution of emotions and had a well-deserved reputation for efficiency and secrecy. On his own time, Dumpheys had been investigating Gorse, convinced that the powerful drug czar used violence to ensure his monopoly. However, anything Dumpheys thought lately had to be taken with a grain of salt, as he'd been suffering from an intestinal virus that temporarily prevented him from ingesting any artificial emotions. Stamens feared his partner's un-bottled state had gotten him into trouble.
"What do you want him for? You have a problem with our product?" Condon asked.
"Not at all," Stamens said automatically, though later he wondered why the drugs had allowed him to get so ruffled.
• • •
When Stamens walked into his office, Nandy Sontines, his secretary, nearly took his head off and used it to practice kicking field goals. "Don't you ever check your goddamned cell?" she asked. Normally cool as a cucumber, her sudden change to a prickly pear alarmed him. He knew it was important to keep his phone on, but lately he'd been receiving so many solicitations from the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association—even the American Coccyx Association had been tailing him—he'd switched it off.
"You heard from Dumpheys?"
"No. I heard of Dumpheys though." She stood up from her desk for emphasis. Barely five feet tall, what she lacked in elevation she gained in volume. "One of Chief Inspector Rausch's detectives found him. He's in Ascutney Hospital. They don't think he's going to make it." With that, she let out a sob like a sonic boom.
Stamens closed his office and drove the two of them to the hospital. As Nandy veered from dread to hysterics, he suggested they pick up some relief.
"I don't want to feel artificial emotions right now!" she snapped. Stamens, on the other hand, wished he hadn't gulped down all of the Pensiveness.
When he saw the bruised body, Stamens thought it might be better if Flip Dumpheys didn't survive. His partner's face looked like a failed student test paper stomped on by dirty hobnail boots. The rest of his body didn't look much better—broken blood vessels gave him the appearance of a black, blue, and yellow patchwork quilt. Whoever did this had little use for the kinds of beatings that left no marks.
Nandy burst into a fresh stream of tears. Stamens realized he should be feeling more than he did, so he stepped out to the restroom and took a hit of Empathy. He soon matched his secretary in waterworks, but unfortunately he took too much. He felt sorry the nurse had to work long hours in a building full of sick people. The overhead flat screen was on and he felt sorry for the losing contestant in a reality show about unhealthy diet called America's Got Toxins. He also felt really bad for the elderly man in the bed next to Dumpheys who had to watch it. Trying to control himself, he leaned over Dumpheys.
"Flip . . ." He didn't know what to say, and that made him feel sorry for himself for having such a limited vocabulary. "Who did this? I won't rest until he rots in jail." Then he started feeling sorry for the assailant. He vowed never to take Empathy again.
Dumpheys had a faraway look on his face, that six-feet-under look. His lips fluttered, and out of them oozed the name Anna.
"Anna who?" Stamens asked. "A woman did this to you? C'mon, Dumpheys. There's hundreds of Annas in the city."
Dumpheys's lips fluttered again, and Stamens waited patiently. "May."
"Anna May? Is that her last name or her middle name?" As Dumpheys lost consciousness, Stamens wondered if these would be his partner's last syllables.
"Wait a minute," Nandy said, gaining some composure. "What if he wasn't saying a name at all? What if he was saying a-n-i-m-e?"
"What the hell is that?"
"Japanese animation. It used to be very popular."
He shook his head. Dumpheys was a basic, no-frills guy who didn't even like Japanese or Chinese food because he thought anyone using chopsticks was showing off.
Nandy started shaking again. "We have to figure out who did this."
"We will," Stamens said. One place to start was Gorse—what a guy—but why would that respected businessman try to murder an un-medicated man? More likely, Dumpheys lost control of himself and picked a fight with the wrong person. Feeling his own control slipping, Stamens reluctantly returned to the Emotion Store.
• • •
Just as Stamens was about to walk into the Emotion Store, he collided with an immoveable object, which he mistook for the side of the building, but turned out to be Emelda Rausch, Chief of Police.
"Chief Rausch, what brings you into my neighborhood?" Stamens gasped. Rausch, as befit her authoritative manner, was a formidable-looking woman. Her large chest made Stamens think less of sex and more of a hammerhead shark.
"I'd like you to know that I have some of my best officers investigating the beating of your partner."
"Thank you," Stamens said, not sure what else to say.
"He wasn't able to say much when we tried to interview him, but there's a rumor that he suspected Nick Gorse—what a guy." Rausch placed her heavy hand on Stamens's shoulder. "Let the police department take care of this."
"You know best," Stamens said, as he watched her amble into her car, which was parked right behind his. Stamens and Dumpheys's relationship with Rausch had been tolerant at best. That she'd come out to his locality in person to tell him the police were handling things seemed more like a warning than an assurance.
As Stamens trudged into the Emotion Store for the second time that day, Condon said, "You look like somebody died. You should take a hit of Animated."
"No, I look like my partner is going to die!" Stamens said.
"Oh, I'm so sorry," Condon said.
Stamens felt his anger rise again. "You're so sorry, what?"
"Huh?"
"You're so sorry that you'll give me a discount? You're so sorry that you'll donate fifty percent of your profits to the Flip Dumpheys Memorial Fund?"
"You lost me, pal, but . . . didn't you buy some Pensiveness earlier? Too much of that stuff will kill you. Don't buy why when you can get wow."
Stamens again found himself with his hands around Condon's collar. "I hate glibness. Would you like to know why?"
Condon nodded weakly.
"Because with glibness how and when you say something is more important than what you say. I think this cheapens thousands of years of oral communications, don't you?"
Condon wasn't getting enough oxygen to add to the thousand years. Stamens let go, wondering if he was wasting his time getting angry at someone whose sole purpose was to sell. How much better was he, a detective who solved crimes only for a paycheck? Dumpheys's imminent death was different though, and he felt the need for justice. But he had no idea if the chaos of emotions he felt was artificial or real, or if it mattered. "Give me a bottle of Righteousness."
Condon brushed himself off, coughed a few times, and seemed none the worse for wear. "Coming right up. Just do me a favor, will you? Wait until you get home to toss it down. That stuff can turn a deaf-mute into a rapper."
Stamens watched Condon press a code into the dispenser. Then suddenly he remembered Anna May.
"What did you say when I came in?"
Condon looked up blankly. "Good afternoon?"
"No, you said I looked like death and I should take some Animated."
"Oh, right. I was joking. It's very expensive."
"I heard that stuff animates the dead."
"No, nothing does that, but it animates anything that's left." He looked grimly at Stamens. "Not for long, though."
"I'll take your entire stock."
Condon's jaw dropped, then he smiled. "Detective, you're making me animated. We accept major credit disks."
Stamens paid. "What's the largest recommended dose?"
"No more than a thousand mil per hour or your head will take off like a flying saucer."
• • •
The moment Stamens got back to the hospital and saw Dumpheys's unmoving body, he knew the only way he'd get Animated into his partner was by injection. Even the doctor, who normally called a half-empty cup "overflowing if you used a smaller container," gave him little hope of recovery. After the doctor left, Stamens stuck Dumpheys's arm with three thousand mils of Animated. One of Dumpheys's eyebrows arched, as if to say, "Yeow-za!"
Stamens didn't have time for body language, though. The side effects of Animated were nausea, vomiting, and the recreation of the Suez Canal in your stomach lining. Figuring Dumpheys's days of spicy meatballs were over anyway, he injected him with another three thousand. His partner's eyelids shot up like defective window shades.
"What did you put into me?" he asked, his voice wavering like a musical saw.
"Six thousand mils of Animated. How do you feel?"
"Christ, how don't I feel? Wait a minute. You injected me with emotions? What about that flu I had?"
"It was your suggestion. Besides, these are desperate times. The doctor said you'd live a long life if we could just figure out a way to stop time. With Animated we just might squeeze a few minutes of coherence out of you before your virus reacts to the drug." He grabbed Dumpheys's hand. "Look, I'm sorry if this sounds draconian."
