A Game of Universe (12 page)

Necatane ran his fingers across the inside of the cap, and remarked, “A brilliant piece of engineering. It might have worked, too, had I not known you would be here tonight. I knew before you were born, killer.”

How did my wasps miss?

“They hit,” he said, answering my silent question, “all well and good. Stung like the devil, too. It was a simple matter to freeze their injection mechanisms. I can move this entire building with the power of my mind. Do you think your insects would seriously threaten me? You are a brash young man indeed, brave, but extremely foolish. No that’s not quite right, not foolish, desperate.”

He stroked my face with his weathered hands, then in a soft voice added, “Oh, I don’t expect to cheat fate this evening. I have seen that you are the one to cause my death, and I dare not interfere with the designs of the great ones, but I shall have my way with them before I am done. I’ll break the universe into three pieces: a scrap for darkness, a bone for the light, and the lion’s share for nature to devour. Socrates could not have had a better death!”

He was crazy.

“Not crazy,” he whispered. “Inspired. Some men compose poetry before they die, I shall do something far more lasting—something to you.”

You told Omar and E’kerta where I was! You knew I’d be going to Needles. You were the only one who could have.

“An excellent bit of reasoning,” he said, “but incorrect. You are very close to the truth though, closer than you will ever know.”

He rubbed his hands over the fire, then, “It is a pity you came to kill me. Under different circumstances, I feel you would have made a fine student. You have a strong mind, well-developed, disciplined. If our positions were reversed, if my immortal soul was at stake, I suppose I would have attempted the same.” He turned his attention to his toes and scraped a bit of crust out between them. “However, I do not intend to have my mind savaged by you, because you cannot find the Grail. You must earn that prize yourself.

“Does any of this seem familiar to you, killer? It should. You have been here sixteen times before. Perhaps this time will turn out differently.”

Warmth poured into my mind, then withdrew. “I see my pupil is with you tonight. The poor soul, you didn’t even leave him his name. It is a mockery to all life to bottle his soul within you thusly,” he declared, outraged. “He is a mere fraction of what he was alive, but you shall need him on your quest, and as distasteful as I find this, I must allow you to keep all your extra personalities.”

The warmth returned to my thoughts. Necatane spoke again, but his lips remained sealed. The bastard was inside my mind.
Let us go then, you and I, my etherized friend, into the evening, and into those twisty passages to examine your half-forgotten memories.

Get out!
I screamed.
This is my mind, my thoughts. You have no right to do this.

No right? I have just as much right as the victims of your borrowing ritual, just as much right because this is what you planned to do to me. But do not worry assassin, I shall be insidiously kind. You shall recall everything in perfect detail. You shall retain all your memories, skills, and thoughts … although you may not want to by the time we are done.

9

N
ecatane shuffled through my recollections with blinding speed—like cards in a deck—blurred fragments of images and feelings, nightmares and dreams.

Your childhood is the place to begin,
he said.

I know what happened when I was a kid.

Of course you do, but that knowledge has been distorted by emotion. Tonight, you and I shall see with the clarity of experience, and without the fogging influence of time.

Why are you doing this, Necatane?

He laughed, then said,
Ask your gambler what “Go Fish
”
means.

A snap of his fingers and we stood in a different place, a different world, Hades. The sky was opaque with ash, and it glowed red in spots, lit up beneath by distant volcanoes. We must be ghosts here, because I could breathe. Normally, you had to wear a breather to protect your lungs from the heat and acid in the air. I remember always having a sore throat and coughing. It started to snow ash, little flakes of chalky gray and smoldering orange that passed through us. We had to wear heat suits to protect us from getting burned. The three layers of asbestos padding trapped all the sweat inside—made you stink.

Hades was a young planet, its crust unstable, and no life except the restless ground and the miners. Sometimes, the sun broke through the dense atmosphere and charged it with luster, a golden shaft that pierced the ash. Whenever that happened, I dropped my tools and ran toward it. Once, I got to stand in the middle of the glorious radiance for a few seconds, then caught hell from Dad for leaving the fields.

Not a pleasant environment,
Necatane remarked.

It was a place of hard work, that’s mostly what I remember.

It is a place of hard work,
he corrected me.
The past is the present. Your father mines for Philosopher Stones. A tough life, scraping the skins of new worlds for magical rocks. Is he rich? Does he have his own land, or does he work for a company?

You’re the psychologist. Why don’t you drag the information out of me?

This way is better, and in the long run, more painful and more useful to you. Think of it as therapy.

All I remember was eating cans and cans of refried beans.

A company man then. Most interesting,
Necatane mused.
You have a deeply suppressed hatred for your father. Let us look closer.

The world moved. Layers of stone and magma engulfed our phantom bodies. We went underground through solid rock, pockets of steam, then a tunnel, and an air lock that isolated the caves beyond from the harsh outer world. It was my home.

A man paced the living room, wearing a track between the kitchen and sofa on the bare stone floor. Watching him march back and forth was a woman. Her face was worn from work, bags under her dull eyes, but it wasn’t that she was tired of the work, it looked like she was tired of life. She was eight months pregnant.

Your happy family,
Necatane said.
That’s you inside her, killer.

Impossible. I can’t remember things before I was born. You show me only illusions, lies to torment me.

Torment? Yes, you deserve to suffer a bit, but that is not my aim. All these scenes are real. To bring you here I drain the very life from my body. Pay attention, lest I resort to stimulating the pain centers of your mind.

I watched.

They argued about water. My father—I recognized his voice, that threatening dangerous tone—waved his fists at her. “There’s not enough water for you to take a damn bath,” he thundered.

The woman mustered what defiance she could, sat straighter, and said, “It’s the only thing that makes me feel decent in this pit. I’ll keep doing it.” It was not much, not loud, but she
did
stand up to him. That was something I never could do, and I admired her courage.

His eyes narrowed and he took a step closer to her. “You can’t even work anymore, you’re so fat. All you do around here is take and take and take. I’m sick of it.”

“How do you expect me to work with this?” She placed a hand on her stomach. “That’s your doing.”

“Is it?” he asked with a snort.

“What do you care? It’s the only reason you wanted me. So you could have another pair of goddamned hands to help to haul those rocks!”

Dad’s teeth ground together, I heard them. He slapped her hard, knocking her off her feet.

She is right,
Necatane said.
Your father only wanted her for breeding stock. Oh, that’s not what he said to steal her away from her pimp. He promised her a life together, a life of luxury, of safety, and he promised he’d care for her. Lies on all counts.

My father didn’t stop. He kept beating her, even though she was on the floor, screaming for mercy.

I closed my eyes.
Please, Necatane, make him stop.

I cannot,
he said softly, then took my hand and led me away.
We shall leave your father to his own devices and look in on your brother, Mike. He had as much a role in your development as your father, perhaps more.

The woman shrieked, but her cries muffled as we passed through the rock wall, and into my brother’s bedroom.

Mike hid under his bed. He had his eyes squeezed shut and hands over his ears. Necatane opened his mind to me. He was scared of my father, of what he was capable of doing when he got mad, and terrified of what might happen to his mother.

He knows she is not his real mother,
Necatane explained.
It does not matter to him. She was the only one to show him kindness. She was the only one to tuck him in, and the only one who read him bedtime stories. He loved her.

The door swung open, and in tramped my father, blood spattered on his arms to his elbows. “Mike!” he yelled. “Where the hell are you boy? I need you. Right now!” Mike first wiped his tears away, then he crawled from under the bed, and asked, “Mom? Is she OK?”

My father hauled him up with one red hand and said, “She’s fine. But I need you to run and get the doc from the settlement.”

“Wh…wh…what did you do to her?” he asked and tears welled up in his eyes.

“Nothing. She fell and your brother inside decided it was time to come out. He’s a little early. That’s why we need the doc. You tell him that we’ve got a new baby—that you’ve got a new brother.”

Mike stared at the dried blood on my father’s arms. He panicked and twisted out of his grip, only to be snatched up again before he got away. “Is she hurt?”

“You better run,” he whispered in a deadly serious tone, “or else the baby’s gonna die. You want that?” He dragged Mike out by the arm, through the living room (that had an obvious smear of blood leading to the kitchen) and shooed him into the air lock, slammed it shut, and locked him out.

“Do I sense a modicum of discomfort from you, killer? Does the sight of blood suddenly bother you?”

What kind of man was he?
I asked.
To kill a pregnant woman?

He was a man like you, I think, able to justify anything to do his job.

Necatane led me into the kitchen.

The woman who was supposedly my mother was on the floor, not moving, and not breathing. I looked away and heard my father struggling with her body, then a sucking sound, and the cries of a baby. He cut the umbilical cord, then set the infant, swaddled in a dishrag, into the sink. This creature was covered in blood, born too soon. He was blue, and with his first breath his chest reddened, then his face and extremities. He was so tiny and wrinkled. He was me.

My father dragged her body outside. The heat, acid, and ash would consume it.

If only we had time,
Necatane said,
we could go back to see what drove your father to do this. I surmise that his father was as much a monster as he. These behaviors tend to get passed down from generation to generation.

He came back and poured himself two shots of booze, drank those, and two more. Into the cellar he then marched, pulled up the sonic disrupter we used to cut through rock, and took the top layer off the floor. Not a speck of my mother’s blood remained.

Humming to himself, he turned up the heat, and went back to look at the infant in the sink. There was no love in his eyes, only a calculating gaze. With one hand resting on the faucet, he figured the additional expenses of raising another child and the profits another pair of hands might produce in the long run. He was deciding if I should live or die—which was more profitable.

My fate was determined on a balance sheet?

Nothing novel about that, is there, killer? Most of your missions are motivated by profit—my own student, Aaron the alien king, the gambler, and so many others—do not forget them.

There was a banging on the air lock. Mike was back with the doctor. My brother was in such a hurry to get help he forgot his heat suit and only wore a breather. Tiny blisters, ash burns, covered his shoulders and back. He didn’t seem to notice—all he could do was look for his mother.

The doctor spoke briefly with my father then shuffled into the kitchen.

“Mike,” my father said, kneeling down beside him, “I have some bad news for you, but you’re a big enough boy now, so I’m gonna tell you the truth.”

“She’s dead isn’t she?” he said, his chin quivering.

Dad shook his head. “I almost wish it were so, but she just up and left after your brother came out. She told me that she couldn’t stand taking care of
two
brats. She wanted to see the city. She wanted things we couldn’t afford yet.”

The monster even looked sincere.

Mike stood trembling. My mother was his world. She was the only source of kindness in his otherwise weary existence. “She left because of me?” he whispered.

“Yep,” Dad said, “you and your brother. It’s just gonna be the three of us from now on. We’ve got to stick together and make the best of it.” He embraced Mike, who having nothing left in his world, hugged him back and burst into tears.

Happy birthday, killer. I pity you, having the misfortune to be born into this—I cannot even call it a family. We must learn more. You shall be sent back to relive certain events. It will be most unpleasant, I assure you.

What do you mean sent back? I thought we were in the past?

Yes, but merely as observers. You are going back to when you were a child. You are six years old, no longer a professional killer, only a little boy. You are the same age that Mike was when your dear mother departed. For brothers, the two of you were very close. You shared everything, and that is unusual for brothers separated by six years.

Necatane vanished.

I was six and on Hades. The memories of the future were dim in my thoughts. My body was not powerful, efficient, and disciplined; I was small, and had a child’s body, clumsy, and ever afraid to touch anything for fear of breaking it. I always broke things.

I sat on the living room sofa, a dusty piece of foam covered with a rotting green and orange tweed. Next to me was Mike. He was twelve years old, and had big muscles from all the digging we did. In the kitchen, my father spoke and drank with another miner, Rebux. And sitting across from us, in my father’s chair, was Rebux’s daughter.

Rebux had a dozen or so such girls who traveled with him from camp to camp. For a few fragments of Philosopher Stone, the miners got them for an evening.

I had the impression she was bored. She shifted in the chair, seeming never to get comfortable, glancing at Mike, or me, or the ceiling, but no one thing for too long. Mike asked her name, but she didn’t answer him. She wore a skimpy white top, no sleeves, and her arms were covered with pinprick blisters. She was clean, too. Her eyes darted to the kitchen, then back to us.

My father and Rebux staggered into the living room. Their faces looked flushed and they stank of booze.

She smiled, and no longer looked bored.

“You boys have the day off,” Dad slurred to us. “Make our guest at home, and don’t get into any trouble. I’m gonna be busy this afternoon, so don’t come crying to me if you burn your pinkie.”

“Yes sir,” answered Mike. That’s what he always said to him. Anything else would catch you a face full of fist.

My father grabbed the girl by her hand and hauled her off to the bedroom. She gave us a strange look when she left, a look of pity almost, maybe compassion. The door then slammed shut, and that was the last I ever saw of her.

Rebux sat on the sofa’s arm next to Mike, making the whole thing sag under his weight. He leaned over and said, “So, I hear you boys are hard workers.” His breath was so foul I could almost see the vapors of tequila come out of his mouth. “Your pa is proud of you both. Says that on your day off you go to the fields and do a little diggin’ on your own. You ever find anything?”

“No sir,” Mike fibbed.

“Well if you do, you just let me know. Maybe one day I’ll introduce one of my daughters to you.” He made a clicking sound and scratched his rough face. He then looked about the room and his eyes found the basement door. “That your cellar, boy?” he asked.

Mike nodded.

Necatane interrupted the memory.

There is something down there,
he whispered.
It terrifies you. What?

I hesitated, then admitted,
Mom had all these peach preserves. At least, that’s what Mike told me.

You fear fruit?

It’s the jars. They’re two liters and real thick green glass—full of rotten peaches. Sometimes one’ll explode, and glass goes everywhere. I’ve seen shards embedded in the stone walls. Think what could happen if you were close to one when it went.

That,
Necatane said,
is not your entire fear. We shall soon learn what, however.

The memory continued.

“Come on,” Rebux said to Mike, “I want to show you something. But just us two. Your brother is too young, I think.”

“I am not,” I said.

“What is it?” Mike asked. “A porn?”

“Something like that, but better.”

Mike’s eyes lit up. When Dad went to the market once a month, we snuck a peek at the porns he hid in his room. They had men and women touching each other. It seemed exciting enough for the characters in the virtuals, all that squealing and panting, but I could never see what all the fuss was about. Mike was more impressed however, and sometimes he’d kick me out and watch them by himself. He did something in there. I hadn’t quite figured out what.