Ectopia (15 page)

- So what do you suggest? You want me to leave him in your capable hands?

- He needs proper help. Someone who's trained. Maybe his sister. She's had medical training, hasn't she?

The sky roars. It's ex-Dad laughing. I look up inside the grey chasm of his open laugh and can smell its gusts from memory. From Steven's memory. His laugh spends itself out.

- You think I'm falling for that? You think I'll let you use my own son as bait to trap my daughter?

- He's sick, Malik tries – He needs your help.

- The whole world's sick and he's one of the sickest things in it. I might chain him up but I can't help him. He's beyond that.

- Give him his qual, Runt suggests. They've closed in around me now, leaving ex-Dad to peer from his watchtower – I found this batch in that new bag of his.

- Ring of Power, Furbo shouts. He takes the bag from Runt and counts em out – There's enough and then some. One each.

- With that freak watching? someone asks.

- He's a drek, Malik answers – He doesn't exist.

- You talking about me? ex-Dad shouts down – No drug-soaked skink gets to talk about me like that.

Ex-Dad's an empty scream. Chuck words at him and you fill him up so he can scream on. Ignore him and he soon dries up. Teensquad have all had Dads one time or another. They know that much.

- Let's do it, Malik says.

He goes to my left, Dome to my right. They ease my body into position and stretch up my arms.

- You'll be alright, Malik says. His voice is the first good thing my body's felt since coming back as Bender. It starts from where his lips touch my ear, collects inside my head and pulses down my spine – I'm with you, Bender. We're with you. We'll give you everything we have. We'll hold on, Bender. We'll hold on.

My lips are open. He reaches between em to pull my lips apart and settles a capsule on my tongue. It slides down to my throat and I swallow.

- Soo's holding the center, Malik tells me – He'll watch out for your Dad.

Everyone swallows and lies down. The fingers of Dome's left hand intertwine with my right, the fingers of Malik's right hand intertwine with my left. We are gathered in a ring with Soo as its center, our arms angled high to form the pattern of a star. I feel the power on the instant of connection. It's like blood is pumped through all of us by one giant heart, the current charging from left to right. It's electric.

Game's on. The trick is to hum when the qual kicks in. As each one starts the ride they hum till we're one voice humming, carving out time and space.

It's there. I can do it. I'm first. I find voice enough. I hum.

Hum.

Like you hum when waiting for something to happen.

I hum louder. No-one joins in. Dome relaxes his hold on my hand. The ring's breaking apart.

- Duds, a voice says from the far side of the ring – There's nothing in em. What's Bender humming for? They've been feeding him blanks.

I felt something. I still feel it.

Malik lets go of my hand. The feeling stops.

- Nobody move.

The shout comes from the watchtower. We look up and see ex-Dad. He's holding a crossbow in front of him. He's been trading this stuff since I was a kid, keeps a pile of such crap in the cellar. He's grinning like this is his big day. Like life's been worth screwing with all these years just to make this kind of sense.

- The first one to touch her gets an arrow.

It's his version of romantic. Ex-Dad's playing Cupid. The gate to the garden where I'm lying opens and a figure walks through it. I turn my head to one side and I can see it. It's dressed in yellow plastic. A plastic hood, plastic cape, and thick plastic pants that buckle round its ankles, an outfit left over from times when it rained. It crackles as it moves.

- Karen, Furbo says. He recognizes her fast. She's been playing on his mind.

- Nobody move. Nobody touch her. Just stand clear of Steven and let his sister examine him.

Karen crackles louder as she kneels close. Her face is white. Her right cheekbone's bruised.

- What's up? I ask. A sound comes out of my mouth but not the sense. Karen's face turns extra worried and she looks across at Malik.

- He got hit in the belly, Malik explains – a real hard blow.

- No talking, ex-Dad shouts down.

Karen pulls some rubber tubing out of her pocket. She fixes two ends of it to her ears and presses a suction cup at its other end to my chest.

- Can you talk? she asks.

- No talking!

- Look lay off, Dad. I'm draped in your dirty plastic in hot sunshine. No-one's getting a look at me, no-one's chatting me up. You've got the whole place covered with that fucking crossbow.

- You mind your language my girl.

- I've got to talk to Steven. Find out what's wrong. Just let me get on with it and get out of here, OK?

She waits. Ex-Dad doesn't answer back. Karen bows her head so the hood hides her face from him. She speaks soft.

- He's flipped, Steven. He's lost it. What did you come back for? I've just been waiting. Waiting for my chance. I was going to follow you.

I stare up at her.

Her face. Malik's face. Those two faces staring down at me. That's what I've come back for.

- Well Miss Doctor, you got a cure? ex-Dad shouts down.

- I'm working on it.

- I know what you're doing, my girl. You're waving your ass around in the air. Now you get your ass into gear and bring it back round this side of the fence. I've had enough of this game. You … and you.

He waves his crossbow to make his choice. Dome and Soo.

- Pick Steven up and bring him round to my gate. Leave him outside and come back here where I can see you. I'll drag him inside and Karen can help me carry him from there. You're not setting foot inside this garden, not one of you, not one step, not till I'm ready for you. You understand? I know your game. You want to carry Steven up to his room. You'll case the house on the way, and work out its layout. That was your plan. Well it's not working. If we've got to have Steven back then we'll drag him back ourselves. That's an end of it. Go on. Pick him up.

Dome grabs under my arms, Soo around my thighs, but I still sag in the middle. It creases my stomach so that I shout out.

- He needs a stretcher, Soo yells.

- You'll all need a stretcher if you don't get on with it. Hurry up. Bring him round.

- Don't worry, I hear Malik say as I pass him – We'll get you out.

I'm glad he says it. Some lies are alright.

 

I stand up. Ex-Dad's carrying me nowhere. I've got to practice walking for when I run from here.

- Thought so, ex-Dad says when he opens the gate – You were fine all along. It was a plot.

Karen's got my clothes and my bag. I walk barefoot along the path and in through the front door, then hold on to the railing at the bottom of the stairs before starting to climb. Paul's in the front room. I see him through the angle of its open door. He doesn't look round. He's plugged into his terminal.

- I'm going to bed, I tell Karen.

Dad's stayed out in the garden. He's the dog. Karen's followed me in. She's peeling off her plastic rainsuit and chucking it back down the cellar steps. She's in tight silver shorts and a lilac sleeveless top pouches her breasts. She shakes her head to loosen its ginger curls.

- You look good, I tell her. My voice is pinched but it's working.

- You look crap. What bed are you going to use? Dad chopped up Mom's bed for the wood and dragged its mattress down to his cellar. He's been sleeping in yours. He tried to get in to mine. He said times are hard and we've got to stick together. I turned to the wall and he held my back, pressing his dick against my bum. I kicked him out. He came back and gave me this.

She points to the bruise on her cheek.

- He got worse, Steven. I gave it him worse. He crawled away but he won't crawl again if he ever comes back. I'll kill him. I should kill him now. Kill him in any case. You're not strong enough to be back, Steven. He'll have you.

- Steven's gone. I'm Bender now.

I walk the stairs to Steven's room. It takes a while, one step at a time, some resting and some gasping. My face is wet but I'm not crying. My eyes are sweating.

The sheets are grey and marked with ex-Dad's imprint. I pull em off, drop em to the floor, and lie on the mattress. Karen comes and stands by the bed.

- You going to be alright?

- You're the medical student.

- I cut babies out of stomach's. That's it.

- You can stop that now.

- It's what I do. I'm getting good. An operation's on hold in my room. I've delivered the baby. A girl. Now I'm saving the parent. I'd better get back. You see Mom?

- Don't ask. You don't want to know.

- She alright? She like her things? Did you give her my dove?

Funny how you don't think about it. The world wants a lie and you give it to em.

- She was touched, I say - She laughed and cried. She says thank you. She says to give you a kiss. Could you bend down?

Karen bends, she puckers her lips, and I kiss her on the mouth.

- I knew she'd be pleased, Karen says – Little things still matter.

The kiss and the lie have made her life right for a while.

- You'd better get some rest, she tells me.

She smiles and goes back to her room.

I doze. I don't know what was in those capsules. Hormones. DMT. Whatever. Something's taking effect. Something's going on in my stomach but it's not all bad. It's like my guts are knitting themselves together. Beyond that, all around that, something else holds me. I guess it's chemical, a gift whisked up by my brain, but it feels like a hammock of skin which rocks me. Or maybe a boat. A round boat of skin stretched round a structure of thin white bone and bobbing on a sea of tar.

Something yelps. I listen but nothing follows. Maybe the yelp was me, a stab of pain inside a dream. I drift off again.

- Can you move?

Karen's got hold of my shoulder.

- Can you make it across to my room? I can help. Hold on to me. I want you to see this. You've got to see this. It's so weird I nearly screamed but cut it off. You don't scream in this house. Screams bring Dad running.

She's been finishing off her operation.

- I did it. I told you I'm getting good. I've kept em both alive. Baby and parent. I've left the placenta inside and stitched up the wound. I've even taken a sponge and washed up a bit. The program's kept running. I took the time to have a look around. Checked out the operating theatre. Checked out the patient. Look, Steven. You've got to look.

She fits the anthead visor over her head to adjust the image, then lifts it off and puts it on me.

- Surprise number one. Check out the sex of the mother.

The stomach's still swollen. That surprises me. I thought it would just shrink back to normal with the baby cut away from it. The wound's raw, the stitches purple. I look to the right. This new mother's got a penis. Can't say I'm surprised. It looks tiny in its cloud of ginger hairs, the way a dick shrivels after swimming.

- You get it? The parent's a man.

I'm already scanning left. I watch his chest. The patient's not breathing. The image is on hold, or he's dead. I go up to his head. For all the blood down below his eyes are closed and he looks peaceful. Like a soldier in a battlefield who's been helped to die.

- You see him?

If he could open his eyes he'd see me back. We'd be looking at each other. Looking at ourselves.

- It's you, Steven. I've just helped you give birth to a baby girl.

- I'm Bender, I remind her – I got a punch in the stomach. It ripped my guts apart. There's no baby inside me. Don't waste your life. Stop practicing.

- But why do that? Why go to all that trouble? Why make me think I'm delivering my own brother's baby? How fucked is that, Steven? You tell me.

- It's fucked, I tell her – Totally fucked.

- Totally.

I lift the visor off.

- They must have scanned me when I was in Cromozone to beam that picture in.

- You let em do that?

- Why did you let your Dad hit you?

I brush my hand across her cheek. She glares back.

- That's what I mean. You don't let em do things. They just do em. It's a battle, Karen. Like you and your Dad. You see it's a battle?

- Too right.

- Who's winning?

- Dad or me? I'll die before he wins.

Death's the final card. It's an ace. Play it and you can't lose.

Dying's a funny game. It's a spectator sport. That's the good thing and the bad thing about it.

The bad thing's not knowing when your own death's over, so you don't get to enjoy it as much. You don't get that sense of completion.

The good thing is watching others die.

Steven was mixed on that. Death wasn't his favorite sport. Bender's much clearer. He's developing a long list of dying fixtures he doesn't want to miss. Dad's dying is way on top of the list. Bender's big on the sport of dying. He's a fan. He's me. I'm a fan. I look out through the window at Dad on his tower.

I'm getting to see the world in a few different ways. Here's a funny thing I think about houses. Live in one long enough and it starts leeching from your life. A family is parents, kids plus a house. The house is never on the kids' side. It knows the kids want to run away. In a bid to keep the family together it steals thoughts from the kids' brains and transmits em. I have these thoughts when I'm running the streets and I bet Dad doesn't twitch, lift his head, and stare in my direction. That trick only works for him in the house. It works now. I think of death. I think of the sport of watching his death. He lifts his head and stares straight in through the window and at me. He climbs down from the watchtower and a minute later he's climbing the stairs.