Ghosts of Punktown (21 page)

     “I want all of it,” the Sufferer said.

     Swift contemplated the back of the creature as it remained turned from him. With its barren white flesh and its lack of arms, and a true head for that matter, it seemed to him like an uncooked cut of meat, like a mass of blank, undifferentiated cells. It looked like an empty vessel.

     He had a notion too wild to be called a hope. What if Talane could be perpetuated in something more organic than just a computer file or encoded molecules; what if, furthermore, she could live again, be reborn, by awakening all of the nanomites as the Sufferer requested? But live again as what? Swift had dreamed of merging with Talane in his mind; where before he had been selfish, he had wanted to become selfless. But this way, she would be merged with the Sufferer instead of him. And who was he fooling? In no species of vessel would she ever really live again. She would have no new, original thoughts; there was no true soul recorded there along with the data of memories, no matter how intense and immediate they might feel. But let the Sufferer have them, if intense and immediate was what it wanted. Let it have them if it thought it was a sturdy enough vessel.

      “Let me transfer them from the extractor to the injector, then,” he told his guest, moving past it to scoop up the cutter gun and return it to the freezer. “I only ask you one thing,” he said, his back to the alien this time. “Where the recording finishes, I want you to tell me if she still loved me.” He considered asking if she had loved him more than Laz, at that point, but knew how pitiful that was. “I just want to know that she didn’t hate me more than she loved me.”

     “I will tell you whatever I can, that you ask of me.”

     Swift shut the fridge door, dropped his hand to the lower compartment to withdraw a fresh beer. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

     “Please.”

     “You’re a braver soul than I, my friend.” Swift turned around to face his guest like an embalmer, ready to fill the veins of the dead with his preserving potions.

8

     He awoke with memories he did not want. Memories of his own he wished he could command out of his body like obedient insects.

     Some of it, mercifully, was blurred and remote. The injecting of the nanomites. The multiplying Knickerson bottles on the table. Sitting there as if at a séance and asking the alien what it felt...what did it see? But only moans had escaped the translation apparatus, until finally came a few garbled lines of a song.
“My name is Wunderdumpling, I love to go a-humping...”

     “Is that all you have to tell me, Talane?” Swift had laughed. Laughed with tears slick on his face. “All you can tell me from the great beyond? You can’t tell me if you
wanted
me? You can’t tell me if you loved me like I loved you?”

     An entranced medium, the Sufferer had shuffled a little, turning its body to face him more directly. “Yes,” came that seemingly disembodied voice. “Yes...of course I loved you.”

     Swift had lurched up from his chair at the words. “Talane...”

     “Ohh,” the Sufferer had groaned then. “There is such...
pain
. So much
pain
.” This time, it had seemed the otherworlder was expressing its own sentiments. “This is more...more than I would have expected...”

     Somewhere after more beers and more questions – most of which seemed to have gone unanswered – Swift had unstrapped the Sufferer from its harness. They had gone to his bed, and the creature had lain down on its front so Swift wouldn’t have to see what passed for its face. His actions, his desires, inexplicable even to himself, he had undressed and crawled onto the Sufferer’s back. There was a rubber-sheathed port tucked low in the cleft of its human-like buttocks that he inserted himself into. He clung there, lying flat, as if hanging onto a manta ray as it skimmed across a dream ocean. As if riding a magic carpet, dizzying heights above any recognizable terrain.

     Its flesh beneath him was not so barren, pure and unfinished, after all. Up close, again he saw the scars it bore, felt them raised against his own flesh. Cigarette burns, long stitched incisions like zippers that he might tear open with his own hands so as to unravel whatever tormented thing it was that this creature called its soul. When he awoke, Swift wouldn’t recall whether it was his idea that they fuck, or the Sufferer’s, or Talane’s, or Swift imagining it was Talane’s. But they rode united through the night, in their conjoined agony and delirium.

     He awoke in his bed, nude, his groin smeared with a clear jelly. If possible, his head hurt even more than it had when the Sufferer had appeared at his door. Managing himself into a sitting position, he noted that it was day – and that Jenny was no longer in his bedroom.

     He found the otherworlder, though, when he staggered into the bathroom to blast himself with a scalding shower.

     This time the Sufferer lay on its back, and lay there alone, not surfing across a phantasmagorical sea but unmoving and leaking a clear, thick fluid from a number of long gashes that had pulled open to yawn deeply. Seeing it there, with its cart toppled on its side beside the toilet, its grille no longer steaming, the blue fluid in its container no longer glowing, Swift could now remember having helped the being back into its harness. But he was certain,
certain
, whatever else he was forgetting, that he himself had not taken his cutting gun out of the freezer again. The gun was still gripped in the claw of the mechanical arm that had unfolded from the Sufferer’s translation machine.

     “Fuck – no!” Swift shouted, falling to his knees beside the body. “God, Jenny, no! Why?
Why
, you bloody stupid fuck?” He took hold of one of its satyr-like, crooked legs and squeezed it in both hands, lowering his forehead to touch the cold appendage. With his eyes closed, it felt as though he were holding a stiff human arm.

     Why, his mind wailed, had he allowed Jenny to shoot up the nanomites? Even if he hadn’t put the gun in its hand, he might as well have done so. Couldn’t he have foreseen that the past could only repeat itself?

     “Talane,” he sobbed, his face a clenched fist that squeezed fresh tears from his eyes. They fell upon the stark canvas of the Sufferer’s body, and quivered there in tiny pools as if the flesh might absorb them. “Talane,” he cried – knowing that instead of bringing her alive again, he had only helped to kill her again instead.

Life Work

HANAKO

1

     Hanako first met the old woman on the landing between floors three and four of the apartment building they shared, which stood on the border of a good-sized park in Subtown. Subtown was the subterranean level of Punktown, and while it did not extend fully to the borders of the megalopolis above it was still extensive enough. Denied the benefits of rain, the park’s flora had been chosen for its ability to draw moisture from the air, and was nourished by the artificial light of the high, solid ceiling that was the only sky this plant life had ever known.

     The underground park had been claimed by gangs, drug dealers and drug-addicted prostitutes a generation before, and consequently the city had all but given up on its upkeep. The trunks of many of its trees were entirely slathered in graffiti, its miniature pond capped by an epidermis of scum, its vegetation riotously overgrown. The locals called it the Jungle. It was the back of Hanako’s apartment building that faced onto the Jungle, and she was grateful there was a tall fence between the structure she called home and the park those others had made their own.

     The elderly woman was leaning her back against the landing’s wall, one hand on the handle of a small pull-cart with two wheels, filled with bags of groceries. She smiled at Hanako when they met each other’s eyes, and when Hanako reached the landing she stopped before the woman.

     “Oh my,” she said, “have you been dragging that up all these stairs?” But of course she had; the poorly maintained elevator was out of service again, or else Hanako herself wouldn’t be making this climb to her fifth floor apartment.

     “I’m almost there, sweetie,” the old woman said. Despite the abundance of alien races living in this colony-city on the world of Oasis, the woman was a human of Earth lineage. Hanako couldn’t judge her age, but she knew the woman must have been strikingly beautiful in her youth, with her pronounced cheekbones and vividly blue eyes.

     “Let me help you,” Hanako said.

     “Oh no, my dear, please,” the woman chuckled, “you’re too small!”

     At 4’9”, Hanako could understand why the woman should take her for a child, regardless of her businesswoman’s metallic gray, custom-tailored jacket and skirt, and expensive high heels. “No, please, I insist. I’m stronger than I look, I promise you.”

     “Thank you -- that’s very sweet of you. You know, two young men passed me on the way up and neither of them so much as looked at me.”

     Hanako was not surprised. Very little surprised her about Punktown anymore, and she had only moved here from the larger but less infamous colony-city of Miniosis three months ago. Even in Miniosis, she had been well accustomed to the vileness of the human race. And nonhuman races, too.

     “What floor are you on?” she asked the woman, having taken hold of the cart’s handle along with her. Together, they dragged it up step after step behind them.

     “Four, just up here,” the woman said, tilting her head. “Which floor do you live on, dear? I’ve never seen you before.”

     “Five,” Hanako replied. “I’ve only been here a few months. Plus, I travel a lot.”

     “Do you live with your parents?” The old woman looked her up and down dubiously.

     Hanako smiled. “I live alone. I’m an adult – I have a condition that has fixed my physical age at fourteen.”

     “Oh, my! Well, you’re very beautiful, no matter what age you are. You’re as adorable as a little doll. But you weren’t lying – you are stronger than you look, aren’t you?”

     A more uncomfortable smile flitted on Hanako’s face, and she changed the subject. “Can’t you have your groceries delivered to you?”

     “I like to shop in person, not order on the computer. Choose my own tomatoes, you know? I don’t want to stay cooped up inside all the time.”

     “Of course not. You must be careful outside, though, please.”

     “Oh, you need to be more careful than I do, my dear…
look at you.”

     Hanako considered complimenting the woman on the beauty she retained but thought it might sound insincere, obligatory, so she didn’t. As they dragged the cart up the last step to the fourth floor landing, and passed into the narrow, stuffy corridor that led off from it, Hanako asked, “Which door?”

     “Apartment 12, at the far end.”

     The old woman punched in her password on the keypad beside the door. Hanako couldn’t help herself from noticing that the password spelled out NURSERY. Unlike the malfunctioning elevator, the door promptly slid back into the wall. On the threshold, the woman turned to invite Hanako inside for a cup of tea. Hanako was anxious to return to her own apartment, having just arrived back in Punktown by shuttle flight from a business trip to the southwestern Outback Colony, but she didn’t want to hurt the woman’s feelings by declining her kind gesture. She supposed she could spare a half hour more before showering and then winding down in front of the VT, on the sofa -- where she would probably spend the night. And that was okay. There was no one to share her bedroom with.

     “Wonderful!” the old woman said, and before she led the way inside she told Hanako her name was Sabina.

     The moment she stepped into Sabina’s apartment, Hanako was suffused with awe. The air was dense, humid. Either the air circulation was malfunctioning, or else the apartment’s atmosphere was thick with the emanations of the plant life that exploded all around her, from every available space and surface.

     “You have a green thumb,” Hanako said in wonder, turning slowly to take it all in.

     “I have a green everything,” Sabina joked, already filling an old-fashioned tea kettle with water.

     They stole sips of their tea as Hanako helped Sabina put away her groceries, starting with those that required refrigeration. Also, in the midst of this activity Sabina would point out a plant on this shelf, atop that appliance, basking on a windowsill to drink in the faux sunlight of Subtown. Addressing this very issue, Sabina said, “I’ve been lucky with a lot of plants that normally wouldn’t do well with only artificial light. It’s trial and error with plants -- I’ve had many failures. But some of my babies I’ve had for fifteen years or more.”

     “Oh my, that’s wonderful,” Hanako said. “I’m very impressed. I really wish I had time for a hobby like this.”

     “Hm…I don’t like to think of it as a hobby,” Sabina said, refilling their cups. “I worked in the nursing field all my life, and I made a good living at it. I was the head of the nursing department at Central Hospital for eleven years. Caring for the sick, nurturing so many different types of sentient beings for all that time. Well, when I retired I couldn’t just stop caring for others, could I? Only, these days, these are my ‘others.’” She gestured around the kitchen. “These are my patients, my children, my everything.”

     “You don’t have children?”

     “No. My husband and I didn’t. Too busy working, both of us. Nicolas passed away eight years ago.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     “You?” Sabina asked.

     “Me? You mean husband, or children?”

     “Either.”

     “Neither. Never,” Hanako stammered. “Too busy…like you were.” She gave a jerky shrug.

     “Oh dear! A lovely girl like you? Do you think men are shy of you because you look so young?”

     Hanako wanted to laugh at the woman; how could she be so naïve? It was because of her youthful appearance that men had given her no rest. Instead, she said, “Maybe I’m the one who’s too shy. But I have devoted myself very much to my career, so...”

     “So did I,” Sabina sighed, “so did I.” With all the groceries now settled in place, she gestured for Hanako to follow her into the next room – which, from the orientation of her own apartment, Hanako knew would be the living room. “Come on…you haven’t seen anything yet.”

     Now Hanako did laugh out loud, but it was a sound of delight rather than mockery. This living room was nothing like her own, which was almost as neat and nondescript as the hotel rooms she had occupied in the course of her business travels. She exclaimed, “It’s like a greenhouse in here!” There were pathways through the verdant foliage that spilled out from every direction, but there were areas of the room she thought one might need a machete to get to. How did Sabina ever water all the plants in the far corners…and did she ever forget to water some of them, in all this chaos? Big pots stood on the floor, smaller pots crowded shelves and little tables and windowsills, or hung by chains from the ceiling. The slowly declining, false light of dusk that slanted through the windows was spattered upon countless leaves, and the room had an overall subdued greenish glow, like the floor of some deep enchanted forest. Just as Punktown’s many races coexisted shoulder-to-shoulder in the chaos outside these walls, and above their heads, so did the flora of numerous worlds thrive here in a kind of botanical microcosm.

     Sabina noticed Hanako admiring a large plant close by the doorway, sprouting from a beautiful glazed pot standing on the floor. “Both this plant and the pot are from Sinan,” she explained, but Hanako might have guessed that from the brilliant blue of the plant’s large rubbery leaves. All the plant life on the extradimensional world of Sinan was one or other shade of blue. “It’s a cousin of this plant, but with even longer leaves, that the Sinanese use to wrap up their dead before they bring them to the underground tunnels where they lay them to rest.”

     “Such a collection,” Hanako remarked. “You put so much love into this…it must be so rewarding for you.”

     “It keeps me out of trouble,” Sabina said, leaning in to blow a little dust off the leaves of another plant beside her. The apartment was less than tidy in other ways – books overflowed from shelves, and were stacked on tables amongst the plants, with more potted plants perched upon some of these book stacks – but compared to the sterility of her own apartment on the floor above, Hanako found it all quite charming. Was it that she was not home often enough, worked and traveled too many hours, or was she herself simply too lacking in this ambiguous “soul” people spoke of to have created an environment of such rich character to dwell in?

     “Like I say, this is my life’s work now,” Sabina continued, “but of course I began it before I retired from my ‘real’ job.” She made hooked quotation marks with her fingers at the word “real.” “You must be familiar with the Japanese expression ‘rice work.’”

     “Uh…hm?” Hanako said.

     “Oh, so you’re not? Well, then, in the culture of your ancestors, the work that puts food on the table is your ‘rice work.’ As opposed to your ‘life work,’ which is the work you truly love. The work that really enriches you.”

     “Ah, I see,” Hanako said. She lied, “Forgive me…I’ve never studied my own heritage as much as I should.”

     “That’s all right, dear! Anyway, as much as I loved my nursing work, and so many of the patients I came to know over the years, growing plants was always my personal passion. I even had a rooftop garden where my husband and I grew vegetables, right in the middle of this terrible city, before he died and I had to move down here to this smaller place.” Sabina wandered further into the room, and Hanako followed her, fronds and branches and flowers brushing against them both in whispery caresses. “So what’s your rice work, honey, and what is your life work?”

     “Well,” Hanako said, and found herself stammering again, “I guess I only have my rice work. I don’t even know what my life work would be.”

     Sabina stopped to face the younger woman again, the two of them standing in a clearing at the center of the enchanted woods. “Oh, my cutie,” she said. “Tell me you know yourself better than that.”

     Hanako gave another uneasy smile. She felt a twitch in her neck, and hoped it didn’t show – or look too unnatural if it did. She was feeling trapped in her blandly fashionable businesswoman’s jacket and skirt – too tight, too constricting after all these hours. She had not been designed to wear an abundance of clothing.