Part 21 (1/2)
She starts inching toward the ladder again. ”Dylan was good but he was naive. They'd kept him in a box, you see. No current events or news, no idea of how the information he was providing was being used. They did give him carefully edited old-time stuff: fairy tales, science fiction, romances. He had a cute idea of right and wrong and he was definitely on the side of RIGHT-all in capitals, if you get what I mean.”
Reaching the ladder, she begins to ascend, aiming for a platform that's more stable. I s.h.i.+ft slightly so that I can see her. I say nothing, wanting only to hear the rest of her story.
”I showed him, though, news clips, photos, other stuff. Dr. Aldrich left me alone with him a lot because he was my brother-something n.o.body else knew. Dr. Aldrich liked keeping who his Wunderkind Wunderkind were a secret. Gave him an edge, you see, Sis. were a secret. Gave him an edge, you see, Sis.
”Essentially, Dylan caught on that he wasn't the sorcerer for n.o.ble houses, but the blackest of necromancers for the vilest of merchant princes. I take some pride in this-I mean the boy was so naive that he thought that s.e.x was the weekly jerking off he did for the sperm bank. Try and get someone like that to understand what makes war or rape or robbery terrible.”
Gripping Betwixt and Between so tightly that their back spines cut my hand, I lean forward to see her face.
”Why? Why did you want to do this to him?”
”I wanted him to kill himself, of course,” she says, coming to sit on the platform edge. ”He didn't though-not right off. He loved living too much. But he thought he found a way to live and yet stop serving evil. Like me he grew up with stories of little Sarah who wasn't good enough 'cause she was crazy as a bedbug and couldn't talk.”
”Yeah, don't try and rub it in, Dr. Haas,” I answer curtly. ”Jersey told me that Dylan messed up his throat and couldn't talk and all the rest. What I still don't understand is why you wanted Dylan dead!”
”You don't, do you?”
Her emerald eyes study the Reaches with fixed, unseeing intensity. ”I wanted Dr. Aldrich to train me, to bring out my abilities. And he would have if Dylan hadn't forced the Inst.i.tute to get linked up with Jersey. Then, well, then you became an option again, and when Dylan hung himself, plans were made to recover you. Bring you from the Home to home.”
She giggles and her hands pluck restlessly at one of the Web cables nearest to her. From my gently swinging hammock I can feel the dull thrum of her motion; it vibrates through me like her pulse in my body. After a few smothered giggles, she continues.
”I nearly stopped them, though, getting you discharged from the Home. Figured you'd die out there, nameless, voiceless, but when Dr. Aldrich started checking, he learned that you'd been sighted. Eventually, when the street people didn't turn you in-seemed to protect you even-we went after them.”
She stops. ”Why am I bothering to tell you this?”
”Bragging,” I offer. ”Couldn't tell anyone else and I can't rat on you unless someone comes here, so you're showing off.”
”Maybe,” she says conversationally, ”because you're a safer confidante than even you may have thought.”
She brings her hand up and then down hard and I see the flas.h.i.+ng silver edge of the cutting tool she's had concealed in her hand. Quick as thought, I understand and, worse yet, I believe what she has been doing while she talked.
With her handsaw, she had been sawing away at one of the cables that supported the part of the Web from which I swing. With the anchor rope sawed through, the ropes holding me sag. I lose my balance and fall, tumbling toward the hard metal and dirt floor, recalling too vividly the mutilated body of the Inst.i.tute guard who had died just this way.
In a futile gesture, I roll myself into a ball, protecting my extremities as even the newest Cubs are taught and praying that I will land on something to break my fall. Jolting off still-strung lines, I resist trying for one to break my fall, knowing that it would more likely break me and that the damage-or death-would be as real as I believed it to be.
I am bracing against death even as my body hits, bounces, and lands. My breath is knocked from me but I am basically unharmed enough to realize that I lie among the ruins of Head Wolf's tent.
Sprawled amid the rugs and cus.h.i.+ons, snapped tent poles and painted canvas around me, I laugh and laugh. My face is buried in pillows, m.u.f.fling the noise. Still, there is a maniac note to my glee that brings Athena to perch by my head and churr softly in concern. I stroke her soft chest plumage with a gentle forefinger and find, as I expect, Betwixt and Between nearby, squarely centered on a red fur cus.h.i.+on.
Moving slightly so that I can see the upper Jungle, I catch sight of Eleanora, her back to us, clambering down.
Softly, I warn my companions, ”Don't move. She may think me unconscious or dead.”
We wait, a frozen tableau, but the pose is for nothing.
”I know you're conscious, baby sister,” Dr. Haas purrs. ”So don't bother with the possum thing-or is it the ostrich one-not playing dead, but hiding your head?”
I hear echoes of forgotten nursery rhymes in her words, but let them slip away as I roll to face her.
”That's good enough,” she commands as I start to get up. ”Stay where you are. I rather like the picture, you languis.h.i.+ng among the pillows.”
As I shove myself into a sitting position, bruises scream at me for abusing them. Eleanora doesn't try to stop me.
”So, here we end it,” she says, walking towards me. ”I can't trick you like I did Dylan, but you're still in my way.”
She seems different as she approaches, her walk stiff, her lithe grace missing. And something is wrong with her face-a network of lines seams her exposed flesh: hands, face, throat, legs. I shake my head and look closer, but the lines are still there.
Ignoring her warning, I shove myself to my feet. I feel as Athena flutters to my shoulder, landing with a faint tug on my hair. Betwixt and Between march from their pillow to stand between my feet.
Muscle aches fade instantly as I ignore them to focus on the woman stiffly lurching toward me-her image more menacing, more distorted than I know her to be. She smiles crookedly and, reaching into her bag, withdraws a tranq gun similar to those which had armed the Inst.i.tute guards.
”Believe me, the slivers aren't sleepy dope; they're crystalline poison. Instantly dead-unfortunately painless. Believe me, I'd have it another way if I could.”
Believe.
The word resonates in my mind. Of course. I look at Eleanora and see that the lines on her face and hands are seams, st.i.tched there by an awkward hand. I remember Professor Isabella reading to me the story of a man who made a son from spare parts, but wasn't willing to accept the monster he had made. The monster, however, never stopped wanting the love and appreciation of the people who had rejected it.
Somehow, Eleanora-brilliant, pretty woman that she was-had never stopped wanting to be the chosen one, had never forgiven Dr. Aldrich for making her feel like the unwanted monster.
All of this flashes into my mind in the same instant that I am scooping up a large chintz pillow and hurling it at Eleanora. She dodges stiffly and fires her gun, but her movement ruins her aim. I cannot spare the energy to doubt that the slivers will kill me, just as she promises-our minds are too intimately intertwined at this point.
Unlike Grey Brother or Midline, I have no idea how to disarm her, but a strange idea comes to me as I scoop up an oval sofa cus.h.i.+on and fling it into her face. Dropping low, I reach and snag her ankle, pulling her off-balance to come thudding heavily to the floor.
She drops the tranq gun to catch herself and as she scrabbles to regain it, I reach out and grab her ankle. There, as I had expected, is a lumpy seam. Somehow, I find the loose end and, grasping it firmly, I begin to pull, feeling the familiar sensation of st.i.tches coming loose, the faint popping and tugging gaining velocity as the thick surgical thread acc.u.mulates in a fluffy pile around Betwixt and Between.
Athena sees what I am doing and grasps a thread end from Eleanora's face and flaps upward.
”What are you doing?” Eleanora screams, forgetting her gun, clawing at herself.
And as she sees, she begins to come apart. Literally. Ankle drops from calf, calf from knee, a growing heap of body parts. There is no blood as they separate and the pile looks less like a dismembered corpse than a bunch of spare mannequin parts.
From where Athena pulls, the lovely head is falling apart in sections. Golden hair cascades like a wig to the floor; the face drops in sculpted panels, a bit of eye in each. The teeth ripple and fall like dominoes.
Except for the one cry of disbelief, Eleanora is silent and when Athena and I pull the last taut length of thread free to stretch between us, a single note like a plucked guitar string echoes in the empty Jungle.
Then I look down at my sister's wreck and weep.
Sixteen.
WHEN MINUTES? HOURS? LATER I I COME TO MYSELF IN THE COME TO MYSELF IN THE Comp-C, Dr. Aldrich is nowhere to be seen. The door to the corridor is slightly open and I hear shouting. Immediately, I set about unbuckling and unwiring myself from the chair. Comp-C, Dr. Aldrich is nowhere to be seen. The door to the corridor is slightly open and I hear shouting. Immediately, I set about unbuckling and unwiring myself from the chair.
I've never done this myself before without help and soon I am in a frustrated tangle. I finally work myself free at the expense of some skin and a twisted left pinkie.
I am scooping up Betwixt and Between and heading for the door when I notice that Eleanora is still in her chair. Hesitantly, I tiptoe over and almost choke at what I see.
That she is dead there is no doubt, but what horrifies me are the vivid red lines that trace in a b.l.o.o.d.y network about her limp body. They look like the scores of a wire whip, fresh and angry evidence of her mind struggling to dismember a body it believed was ripping apart.