Head Full of Mountains (28 page)

They were in a cove of sorts, opening up to a greater area that remained dark. The hub Crospinal had looked out over from the ledge opened up there, a vastness brimming with remaining night, like a weight, leaning in. Standing there, blinking, Crospinal again felt awed by the immensity of the world.

Within the dark, several very bright moving points of light glimmered, impossible to tell at what distance. He saw no walls, no hint of higher areas. The sight was wondrous and humbling—

The man had started laughing, breath sickly sweet. Within the cave of his mouth, a black tongue writhed. Ambients illuminated his eyes, not blue, nor green, but cataracted, and the marks over his body were not creatures at all but discoloured melanomas, crumbling dark patches of disease and dry skin. His scalp was blotchy; he scratched at it now, and there was blood. “I got some tricks,” he said when he could speak again. “And that, my friend, is how you tell us apart. I’m the real thing. Let’s see you try.”

He circled now, pointing. “Your passenger fixed you because he thought that would make you his son. Fathers and sons haven’t existed in a million years. We like to think we’re smart, but we’re not. We’re pathetic and insane. Scrambled wrecks. It’s a blessing to leave memory behind. Now, sit. Eat. I won’t ask you again.”

With his eyes still smarting from the light, Crospinal glanced behind himself again, saw the crude bedding, batches resting there, sitting or sleeping. Overhead was a local, lower ceiling, but arcing up, to blend into the vertical, and vanish upward. The active light from this cove faded long before the broader opening: he envisioned the bottom of the great wall, an illuminated pinhead where they had gathered, lost in the black cathedral of endtime’s night. The sailors inside him were awake again, whispering from their hiding places, warning him, but Crospinal already knew the danger.

He walked back to the spot where he had woken, and sat.

Somewhere out there were Clarissa and Richardson, and the machines that had repaired him. Somewhere out there—

From the opening of a floor grille, lengths of old carbon rods grew; pierced on these, he realized now, were shreds of flesh.
Food
. No pellets here, no dispensers. But was this rat meat? Crow?

Hunkering down before Crospinal, still grinning, one hand flat on the floor, the man stared. His glazed eyes glittered and Crospinal wondered if he was able to see anything at all. Two fingers at the second knuckle were lost, nubs rounded and smooth. Crospinal knew he would never be able to leave this place, not as long as this man remained alive.

“Such a long time I’ve been here,” he said. “I’m so happy you’ve come back.”

“How did I get here?”

“I don’t know.” The man shrugged, dismissive. “I found you out there, and I carried you back. You were wedged between two floor plates crumpling together in some tectonic upheaval.” Demonstrating with his fingers, pushing together. “Awash with toluene. Heart beat thin, almost nonexistent. I saw them, searching. But you’re almost invisible, like me. The batches, well, they’re idiots, to be honest, when it comes to initiative. I waited for a clearing, picked you up, and carried you here.”

Crospinal was staring at a grotesque tumour dangling between the man’s legs: wrinkled and olive-toned, it hung below the level of his garment and looked truly malignant. The man had paused but, realizing what had stricken Crospinal so, laughed again, grabbing and hefting the growth—which was loose, anchored in place by tendons. He
squeezed.
“Your old man never showed you his gear? Never saw him naked?” Bouncing what he held, gripping it. There was a shaft, the flesh darker and smoother than his knuckles. A hole at the tip of the shaft glistened with a drop of mucus. “Sometimes I think this is all that’s left of the old world. Maybe that’s what the sailors are searching for? Maybe this is humanity? All this talk about souls.” He released the painful-looking tumescence. “Fuck it. But a surefire way of telling us apart. You don’t have anything like this, boy, do you?”

“No.” Something awful had happened to the man’s genitals: before the catheter had corkscrewed into Crospinal’s urethra, and the processor had bonded to his pelvis, his own penis had been as delicate as those of the batches around him.

But the man laughed and laughed for some time, finally subsiding into chuckles. Those lingering about settled down, curling on the floor, scratching themselves, drifting off into darker areas.

Crospinal leaned forward and snapped a carbon rod off at the base; the meat, dangling from the sharp tip, swayed. “You eat them,” he said.

The man did not reply. His eyes glittered.

Crospinal raised the flesh to his face, sniffed, and pulled it free. The rod had been honed to a sharp point. Between his fingers, the meat felt dry, almost like the sole of a boot. He rubbed his thumb against it, never taking his eyes from the man, and tried to bite off a gobbet, but the meat was tough, so he pushed the whole piece into his mouth, awkwardly, with a knuckle, and chewed.

Sailors within began to sing.

Staring at the dark ceiling, he listened to creaking from next door. The noise had woken him. He could not recall falling asleep, yet it was 3:11. Nor could he recall the transition from sleep to lying here, awake, listening. There had been a dream, a confrontation? Details were gone now. Muffled voices. After a moment, he touched the mattress next to him, to see if his wife still lived with him, but his hand fell upon nothing but a damp sheet.

The grace period, if it came at all, was at night, during times like this. He could not feel any tremors in his body. As if he was catching them unawares. Alerted now, they dashed back across time, and possibly space, to inflict him again. He held his hands up, watching them, but the room was too dark to see much of anything except the glowing red numerals of the clock.

Grinding his teeth, he tried to prep for the shaking to return, listening to the floorboards creak, and for the talking, imagining the boy next door roaming the cramped apartment, from his bed to the couch, to his parents’ bed, to the dresser, and back to the couch. Were his parents even home? Who was talking? He seldom heard talking. He could visualize the furniture but had never stepped foot in the neighbour’s apartment.

Why the fuck was the boy always awake?

Sometimes on the stairs, when he was returning exhausted from work—forcing his limbs to continue for just a bit longer until he could shut the door and lay on his bed, close his eyes, dream he was sailing the stars already—they would encounter each other, staring until he was forced to look away.

No one saw the shaking, except for the boy.

Floorboards creaked.

He had come to understand that the boy was trying to tell him something.

About the one-way trip.

A warning.

Today, the last of the banks had been installed and activated. Ten thousand embryos, ready for their big chance. How often had he looked upon them, expecting the weight of potential futures, of myriad souls, to crash upon him and crush him, yet feeling very little from the innocuous tubes each time?

And all twelve gates were active. The last of the twelve cortexes achieved max right before his shift ended. Twelve minds would watch them all as they slept, would guide them through the galaxies. A crowd of psychologists and biotechs and selected press stood at the base of the housing and took readings and notes and wondered at the implications. A milestone, to say the least. This one had been a woman from Denton, a doctor.

They were ready.

As he hurried to get the dolly back to its dock, he was certain he felt the attention of this doctor, turning toward him. The cortexes would stay awake while passengers slept. They would stay awake while he slept. He even peed a bit into his suit, thinking for some crazy reason that he was already hooked up, but no co-worker, thankfully, noticed the wetness.

There were ghosts of the past and ghosts of the future everywhere. He was a receptacle; they would fill him, and the idea was terrifying.

His supervisor laughed when Crospinal told him, and called Crospinal a
fuckin’ coward
.

As the tremors crept back, he had begun to fall asleep again, and the darkened room was turning upside down, so furniture became inverted. The bed, suspended from the ceiling. Crospinal had to push himself upward into the mattress, holding onto the crumpled sheet to prevent that, too, from falling.

“I live here,” he murmured, convincing himself. “I live here,
I live here,”
while, next door, the boy continued to move about, unhampered by any nocturnal inversions.

In sleep, breathing slowed. The room swung around, right side up. As his mouth slowly closed in relief, he had a dream of another boy named Richardson opening his, and speaking for the first time. Richardson had made it back to the cockpit. From there, he was sent by sentries to the chamber where the stats were now fully emerged. The corpse of the batch had been removed. A fresh sailor in full uniform and silver helmet was exposed; the door of a cabinet had opened. Richardson took part, holding the arm, helping the sailor down from the booth, his boots firm on the strip of carpet there. A chill washed over him from the stat, the slow breath of time. Dripping, on trembling legs, the sailor looked about, nonplussed. Richardson said his first words to the sailor, meant to reassure, to welcome, but the phrase came out in a language that did not yet exist, a whispering language of sibilant hisses and protracted clicks.

The sailor fell to his knees.

Then a wind swept the scene away, multitudes of faces rushing past, a sea of hopes and despair washing over him, none lingering long enough for him to recognize but enough to wake him again, slick with sweat—

3:47

Like red eyes.

Terrified of the coming day, he sat up, fully awake, until the glow of the ambients was just bright enough for him to see the forms of other people, sleeping naked all about. He frowned, wondering if he were remembering a dream, or entering into another one.

A carbon rod was clenched in both hands.

All was still.

Did he have the capacity to use the rod as a weapon? This was a test of sorts. Only one way to get away from the man who had held him down here. Previously, he had swung a carbon rod, but had not connected; the batches, then, ran off. He imagined solid impact, flash-hardened carbon crunching a skull, life spilling out through a hole torn in a man’s guts as the rod jammed upward, piercing intestines and diaphragm and juddering against the range of white vertebra—

Beyond the alcove, a great expanse of the hub was becoming visible in the growing light of a new day. Mists of polymers rose from the floor, commanded by the burgeoning lumens.

Had the man been real?

Crospinal could still feel the hard tap of a forefinger against his sternum, the thump inside his chest. The man’s foetid breath, so close to his face.

Standing, he walked gingerly from the cove, stepping over the last of the sleeping batches into the larger expanse, the ceiling vanishing, swooping up to join the massive wall, which rose out of sight, swallowed by brighter areas higher in the world. He looked for the ledge where he last saw Clarissa and Richardson, but features were indistinguishable at this incredible distance, so he gave up.

At the horizon, clearer now, he saw no features.

He headed toward the open floor, taking big strides at first, picking up steam, leaving the batches and alcove behind, as the batches turned languorously and stretched, as if they, too, were dreaming. No sign of the man. The encounter seemed years ago.

At the bottom of the world, though, dwarfed on the ancient tiles, and feeling the inrush of time and the insurmountability of direction, Crospinal soon hesitated. An unknowable silence all around. The world poised, waiting. Had he been here before? From the people he was leaving behind there was a sort of peaceful, throbbing weight, settling over his shoulders, cast from them; they emanated the simplest of purposes, like a somnambulant heartbeat. He should sleep more. Go back with them, lie down.
Stay.

He did not.

The carbon rod burned against his fingers. He clenched it
tight
.

A clear purpose would most likely elude Crospinal forever. But he carried within him a history, from sailors to batches, and even from elementals, too, who transversed the bays, watching over young children as they played in the pool, carrying within themselves colder yet no less complex questions about what sense life might possibly make. Any elemental, or lesser device with half an intellect—any living creature, humans of any sort, gazing upon sights such as the ones Crospinal had seen, and who felt the touch of fingers against their skin or uniform or plating—had felt this convergence, this moment of belonging.

Had he found what he was looking for?

The moment of peace and clarity was already diminishing.

He turned to look behind:

Distant batches were sitting, waking, knuckling their eyes. He saw one urinate, squatting.

From far away came a low hooting sound and a rumble, and he realized, looking for the source (again trying to evaluate just how
big
the world was), that he had not heard the engines in some time, nor felt their power, coming up through his reconfigured bones.