Gojiro (17 page)

The Brain in the Basement

“C
UTE KIDS,” SHEILA BROOKS SAID, FINALLY.

Until then they’d just been standing, mute, in the middle of the drafty ballroom, as if waiting for a spectral orchestra to strike up an angular, tonelessly modern waltz.

“Yes,” was all Komodo could say, as stiff as Greenland. Face-to-face with her in that grandiose, cavernous room, he felt cornered, trapped.

“Are they all yours?”

“Mine?”

“The kids. Are they all yours?”

“No, not exactly.”

“They’re adopted?”

“Well . . . not formally.”

Sheila Brooks tugged at the more accessible portions of her unruly coif. “Then . . . they’re foster children?”

Komodo seized on the term. “Foster children! Yes, you could call them that.” Then, feeling the ball in his court, he asked, “Do you have children, Ms. Brooks, you and Mr. Zeber?”

Sheila pressed her hands together, forcing the chewed skin around her nails whiter. “No. I can’t . . . have children.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s not
biological
. I’m not barren or anything. I took tests. There’s nothing wrong with my
flesh
.” She hit herself hard on the forehead with her palm. “It’s up here! That’s what stops it. Brain cells. They tunnel down and murder it, right in the womb—psycho-abortion. The doctors won’t admit it, but that’s what happens. I know.” Then Sheila Brooks turned her back, stared out the thirty-foot-high French window. She was sobbing now.

Komodo’s throat tightened. How different this was from that moment beneath Albert Bullins’s candy-striped tent. Back there, it was as if his every ion were charged, directed. He could have walked through any obstacle to her. He knew it was sinful—she was another man’s wife!—but, whatever had come over him during that uncommon instant, he wanted it back. It did not come. He could only stand, glued to his spot in that hideous room, listening to her sobs echo amidst the painted stars upon the vaulted ceiling. He was starting from absolute zero, as if the right words, the entire language he needed to express his thoughts hadn’t yet been invented.

“I’m awful,” she said, blowing her nose with a honk. “Coming over here, laying this on you. It’s just that . . . kids . . . I dunno. I walk through nurseries, see them lying in their plastic cribs, with their little feet and little hands, all of them, just starting out and then it takes over—what’s gonna happen. The squealing brakes, the microbes eating away, the bad water out of the tap, tornados tearing off the roof of the school . . . And the kids—they know. They
know I know
—who I am. They see me coming and they run.”

She let out a wail. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. It’s just that
your
kids—well, with them, I dunno, it didn’t happen. I don’t know why. I looked in their faces, and the horror, it didn’t start up. It was like . . . you know what I mean, whatever was gonna happen to them, it already did. It was different. Like . . . comfortable.”

She took a breath. “That one, the one who kissed me, what’s her name?”

“Ebi. Her name is Ebi.”

“Ebi.”

* * *

Grasping at etiquette’s thin straw, he asked if she’d like to see the house.

They made an ungainly couple, moving through the gloomy mansion together. It was more than the height discrepancy; there was significant differential in their bipedal formats as well. Komodo, crisp and compact, walked with a straight-lined precision that no fashion model with the Britannica balanced on her head could hope to duplicate. Sheila Brooks, on the other hand, locomoted with complete physical obliviousness. Her step was shot through with a cartoonish segmentation, each wideslung leg swing accented by an outward heel flare. This was compounded by a radical forward crane of her seemingly extravertebraed neck, which caused her large oblong head to precede the splaying footflap by a good yard. Needless to say, her posture left much to be desired. Despite this shambling display, however, her stride remained quite lengthy, so much so that she only required one step for Komodo’s every two. He attempted to compensate by doubletiming his gait. But then Sheila went faster too, causing Komodo to speed up further. In this way they traversed the shrouded corridors and cold marble staircases, faster and faster, neither one of them willing to call attention to the ever-escalating pace.

Finally, halfway down a dismal hallway, Sheila Brooks stopped to look at a painting of the sad producer’s long-lost love. There were dozens of the portraits in the house, all done by the old producer himself. Apparently, it was the way he’d passed those years alone. Each painting was dated, enabling Komodo, a student of such things, to trace the artistic trend. It was interesting to note how, in the earliest works, the pert-faced subject was almost always seated beside a sunlit window, much in the Vermeer style. The later pictures were darker, grieving, as if the window had been shuttered up with bricks.

“She is quite beautiful, don’t you think?” Komodo offered tenuously, recounting much of what the real estate brochure imparted in regard to the Traj Taj’s legend.

“Really good skin,” Sheila noted.

“It is a sad story,” Komodo said. “But the children enjoy looking at the paintings. Many of them have copied the works in finger oils. They have an ardent appreciation for art.”

“My mother was a painter,” Sheila Brooks said bluntly.

“Oh yes,” Komodo replied with sudden excitement. “I am aware of her work.”

“You are?”

“Absolutely. Her portrait of your father standing in the middle of the Encrucijada Valley is . . . shattering. Of course, I have only seen reproductions, shoddy ones at that, but sometimes I cannot even bear to look at those. It is almost too beautiful, too powerful. I’m certain seeing the original would be a great experience.”

“I never saw it.”

Komodo shuffled his feet. “You’ve never seen your mother’s painting?”

“I’ve never seen any of what she did.”

“But you should.”

“What for?”

“Because . . . because you are a great artist yourself. Your films are very compelling.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

Komodo couldn’t stop himself. “Where I came from there is a theory, sometimes referred to as Alchemical Heredity, or the Tenacity of Genes and Dreams. This means that, just as certain physical aspects are passed from parents to children, it is possible for thoughts, ideas,
dreams
, to likewise be inherited. Perhaps it is simply a personal folly, but I believe that there are dreams that, left unfinished in one generation, can be completed, or at least carried on, by the next. In fact, it was by virtue of your parentage that I felt we should come—”

“I don’t want to see my mother’s dreams,” Sheila Brooks said sharply. “It doesn’t matter anyhow. She’s dead.”

Komodo’s head slumped. “Oh, I am sorry.”

“She died the day I was born.”

Again, Komodo felt himself falling, down and down. Shame straitjacketed him. Then he felt someone standing behind him.

It was Shig. “Please forgive me,” the severe neoteen intoned, the hallway’s Caligari shadows only exaggerating his macabre aspect. “I heard a noise and thought I would investigate. We are in a strange country and cannot be too careful.”

Shig’s head pivoted like a surveillance camera in a convenience store, first scanning Komodo, then Sheila. “Mr. Zeber is ill?”

“No,” Sheila said faintly. “Why?”

“I only hoped he could have accompanied you to enjoy our hospitality.”

“Ms. Brooks just happened to be passing by,” Komodo said.

“I see.” Then Shig stared at Komodo. “Perhaps you might wish to check the laboratory; I noticed the door ajar.” He bowed and withdrew.

“That was the guy who came to the house. Who is he?” Sheila Brooks asked.

“A longtime associate,” Komodo answered.

“Really creepy.”

Komodo turned away. “Ms. Brooks, would you mind coming with me for a moment? There is something I must attend to.”

Shig was correct. The door to the makeshift laboratory Komodo had set up in the basement of the mansion was open. That could mean only one thing: Atoms had been in there. It was a serious problem, the little misfits sneaking in, guzzling every liquid, getting sick all over the place. There wasn’t much that could be done to stop it. Back on Radioactive Island, even with the latest intelligence equipment flotjetting in like a paranoiac’s trade show, security had been difficult. Here, it was impossible. Spastic as they were, many Atoms nevertheless possessed startling aptitude when it came to breaking and entering. They could turn every tumbler, pluck out any electric eye.

Sheila Brooks saw him first, pinned up there on the ceiling like an overweight moth. It was that Bop again. Obviously the unfortunate boy had wandered into the lab, gulleted some spare helium pellets, blown up to twice his normal size, floated upward, and become wedged between a pair of ceiling beams. “Do not be alarmed, Ms. Brooks. The boy is not hurt. It’s a chronic problem.” Komodo climbed a ladder, defused the pellets, and carefully guided the boy down to avoid a potentially disastrous propulsive exhaust.

“On your way,” Komodo said, giving the resuscitated Bop a kindly tap on the backside.

“What is all this stuff?” Sheila Brooks asked, surveying the array of blue-sparking static tubes, twelve-foot Tesla coils, multidialed torque engines, blip machines, and fish-eyed mirrors. Komodo, unhappy without his toys around him, had managed to slapdash the entire lab from several beginner-level Gilbert chemistry sets he found in the multigabled attic of the mansion. He could transform any room into a set from
The Bride of Frankenstein
in no time.

Uncertain of his next move, Komodo grabbed a pair of steel-rimmed glasses off the workbench. “Try these,” he suggested with forced conviviality.

“What are they?” Sheila asked, suspiciously regarding the cheaters.

“You’ll see! Try them on!”

“I don’t know,” she said, indicating her electrician’s-tape-encrusted goggles. “These aren’t just for fashion, you know. They’re prescription.” But then she reached out. “Well . . . okay, just for a minute.”

Komodo’s heart began to pound as Sheila reached with both hands behind her head and began to undo the catches of her glasses.
Spall-lurt
went the suction cups as they separated from her face. He’d never seen her eyes; he didn’t even know what color they were.

They were green. An emerald sort of green, maybe a bit darker. A verdant sort of green, showered through with gold. Komodo felt dizzy, as if he’d walked into an intoxicating cloud.

“So?” Sheila asked after placing the thin-lensed, clear-view glasses on her face.

“Do you feel the small button on the inside of the right temple wing? Push it when I tell you to.” Then, in a most uncharacteristic pose, Komodo put his thumbs into his ears, wiggled his fingers, and stuck out his tongue. “Now!”

“Wow! It has instant replay!”

“Sixplay capacity for each event, expandable by a factor of twelve. It can store two hundred individual events. It comes equipped with audio echo as well.”

Sheila pushed the button again. “This is great! You could make a fortune with these.”

Komodo scratched his head. “Oh, I don’t know. I just make them up for fun. To play with. I have a Braille one, too. Some of the children cannot see.”

“Do something else!”

“What?”

“Sing something, like before.”

Komodo blushed horribly, then, in a reprise of one of those solitary talent shows he used to put on for Gojiro back in the old days, he grabbed hold of a pole, whirled around, and sang a couple of bars from “Jailhouse Rock”: “And the whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang!”

“Great!”

“No.”

“Really! You’re a terrific inventor, you know.”

Komodo blushed. “I try hard and someday hope to invent some truly useful things such as the deep-sea hippodrome, the spectromarine copter, and the electric dining car runabout.”

“Who invented them?”

“Tom Swift.”

Her eyes lit up when she laughed, turned even greener, deeper. Her lips seemed thicker, almost plush; a small, inviting crook appeared in them, especially the lower. “That’s silly,” she said.

“Yes, I’m very silly,” Komodo said giddily. It was his only joke, and it had worked!

“What do you do with these things you invent if you don’t sell them?” Her eyes seemed serene now, a deep mist on an isle of pines.

“Oh, I usually destroy them, cannibalize them for parts to make other things.”

“But why? That’s such a terrible waste.”

“Waste? I don’t think so. I don’t really have all that high an opinion of my work. Nothing I’ve yet created merits preservation. Sometimes I feel I am close to creating something of value, but just as I reach the crucial stage I experience . . . a failure of inspiration. Besides, it would be an unforgivable vanity to use additional resources solely to produce these mental doodlings.”

“But if you keep breaking them up to make other things, what are you left with?”

“The last invention, whatever that may be.” He shrugged. “But probably I’ll wind up just destroying that too.”

The idea upset Sheila Brooks. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short. You are really a very gifted person. Bobby said so, after the party. He was real excited. I haven’t seen him like that for a long time. He said you represented an unbelievable opportunity.”

“Mr. Zeber sees opportunity?”

“It’s how he talks; he can’t help it. He hates that corporate thing. It’s part of what I’ve done to him—always making him take care of the business crap, hang around with those jerky studio people, while I stay in the house. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be . . .”

She trailed off for a moment, then continued with a quick smile. “Oh yeah. Bobby really thinks you’re great. He said that special-effects guy—Tim Tuttle—he does our pictures, he’s supposed to be the best or something. Anyway, he told Bobby he couldn’t figure out how you do it. He said, ‘Either that Komodo is the most innovative FX guy since Méliès or he’s using a real monster.’ ”

Komodo tugged at the collar of his black pajamas. “Well, er, that’s very . . . flattering. But—”