Made Men (30 page)

A
s Osgar pulled the
limp woman from the bag, the newness of her smells assaulted him.

Hormones.
Assimilate. Assimilate—

Reciting
his mantra, he cringed at the light, popping some Kava. His liver had healed.
The ketamine could wait until the woman was secured. She was dead
weight—like a massive, loose frog in his arms. Head lolling, Henna’s
airway was momentarily compromised. Placing her on the bed, he straightened her
head and her breaths resumed.

He’d not expected this.
Osgar had only realized his opportunity when he’d seen her.

Something
felt different in his apartment. The statuesque figure looked about, engaging
his senses, isolating the stimulus.

Copper-like.

He
started with what was new—the woman—stooping to smell her armpits
and her mouth.

Blood?

He
pulled her mouth open: if she’d bitten her tongue that could explain the smell.

She hadn’t
.

Grimacing,
Osgar threw open his incapacitated ward’s legs to smell her vagina.

No. Only hormones. Not copper
.

He
arranged her in bed then hooked up her pumps.

It wouldn’t do if she became lucid while
he searched for the smell.

After
starting the feeding pump, Osgar re-started her IV sedation,
then
scowling, slid a diaper beneath her. Even geniuses soiled themselves when
drugged.

He would harvest the child as early as
possible
.

Then
he would kill her. Admire her brain. He’d fulfill his promise to the Scotsman.
It would be months of anguish, but he could do it.

People
were simple: so open to suggestion. Blackshaw had undoubtedly believed the
doctored photographs.

S
tripping, Osgar
checked the settings on the sensory deprivation tank, injected the Ketamine, and
swung open the hatch. It had been awhile since he’d felt the relief of
Ketamine. He eased himself into the water, grasped a bottle of saline, and
cracked the seal. He swung the door shut, repeating his mantra.

Assimilate. The past two days had been
unbearable.
Assimilate.

His
body began to relax.

He’d force his thoughts away shortly
.

Propagating
an offspring via the toxicologist, he’d create a life he could truly mold.
Someone who understood him.
Who, perhaps, could care for
him.
Less an offspring than a peer.
Someone he could respect. The fertilization had taken. He could see it on
ultrasound: the tiny life he’d placed in the woman with the instruments. They
were in the sixth week.

Assimilate. Assimilate. Assimilate.

Raising
the bottle, Osgar sprayed saline on his face. Though still excruciating, his
pain had halved. A month had now passed—how he’d endured not killing the
female prodigy he didn’t know.

He needed her death
.

The
proximity of her sublime brain had made him jittery, and he’d struggled with
the urge to open her skull to admire it—had even shaved her to prepare
for the initial incision, but had to focus on the longer-term plan. His tools
had been inside of her womb, but her brain he left pristine.

Osgar
began to send the bearers of his thoughts on tasks, his last trick to achieve
peace.

More saline.
Assimilate, Assim—

Though
yearning for the kill, for the relief he could feel, Osgar used guided imagery.
The toxicologist’s body could, ultimately deliver him from his evils; then he
would slice open her head.

Bone saw, then the meninges: dura,
arachnoid,
pia
—ah—there it would be.

Osgar
squeezed more saline in his eyes and mouth and reached for more Ketamine,
reciting his mantra.

Assimilate. The chamber smelled wrong
.
Assimilate. Ass—
The copper smell was inside … with him.

He
felt the drug begin to work.

Corrosion might explain it.

He
banished the thought, focusing on the nothing of the tank.

The smell didn’t matter.

Ten
thousand voices became a hundred, then five, and then one.

Tap
,
tap
.

The
relay. He opened an eye to look at the panel.

Green? Red?

Osgar
hoped for a brain, not up to a hunt.

A brain needed him. He needed it too. A
cancer.

He
would place tubes in Henna’s bladder and rectum and leave her there, would
place new fluids and fly to his relief—the brain operation: better than
any drug. She would have to come off of sedation, but he could tie her down,
chain her to the bed and gag her and rehydrate her when he returned.

“Go
ahead.”

“Goodbye,
Brother.”
It was not the computerized
voice Osgar anticipated.

O
sgar’s eyes shot
open.

The
salt solution in the tank crackled as electricity raged through his body like
lightning. Smoking, flopping, the globes of his eyes burst. His beautiful fingertips
blackened and swelled. Two hundred and seven meters away, Rickard replaced the
receiver.

Osgar’s
body continued to sizzle for a few seconds more, then the stripped wires
feeding the voice-operated microphone inside the tank lay fallow, the circuit
broken, inside the shallow salt bath.

Rickard
toggled a button on the VHF. “Go.”

Low
and fast, Ryker exploded into Osgar’s apartment. Yanking wires from the relay,
he flung open the lid.

It was done
.

Lifting
his own radio to his lips, the reptilian warrior paused.

Movement. A bed.

He
charged the figure, teeth
bared,
head low, the jets
beneath his tongue pressurized, ready for anything.

Dropping
to his knees, he purred, the blacks of his eyes again human. Ryker pulled a
tube from Henna’s nose, then her arm, and swept off the sheet to inspect her
body for damage.

“I’m
here, Henna.” Then he pulled it up to her shoulders and crawled next to her,
glaring around the room like a mother crocodile.

“You
are safe now.” He slowed his heart, swiveling his ears.

“We’ll
just lie here and let you wake up.” Nothing moved. If it did, he’d kill it.

He’d kill everyone to keep her safe.

Then
he reached for the radio and toggled the button. For a moment, he felt
overwhelmed, and could only click.

“Was
she there?” Rickard asked, his voice bookmarked by static.

Ryker’s
eyes became wet and his inner lids lazed, absorbing the tears, which felt good.

“She
was here.” His sinuses burned.

“I’ve
got her.” He breathed.

“She’s
safe.”

Berlin, one year later.

R
ickard made a perfect docent.

The
museum—the first of its class in Berlin—had hired a Swiss director:
a plain yet precise woman with an eye for taste and impeccable qualifications.
Months earlier, when the thin German had applied, Amelie had snapped him up.
She considered Rickard a friend and confidant, and with only one name, he
seemed an immediate star, like
Prince
or
Cher
.

He was awkward, but so was the art world.

He
became her right hand in short order. A font of knowledge, a painter himself,
the director found herself deferring to his eye often.

Amelie
approached Rickard before he’d even slid off his jacket. He usually unlocked
the doors before their morning meeting.

“Come
see—I don’t know what to make of it!” She pulled him urgently by his
elbow, marching him down a hall, through the door to the grand room. She pushed
him in front of a painting, waiting for him to recognize it.

“Rembrandt,”
he offered. “The Storm on the Sea of …”

“The
Sea of Galilee!” she exclaimed.

Her head docent couldn’t tear his eyes from the
Rembrandt
.

“But
it was stolen,” he said finally. “You didn’t…”

“Of
course not!” Amelie interrupted. She yanked him backward, nearly off his feet,
backpedaling several meters into the center of the great vaulted space, jabbing
her finger as she spun him. “Matisse, Van Gogh, Vermeer, that one I don’t know
but certainly stolen, too …”

R
ickard feigned surprise poorly.

It
didn't matter. Amelie wished him to bear witness, not explain. “Cezanne …” She
ticked off the remaining list of masters with hurried yelps then looked at his
face. As he’d hoped, she followed Rickard’s gaze to the arch of the
marble-tiled ceiling.

“Oh
…”

“What
is it?” he asked, mouth agape. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he lied.

“It
looks like … Icarus.” Amelie gushed.

“It
must be,” he said. “Now that you say it, I’m sure you are right—”

The
sculpture looked magnificent hanging from the ceiling. The leather panes of
skin comprising the wings showed violent movement. Man seeking answers, the
heights man strove, dangerously, to achieve. The
body of the
figure—curled swaths of skin from both the lobbyist and Osgar—shone
like
feathers. The small lights he’d placed inside oscillated like a
Japanese lantern, wavering and soft. It was Osgar’s face that sought the heavens,
his skin fixed in a placid, final expression. A sun-warmed, hopeful look; he
soared forever on the wing-skin of heathens.

“I
don’t recognize it,” Rickard offered, reaching for Amelie’s hand. “What should
we do?”

I
t was times like this that she wished to trade
places with the odd, soft-spoken docent.

Certainly, they’d have to contact the authorities.

There
would be investigations and inquiries …

Was it a crime scene if stolen artwork were
recovered?

She
took his hand. It felt cool
in her own
.

She’d seen so many of the paintings in books!

Drawn
to the one she didn’t know, not sure what to do, she led Rickard closer.

“Are
those … gumdrops?” she asked.

“They
appear to be,” he answered. “A rendition of Vermeer, perhaps? The composition
is familiar.”

“Borch.”
She corrected with a whisper. “
Woman in
Front of a Mirror
, only
better
.” Amelie wiped at
her face, overwhelmed. She reached out to finger a plaque she’d ignored. It
read, simply:
Gitte
. No artist was
listed.

“Whoever
painted this had the touch of the gods.” A surge of energy hit her. Smiling,
smoothing her skirt, Amelie was ready, again, to play director.

“Let’s
put this museum on the map.” She felt a surge of energy, the most alive the
director had ever felt.

Rickard
gazed sidelong at her, trying to look confused, but admiring the dopamine and
serotonin humming through his boss. She squeezed his cool, dry
hand—hard—then shook it with ferocious enthusiasm.

“For
now, my friend, let’s simply open the doors.”

Greece.

“T
here’s
my merman, Mama.”

Anjou
pointed playfully to prove it. “Just there.”

Henna
looked over the side of the small boat. “I see him!”

Anjou’s
merman
had named the toxicologist’s
daughter. Ever vigilant, Ryker never left her side. He’d let Henna read the old
journals they had taken from the tunnel, then, together, Henna and Ryker burned
them on the beach one night as she’d waddled home—so pregnant that she
could barely breathe, but with the answers she’d needed. He’d asked her shyly,
if her baby were a girl, if Henna would consider his ancestor’s name … Anjou.

Such a
sweet gesture and a beautiful name.

It
was an easy choice to make. He had saved her life.

Anjou’s
life too.

“He
stays down a long time,” said Anjou’s tan playmate. Henna and Vai slathered
their girls in sunscreen before each outing, but Vai’s … Vai and
Bonn’s
little girl, Zoey, tanned
dark—right through the lotion.

“Two
little Gypsies,” Vai noted.

Ryker
ascended, tossing a fish into the basket, then grinned at the girls, flicking
his inner lids closed then open—left, right, left—a trick the
two-year-olds loved. Opening his mouth, he let the small octopus he’d caught
crawl out and was met with squeals of delight.

“Oh
… let the little one go,” Vai pleaded. “We’ll eat him when he grows up!”

Henna
knew what Ryker could do. What he was. He was a glorious, lovely, toxic beast.

One of
two in the world
.

She’d
compared his subglottal secretions to the septic samples from monitor lizards worldwide
and nothing came close. A waxy plug formed when he was calm and when left
untaunted, his saliva was completely benign. She remembered how he’d been ready
to travel back to Edinburgh as soon as they’d arrived in the Greek paradise.

“Abernathy needs his death,” Ryker had said. “No,”
she’d begged. “Stay. He is nothing. You’ve done enough. We need you. Stay.”

So
he did.

Zoey
helped the invertebrate back into the clear blue water. “
That
way,” she commanded and then turned to grin at Anjou. As Ryker
dutifully dove into the depths in the direction he was told, the girls dangled
their arms over the side to watch.

“Not
everyone is so lucky to have a merman,” Vai announced, passing out pieces of
fruit and wedges of cheese and bread. “We are a lucky family to have one.”
Henna smiled and ran a hand over her head. She’d kept her hair short. Not
shorn, as the Devil had done, but shorter than … before the event. Indeed, Vai
was like a sister to her.
A beautiful, compassionate,
resourceful sister.
A great storyteller.

Henna
had lost some time, even after her rescue, and though Vai hadn’t been there
when the Germans had saved her, she’d been around ever since. In fact, it was
her idea to come to Greece.

A fresh
start.
For all of us, in a safe place that I know.

Vai
passed her some crisp, sweet grapes. “Did I tell you about our goat?” The girls
settled in with their snacks with eyes shining as the story was told.

Her
parents had come to help for nearly a year.
Handsome,
gracious, and musical.
Gitte came and went often.

Alvar
and Akka, who were only returning to Ruka for some sentimental belongings,
planned to come right back. Life was so easy here.

“What’s
a virgin birth?” interrupted Anjou. “Has that happened before?”

“Not
with goats…” Vai said earnestly “…and it’s quite rare with people, I’ve heard.
Now pay attention …”

Things
had stopped falling from the sky.

Henna
embraced the global movement away from technology and toward closer
relationships. They didn’t have a telephone in the small house they’d rented or
even cellphones. The stars shined brighter at night—bright enough to read
the old-fashioned, paper letters that people sent back and forth. Letters had
become all the rage.

Anjou
didn’t buy Vai’s goat story. “But how are you certain the goat didn’t swim, in
the night, to meet a boy goat—or have an elongated gestation due to local
and unusual flora?” Happy, an inquisitive child, that morning she’d said:
Just forty-five days until my birthday,
Mama. Should I write my merman an invitation to my party?

“Because,”
Vai explained, “I know goats. And also, I put a bell on her neck, and she ate
constantly, like this…” the beautiful brunette shook her head, spraying grapes
about and chewing them messily with her mouth open. “…
so
I would have heard if she’d left. I’m a light sleeper. And this particular goat
was fond of two foods, which she ate all her life, even before we’d arrived
here, so your theory, wise one, is shot: that nanny ate bread and fish six
times a day, in small bites, and nothing but.” Henna smiled. No wonder Bonn had
loved her. She was fantastic, but not a light sleeper.

She talked.

In
her sleep, Vai spoke with her lost love, every night. It seemed she was
dreaming. Henna asked Vai about it, just once.

I don’t have to miss Bonn. He’s with me each night.
Not just a memory. He’s there, Henna, waiting for me. Laughing. Listening to
the things we do. He’s proud of us all.

A
fishing boat neared. Henna bristled, sliding a hand inside her satchel to grasp
her newest gear: she, too, could shoot a jet of Ryker’s
stuff—accurately—eighty feet (twenty-two feet shy of the German’s
record), despite the space-age delivery device. Vai peered at the nearby boat
but shook her head calmly, offering Henna a small smile.

Still,
she swung open the panel with the rifle: an open-bolt, belt-fed affair loaded
with white phosphorus projectiles. Now she could predict many things … and yet
lived by the adage: trust but verify. If she
was
wrong, there would be hell to pay.

But not
on our end
.

Henna
thought.

Heaven help the cretin who bothers us now.

R
yker’s eyes broke the surface to watch the boat
pass. He’d discovered new tricks but kept them hidden—not sharing them,
even, with Henna; what he wanted more than anything was a family, not to be
studied.

No
gland on a person inside the approaching vessel spelled malice.

Another family headed out—just to fish.

Though
he couldn’t see them, he knew a little girl was at the wheel, and that her
father helped her steer. The adult male human was proud—yet
nervous—because they’d come too close to another boat.

To
Ryker’s humans.

They
ate mostly fish, (the Greek family) but some chicken, and the fisherman’s wife
was
pregnant again.

With a
boy.

The
aberrant checked
his own
family. They were happy, so
he kicked back into the depths for fish: his new favorite food.