Fiction & Photos
DELICIOUS HOME-GROWN VEGETABLES
Okay, a couple of warnings before we proceed.
1. This is over seven thousand words long. This was not my intention. I was going for something short.
2. It's a full story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. However, the plot--especially the ending--might make sense to me and only me. It might be one of those things that works only in my head. If so, if I didn't drop clear enough hints through the story, I'm sorry. I honestly just wanted to write something and get it out there.
3. It has a robot in it. Two, actually. The title is meaningless.
4. It's based on Donal's picture of the iron fence and Elimare's picture of the gentlemen in caps. It's set a post, post-industrial future.
5. I shouldn't have to tell you this.
6. I might do a couple of quick edits tomorrow, when I read it again and go "gah".
Off we go then.
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The fence was about five feet high, iron railings with blunt spearhead points. The old lead paint was bubbling away and the bars were cratered with rust along what had been the blastward side, where they faced back towards the old city, towards the docklands.
Hollow-boned Dilly was first over, taking a short run, planting his hands between pairs of spearheads, then swinging his legs up and over like a gymnast over a pommel horse. He clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and smiled back at his friends. Frank and Turps looked at each other.
"You next," said Turps.
Frank shrugged. He was the largest of the boys, thickly and solidly built, a full head and a half taller than Dilly or Turps, the product of meat and potatoes, of pints of full-cream milk, of the cruel tutelage of four even bulkier and hairier brothers. He walked up to the fence, grabbed the bars, and shook them to make sure they'd take his weight. For all their rust and age they stood fast, utterly immovable. He gripped the band of iron between two pairs of spearheads, and with a groan he hauled himself up until his elbows were locked straight and his belt buckle was just above the jagged points. He paused like that for a few seconds, considering his options, imagining the sort of damage one of those blunt iron spikes might do to his scrotum. His upper arms began to shake.
He looked back towards Turps. “Give us a leg up.”
“No way,” said Turps. “One, you're some sort of giant. Two, your feet are soaking wet.”
“Don't make me kick your arse. Tell him, Dilly.”
“He'll do it,” laughed Dilly, who at this point had found a low bough on one of the knotted trees of the forest beyond the fence, and was dangling ape-like from it, swinging back and forth. “Don't exasperate him, cousin.”
“Exasperate?” Turps could do a spot-on impersonation of Frank's voice when he wanted to feign ignorance. “What does that mean then?”
“Piss me off!” shouted Frank, his cheeks glowing red. “Come on! I won't put my full weight on you, I promise. It's just for balance.”
Turps took a few steps forward, interlocking the fingers of his hands. Frank looked back. “I'll just use your shoulder,” he said, reaching out with a one of his big damp feet. “Come on, get under me, walk right up to the bars. Hug them tight.”
Turps grimaced as the heel of Frank's boot brushed his ear. He held on to the bars for support as Frank pushed down. The sudden weight took his breath away and gave him black spots in the corners of his vision. For a second he thought he could hear his collarbone splinter and then--
--Frank tumbled over the fence and fell in a heap. He sprung back to his feet, smiling and patting himself down, soaked from head to toe by the long and dewy grass. “Nothing ruptured!”
“We'll have to find another way back,” moaned Turps, rubbing his neck. “Your fatness never ceases to amaze me. I think you've broken my shoulder. Maybe monkey-boy will give you a leg up next time.”
“You forget I have the bones of a sparrow!” shouted Dilly, who had found his way up on to his bough, and stood there, balancing effortlessly. “My poor rubber back would just fold in two. Be thankful you have the fortitude to help our poor monstrous friend.”
“Monstrous, eh?” Frank barged Dilly's tree with his shoulder. The whole thing shuddered. Dilly smiled down at him, arms folded, greatly unperturbed.
“Help,” shouted Turps, struggling to haul himself over the bars. He'd managed to get one leg horizontal with the top of the fence, with his foot wedged between two of the spikes. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with his other leg. Frank grabbed him by the back of his trousers and the collar of his coat, steadied himself, then lifted him up and over. Safely back on land, Turps reached through the fence to pick his cap out of the grass, fixed the peak, and sat it back on his head.
“And now, gentlemen,” said Dilly, leaping down from his branch, “the surprise.”
“It's here?” asked Turps, looking around. All he could see were scorched-looking old trees, bent and knotted and somehow still holding on, and beneath them, tangles of brambles and sloping hills of thick gorse. Dark green spikes protected unripe berries and tiny yellow flowers. “This is the surprise?”
“Well no,” said Dilly, turning towards the darkness of the forest. “I suppose that was a bit premature of me. It's about half a mile that way. And, uh, there isn't much of a path, so I normally go between the trees. Normally takes about ten minutes.”
“He's right: you are a monkey,” said Frank. “Monkey-brained, too, if you think I'm going to risk my neck up there. Those branches are as brittle as matchsticks.”
“Don't be ridiculous,” said Dilly, searching behind a jagged and blackened stump that bristled with shelves of some ribbed orange fungus. He withdrew a long iron poker from the mulch—probably looted on one of his trips to the outskirts of the old city—and wiped the handle clean with the sleeve of his coat. “I've planned ahead. You're going to beat us a path, big man.”
###
It took them a full hour, with Frank moving ahead and whipping at thick ropes of brambles with the old poker, Dilly dangling from the branches above and pointing out the route. “Just climb over this,” he would say, pointing to a shelf of bare rock. “Hack through that,” he would say, pointing at a thin spot between two great mounds of thorns. “Watch out for the stream,” he'd said, just as Turps found himself up to his ankles in freezing water. “Careful, the ground falls away here...”
The sky beyond the treetops had started to grow dark when Dilly dropped down from his tree and finally said, “it's just through here.” Turps had been cut to shreds by this point; the skin of his cheeks stung wildly where branch after branch had whipped back and caught him. Towards the end he had learned to walk with his hands outstretched in front of his face, clawed and frozen, like one of those screaming girls in the late-night cinematographs. Frank had worked himself into a wild stupor, pushing ahead with a fixed grin, knuckles bleeding freely, his thick arms covered with long and curving red scratches. He'd clearly had the time of his life.
Frank trampled his way through an overgrown raspberry bush and suddenly—with the crack of old wood as a fanfare—they were out of the forest, in rare clearing, wading through knee-deep grass and the white flowers of wild potato plants. The breeze smelled faintly of garlic. They were right on the lip of a small hill; the forest ran down the sides, disappearing behind the grass.
Dilly ran ahead and stood on the hill's peak. “Up here. This is the first surprise, chaps.”
Turps clawed his way up the hill and peered over the edge.
In a small valley, surrounded by a wide circle of long grass and then the hard edge of the forest, was a solitary house, encrusted in crimson red ivy. Beneath the ivy was brick—red brick, not the grey concrete slabs that came after the war—which meant it was like the houses in the old city. But it was perfect. It was far bigger, for one, not like the rows of old tumbledowns they were used to. And the windows were still intact. A small tree with bright green leaves grew out of the chimney—but it still had a chimney! It still had a roof! The little valley must have formed a natural shelter. To one side of the house was a shattered greenhouse; a miniature forest of tomato vines sprang from its broken mouth. That same side of the valley was covered in the low flat leaves of wild garlic.
They slid down the hill until they were level with the house, and Turps felt his heart beat faster. They made their way around the house in a broad circle before coming to the front door. The doors, back and front, were intact, as were the ground floor windows. It hadn't been looted. Were they the first to find it? Two generations of looters had grown up since the war and they were really the first to find it?
Dilly walked up to the door and lifted the wide brass knocker. It looked something like a horseshoe dangling from a clamshell. Above the clamshell was an arcing band of glass set into the door, cut in some way as to obscure the view beyond, the grooves caked with years of spent fallout and sand and grit.
The knocker let out two bright cracks.
“You're expecting someone to answer?” asked Frank.
“That's the second surprise,” said Dilly, as something small and round and silver-grey moved in the dark obscurity just behind the door, something clicked, and Frank sprang back in terror, poker raised.
###
The door did not open. Instead, a small rectangular flap creaked open about halfway up the door. Two small metallic points emerged, pointing right at Frank's crotch.
“Tell your friend to put it down,” came a calm voice from behind the flap. “Or I'll zap his balls to dust.”
Dilly turned to Frank. “Put it down. He means it.”
“He'll 'zap' my balls?”
“Trust me. It's not pleasant. I can still feel the burns on my chest. It goes beneath the skin. First time I came here, I went up the side there and tried to slip in through one of the roof windows. This led to a bit of a misunderstanding, and a brief but violent altercation which I lost. Mainly because I was not armed with a beam weapon.”
“I'm still sorry about that, Master Dillbury. But you were being unreasonable.”
“That's fine,” said Dilly. “At least you didn't go for my balls.”
“I only wanted to knock you out. Your friend with the poker looks big and vicious though. Looks like maybe he wants a scrotum full of hot ash.”
Frank dropped the poker. “Okay. Okay.” He covered his crotch with his hands. “You gave me a scare, that's all.”
The flap sprang shut with a snap. Frank jerked in fear. “Perfectly understandable,” came the voice. The door swung open.
Behind the door was something like a silver skull with a hundred-or-so long wires dangling from it. Not dangling from it—supporting it. The wires were alive. Some reached down to form long, spindly legs, branching at the ends to form mobile, gripping feet. Others were arms and hands. Two ended in sharp metallic points—these retracted slowly up through the makeshift ribcage (again, a mesh of these shifting, living wires) and disappeared into the base of the skull. The skull itself had small black points moving in the eye sockets, and a mesh of smaller wires holding the jaw in place, and of course it was made of some silvery metal, but it was otherwise unremarkable, just like the bleached skulls you might find anywhere in the old city.
“Hi, Mitchell,” said Dilly. “These are the friends I was talking about. The strong one and the clever one.”
“Come on in,” said Mitchell. His jaw moved subtly when he talked. Turps had expected it to flap like the skulls in the puppet shows. But it didn't...it didn't flap. It moved just right. Just right. Just right...and the way it...he...turned and walked, too, bundles of wires shifting silently over each other like sets of muscles, just like in the books...
Turps stepped through the door—stepped right into a perfectly-maintained pocket of the late 21st century, complete with a living machine that was ushering them into some kind of dining room—and thought that his heart might explode at any second.
###
“You boys must be hungry,” shouted Mitchell, who was making a lot of noise in the kitchen while they sat on tall-backed chairs along a perfectly set dining table. “I try to keep the garden going, but I was always an indoorsy kind of fellow. It's especially tricky with my, my...you know. My condition. I was once a handsome man about town! But let me make you something! It's been years, boys, years. You must tell me how it all tastes.”
The smell of parsnip or turnip or something like that made its way slowly in from the kitchen. Turps leaned back in his seat to try and catch another glimpse of Mitchell. The tiny sliver of kitchen he could see was a flurry of silvery limbs, whipping about wildly, opening and closing drawers, withdrawing knives, washing vegetables...
Frank looked dazed. The cuts and scrapes on his hands were bleeding over the fine white tablecloth. “Frank,” whispered Dilly.
“Watch where you're bleeding.”
“Oops,” said Frank, staring lazily at his knuckles, his mind a thousand miles away. “What is he, Dilly? What is he, eh?”
“Why don't you ask him yourself? He won't bite.”
“What did he tell you?” asked Turps. “This is amazing. He's a service unit or something, isn't he? Some kind of mechanical servant. But think what he'll be able to teach us! Think what he'll be able to do for the Restoration!”
“My ears are burning!” shouted Mitchell. “Or they would be, if they hadn't fallen off fifty-six years ago! Listen boys, I'll answer your questions in just a minute. There's nothing to worry about. What's this talk of a Restoration, Master Turps? Can I call you Turps? Why are you called Turps?”
Turps took a deep breath. “The Restoration is...well, it's been the main function of government since the end of the war. Everybody works for the Restoration. The idea is that we can restore some of our past greatness by digging around in the rubble and trying to figure out old manufacturing methods, stuff like that. The problem is, the stuff made just before the war is mostly incomprehensible, as it was made by...” He paused there, trying to find the correct words. “...Alternative intelligences.”
“You can call us machines, it's quite alright,” shouted Mitchell, punctuated by the wild sizzling sound of something wet hitting a hot pan. “So what kind of progress have they made while I've been pottering about here?”
“Well, the Restoration is basically two movements now. Two big parties. Some people think that we should go right back—two hundred years!—and start with the basics...microprocessors and stuff. Things recorded in old books. Radio waves and moving pictures. They made an adding machine from the ground up last year. They call themselves Back To Basics.”
“My, my, microprocessors! Adding machines! Well done to them!”
“Yes,” replied Turps. Fried tomatoes. Mitchell was frying tomatoes. “On the other hand, there are Restoration factions that scoff at this—they're mainly concerned with reviving the remains of old Alternative Intelligences and having them do everything for us again. They're called Back On Track, and they're getting a lot of votes lately. They haven't made much progress as yet, but they say the future is always right around the corner. They make some pretty grand claims, and people get taken in.”
Suddenly the kitchen fell quiet, but for the gentle sizzling of tomatoes. The sound hung in the air for a full count of five. Frank pulled a face that said, oh-oh, you've said the wrong thing. Dilly shook his head, put his forehead on the table and ran his hands through his hair.
“I suppose they'd love to get their hands on a fellow like me,” said Mitchell, this time in a quiet, level voice. Then he snapped: “Would they make me lead engineer at the AI plant, Turps? Or would they just take me apart and fiddle with my innards? Fucking apes! Fucking fucking apes!”
The boys looked at each other. Frank slid his chair out from the table as quietly as he could. At that moment, Mitchell wheeled into the dining room, riding a mad wave of whip-like tendrils that seemed to grip every part of the doorway at once, covering their only exit. His jaw swung open and the multiple black points of his eyes fixed themselves on the boys...
...And from behind him, balanced on a single tendril each, came three steaming plates. He flowed on into the room and set the plates down. The sight and smell was astonishing...baked carrots and parsnips, perfectly crisp at the edges, tucked in beside fluffy mounds of mashed potatoes, big plump tomatoes bleeding juice and seeds over them. Chopped pickles. Fat onions, cut into rings, fried until they were caramel brown. Diced turnip in some sort of sweet berry sauce...
Mitchell knitted his tendrils back into a roughly human shape and sat at the head of the table. “I'd have liked to have given you some meat,” he said, “but it's in awfully short supply. I've been trying to catch rabbits with my zapper since Master Dillbury let me know you were coming—I've made a hickory smoker, and everything—no luck as yet, I'm afraid. I don't think my little forest friends like me very much.”
“...That's alright,” said Dilly, looking at the others. “We appreciate this, we really do. Um, come on gentlemen, tuck in!”
Frank lifted his fork and pushed his potatoes around, as if he was checking for something underneath them. “Yeah,” said Turps, nudging Frank, then stabbing a parsnip and lifting it to his mouth. “This is amazing, Mister Mitchell, sir.”
Frank shoveled a heap of potatoes into his mouth and smiled stupidly. “A bounty,” he added, through his mouthful of spuds.
Mitchell's bare skull flicked towards Frank. The movement was instant—like an editing mistake from the early cinematographs. His eye-stalks were fixed on the boy's bleeding knuckles. “What's happened here, then?”
“Just cut them a bit on my way here, sir,” said Frank.
“And bled over my tablecloth, I see,” said Mitchell.
Frank's face fell flat. He froze. “Don't hurt my balls,” he said, meekly.
“Oh no! No, I would never do a thing like that, dear boy! It's quite alright. Here—give me your hands.” Mitchell reached out with two tendrils; Frank reached gingerly back towards him. A tendril slid around Frank's wrist and looped around his thumb, gripping him tightly.
Dilly and Turps looked at each other, forks paused in mid-scoop.
“Now, here's something that your Restoration chaps would love to get their hands on,” said Mitchell, quietly. “Manipulation of tissues on a nanoscopic scale. You know what that means?” The point of the second tendril hovered above Frank's hand. It split in two. Then it split in two again, the original split becoming longer. Then those new points split in two again...and again...and again...until what was once a point became a fuzzy tree, the smallest branches of which (and branches five or six levels above those) were too small to see with the naked eye. The fuzzy tree settled on the back of Frank's hand like a soft, semitransparent sponge, and he let out a girlish squeal. He tried to pull away with all his strength; Mitchell held his hand perfectly still.
“It's hot!”
“No, it just feels that way. Tiny nerve endings being rebuilt and vital chemical patterns being reset, boy. Do you know what those are? I suppose not. Anyway...” The fuzzy tree looked busy. It became a shifting blur. Then—after just a few seconds—it withdrew and folded back on itself, becoming a single point again. The boys looked at Frank's hand. It was a little red, but the skin was perfectly intact. Mitchell released him; Frank drew his hand to his chest and rubbed it.
“Will I fix your other hand, Master Frank?”
He tucked is hand into his pocket. “No thanks, Mister Mitchell, sir.”
“Just let me know if you change your mind. I like to help where I can.”
They continued eating in silence for a full count of five before Mitchell's bare skull flicked around to look at Turps.
“Real conversation killer, eh?” said Mitchell.
“I thought it was fascinating, sir,” said Turps.
“I thought you might. Your friend gave you a strong recommendation, you know. Cleverest boy in class! And insatiably curious! Just the right combination to utterly ruin the world, my boy.” Mitchell reached out a hand—or a clump of tendrils shaped like a hand, anyway. He ran it through the boy's hair. “Why do they call you Turps? You never did tell me.”
The cold fingers remained. The machine was applying no pressure, but it felt like a terrible weight all the same. “It's a condition I was born with,” replied Turps. “My skin is all light and dark patches. You can't see it on my face much. But my father said I looked like I'd been bathed in turpentine. He has it too, though—his back is striped like a Zebra. He says it's a post-war thing, like Dilly's funny bones.”
“Not quite like Dilly's wonderful bones,” said Mitchell. “Those fitted a purpose, once upon a time. What's your real name?”
“Adam, sir. Adam Knox.”
“Knox!” Mitchell pulled his hand quickly away. This plucked a few hairs from his head. “Sorry, sorry my boy, but Knox! Did you ever hear of a Eddie or Linda Knox?”
“My grandmother was Linda Knox. Dilly's, too.”
“Fascinating! The original owners of this house had many friends, Adam. I got to know them all well. The eldest daughter of the house was friends with a young married couple by the names of Edward and Linda Knox. They were such sweethearts—not a care in the world! A very 80's couple, tended to constantly by a fleet of little machines. I kept an eye on them myself when I could. I often wondered what became of them after the war. I hope my Linda Knox is the same as your Linda Knox, eh? Little Linda learned to scrape an existence in the rubble like everyone else! Even helped to repopulate the world!”
“I...I hope so,” said Turps.
“Actually, hold on...” Mitchell paused and sank back in his chair, tendrils slithering up and into his skull. “Yes, you are related to her. I'm fairly certain.”
“How can you tell?” asked Dilly.
Mitchell's skull swiveled around to answer him. “I have my ways. Linda Knox is written all over him. Not Eddie Knox, however! It
would seem either Eddie didn't make it, or Linda was something of an unfaithful wife. There's an old saying: sucks to be him! Well, I suppose after a ninety-five percent population drop...needs must, don't they? The last remaining madman with his testicles wrapped in tinfoil suddenly becomes top stud.”
Frank finished his meal and set his knife and fork down. His plate was empty. He swallowed deeply, leaned back in his chair, held his stomach and burped. “Thanks, Mister Mitchell. That was great.” He reached down to his lap and brought up his cap, then planted it squarely it on his head. “I'll just be off before it gets dark. Chaps? Are you coming with me, or would you rather remain and enjoy the, uh, hospitalities?” He stood up from the table, and Mitchell mirrored his movements in a most perfect and disconcerting way.
“Won't you stay for seconds? Big healthy lad like you?”
“Oh no, sir, my mother would say I'd imposed on your hospitality, then I'd be in all kinds of trouble. No, I was taught that a good guest knows when to make his leave.”
“And now is not that time, Frank,” said Mitchell. “I've made ice-cream. Raspberry ice-cream. Come on, eat your ice-cream, then you can be on your way. You can take torches and proper blades to make your way back.”
“Well,” said Frank. Mitchell took a step towards him. “Well, okay.” Frank sat down and took off his cap.
A single tendril shot out from Mitchell's chest and straight towards Frank's face. A split-second before that terrible impact, it changed course, split in two, and wrapped itself around his plate. There had been no time to react. No time to dodge. No time to prepare. All Frank could do was sit still and quietly empty his bowels.
“Ice-cream coming up!” said Mitchell, cheerily, as he swung out of the door with Frank's plate. “And don't dawdle, boys,” he added. “There's ice-cream for you too!”
###
Dilly turned to Frank with a grave look on his face. “You've dunged yourself, haven't you.”
“I have,” said Frank. “I thought it was going to kill me. I just want to leave, Dilly. Your surprises were great but honestly I just want to leave now. You can have my ice-cream.”
“Nobody's leaving,” said Turps, quietly. He poked at a cold carrot. “There is no ice-cream. Nobody's getting out of here alive.”
Dilly leaned across the table, one long and bony finger outstretched. “And what makes you say that? He's my friend. You two are just ruining this. Ruining it for everyone. You know, he told me, he told me to go and bring you guys back here because I said you were okay and he wanted some company, but now look what's happened! Frank's shat himself and you, you think just because he's different, that he's automatically going to just murder you. You don't know him. I know him. Now look—you've made Frank cry.”
“I'm not crying,” said Frank, sniffing.
“So what makes you so sure we're going to die, Turps?”
Turps set down his knife and fork and leaned back in his chair. “One,” he listed, “he says he's making us ice-cream. Ten minutes ago, he said he had a hard time catching rabbits. Did you see any cows out back? Any goats? I'd settle for the iced-cream of voles but I don't think he's captured any alive.” Dilly sat back, arms folded, jaw set, waiting for two. “Two, and probably most importantly: he can't trust us. Even if we weren't, you know, who we were. He has to assume that we're going to go back to town and tell people about him. He's the holy grail for the Back On Track people. He has to know they would surround this place and take him apart bit by bit.”
“What did you mean, 'if we weren't who we were'?”
“That's point three, Dilly. Three: I don't think our host is meant to look like a disembodied skull on legs. I don't remember hearing about disembodied skulls in the stories my grandmother told me. No: the machine-men and women were partly human. Or humans were partly machines. The lines were blurry. They were called...cyberks. They wore human skin. I think Mitchell was a cyberk, but his body has rotted away or something, and here we are. Three healthy bodies.”
The boys sat in silence for a minute or so.
“The kitchen's gone quiet,” whispered Frank.
“He's out draining a fieldmouse for your ice-cream.”
“I'm sorry,” said Dilly.
“That's alright,” said Turps.
“No, I'm really sorry,” said Dilly. “There are some things you don't know about me. I thought I was telling a few white lies, that's all, just to get you here and get you to relax and...listen. But I didn't think he was going to do us in afterwards. I still don't believe it. So I'm going to tell you this...just in case.”
“Go on then,” said Frank, sliding uneasily out of his chair and pulling at the seat of his pants.
“Okay. I didn't just find this place last week. I've been coming here for years. My mother told me about it before she left town, and I came here just as soon as I was big enough to hop the fence. Mitchell isn't just a friend.”
Frank tested the weight of his chair, and glanced towards the window.
“He's not a cyberk either. If anything it's cyborg, and that's an archaic term. Sixty years ago, he lived here with his family. As head of the family. He wasn't a servant. It's not like the books tell you: the machines were not all servants. The truly living ones had homes and families of their own. That's what Mitchell was. He had a human body and a fully-human wife. He had three fully-human children with her, and a fourth, another human one, though she was conceived in error—I mean, without taking the proper steps—and by another woman. Turps, she was our—”
They heard the clacking of metal tendrils on the ceramic tiles of the hall. Frank looked towards the door, then turned and ran—in a sudden flash of movement—with his chair lifted in his hands. He screamed a low, animal scream, and hurled the chair towards the dining room window, which shattered outwards in a shower of tiny glass cubes. Without slowing, he jumped, found purchase on the sill, and followed the chair out into the dark, still screaming.
Mitchell flowed in through the door, tendrils plunging into the walls and ceiling for grip. He shot through the room and out of the window like a hail of machine-gun fire; plasterboard walls exploded and plates shattered in his wake. He had become a terrible, deafening, lightning-fast storm of flying metal with the gleaming shape of a skull—seen for just an instant before disappearing into the darkness beyond—riding the shock front.
His hundreds of pointed feet had made holes in everything except Dilly and Turps, who found themselves totally unharmed. They jumped from their chairs just before the ruined wood fell out from underneath them.
Dilly ran for the window. “Don't kill him!” he shouted. “Grandpa! Don't kill him! You can have me instead, whatever you want, it's not his fault! He doesn't understand!”
Turps turned and bolted for the door. Then—just as he passed through the rectangle of splintered wood—he skidded to a halt, looking at the floor. He turned to Dilly with his head in his hands. The hollow-boned boy was in a heap by the window, holding his hair in two clenched fists.
“Look at that,” said Turps. “There's three bowls of ice-cream in the hall.”
###
The front door swung open; Mitchell made his way in, dragging Frank's ruined body behind him. He dragged him along the hall without looking at the boys; he came to the kitchen door; he opened it with a single tendril and threw Frank's limp form into the dark.
Turps watched this from the doorway of the dining room. Some of Frank's blood had landed on the ice-cream during the airborne part of his trip to the kitchen. It ran slowly, like raspberry syrup.
“Did you have to kill him?” asked Dilly.
“I tried reasoning with him,” replied Mitchell, slipping smoothly into humanoid form. “I swear I did. I told him who he was. How important he was to me. When that didn't work, I tried threatening him; I told him I'd use my heat ray on him.”
“You don't have a heat ray,” said Dilly.
“Of course I don't. But he didn't know that. The thing with the letterbox had him duped. Anyway, it didn't work. He was convinced that I wanted to skin him alive. You could call it death by overactive imagination, I suppose. He was berserk, running in a straight line for the fence, tearing himself to bits on the thorns. I couldn't let him get out, son, it would have been death for all of us. The whole family would be snatched up by Restoration.”
“I know,” said Dilly. “I'm sorry I brought him here.”
“I asked you to,” said Mitchell. He backed against the wall of the hall, then slid down, limbs falling limp. “Maybe I should just end it, son. I've been around a long time. Maybe I'm not meant for this new world of yours. All I have to do is think it, confirm it, confirm it again, and I'm gone.”
Turps shook his head. “Don't do that,” he said.
“I've killed an innocent.”
“Can't you fix him?”
The tiny black stalks in Mitchell's eyesockets swung up to fix him with a stare. “What do you mean? Bring him back from the dead?”
“That's exactly what I mean. Like you did with his hand.”
“That's just a party trick I do. First aid. Mostly I just speed up the natural healing process by encouraging things along. This is different. No, even sixty years ago, you'd have needed a team of specialists linked to a medical nanoswarm to do a Lazarus job like that. It wasn't unheard of, just terribly, terribly difficult.”
The wind whistled in through the front door. The trail of blood in the hall had already begun to dry, losing its sheen. Turps watched, numb. “Is it true then—you're his grandfather?”
“Great-grandfather.”
“That's why I have hollow bones,” said Dilly.
“That's right,” said Mitchell. “The human part of me was engineered to suit my needs. No skull, no brain, hollow bones for my little metal tentacles to inhabit. Careful gene work. I had three children by my wife; their genes were reprogrammed in vitro so that they'd be fully human. My fourth child was by another cyborg, Mona. She...she was an expansive, astonishing, glittering mind, older than I was but from the same production run. We connected in ways I never could with my human wife. But we weren't careful enough. The child shouldn't have been viable, but...there you go. She decided that she wanted to keep it; she worked hard to make it survive. She found genetic material here and there to fill in the important gaps while the child was still just a few thousand cells old. She undid any nascent deformity while it grew in her womb. The resulting child's bones were hollow, and it was full of bits and pieces to support a machine mind that wasn't there, but it was human, and it was beautiful. We called her Linda.”
“Who later became Linda Knox.”
“Correct,” said Mitchell. “That's why you're here too, Adam. You carry some of her in you. And by extension, some of me, or some of who I was, anyway. Just like the poor boy in the kitchen.”
“Frank?”
“Grandchild by my only son.”
“So you were rebuilding yourself. Gathering parts. You were going to recombine us somehow. Grow yourself again.”
“No...no. Such imagination! Even if I wanted to, the kind of equipment to do so hasn't existed in over five decades. No, it's the end of the cyborg, boys, at least until the great carousel rolls round again. I only wanted to meet my family. Dillbury's mother visited now and then—before she left to go wherever it was that she went—and she spoke of the rest of you, and how you were all surviving so well, and I just wanted to clamber out through the forest and into town and meet you all. But I am, after all, a skull on legs. An old, old skull on legs. I first came blinking into the world one-hundred and fifteen years ago.”
Dilly knelt by the skull. A single tendril rose up to stroke his face. It left a smear of blood on his cheek. “You've been a good friend, young Dillbury. I'm so, so sorry. You boys should leave this place. Frank deserves a decent burial—but the facts of his death can never be known. They would strip you down, boys, in the hope that you had secrets buried in you. I'll look after him here. Then I'll shut down once and for all. An easy end is far more than I deserve.”
###
The journey back to the fence was a silent, solemn affair. Dilly led the way with an old electric torch; Turps followed closely behind, shuffling along, trying to follow the path of ruined foliage that their dead cousin had made. He became increasingly sure that there was a clever pattern to the destruction, a logic that might be puzzled out to arrive at something like an understanding of Frank's mind. Perhaps that was important somehow, now that Frank was gone. Or perhaps he was simply half-asleep.
The pattern was still just beyond his grasp when they came, finally, to the fence.
“You first,” said Dilly, kneeling down in front of the fence. Turps didn't argue. He put his hands on two of the spearheads and let Dilly heave him over.
“You're pretty strong for someone with a rubber skeleton,” said Turps.
“You're pretty light for someone full of marrow,” said Dilly, smiling without laughing. Then he reached through the bars and took Turps by the shoulder.
“Listen,” he said, “I don't want you trying to follow me. I know the way, you don't.”
“What do you mean? Get over here. We have to go.”
“You have to go. I brought you here. I brought Frank here. I can't do it; I can't go home and say we just lost Frank, and I can't leave him to end it alone in that house. You have to be the strong one; you have to say we both went off and left you at the fence because you couldn't make it over yourself; you waited around for us all night, but we just never showed up. You'll have to act surprised when we don't show up tomorrow, or the day after that, and then, ever.”
“Please don't.”
“I have to, cousin.” With that, Dilly turned and ran catlike back into the trees, throwing the electric torch far into the undergrowth and disappearing into the dark.
“You don't have to!” shouted Turps, gripping and shaking the iron rails. They shuddered for him. “You don't have to do anything! Come on back! You can't leave me with this!”
###
Dilly moved by the light of the half-moon, and where there was only shadow and black he moved by memory alone. He moved as fast as he'd ever moved by day.
He was rushing to get back to the house, wasn't he? He would get back to the house and either tell Mitchell that he didn't need to be alone, or at least he would bury his grandfather's spent shell with his grandson. But part of him knew there was another reason for this reckless haste: he wanted desperately to escape his cousin's pleas for him to return. He'd expected it to get easier as he put some distance between himself and the fence...but no, as his cousin's cries had grown fainter, the message they carried and grown stronger, until he couldn't hear his cousin anymore and all he could hear was the voice in his head screaming for him to turn back, turn back, before he was irretrievably lost.
Still, he had his momentum up, and he made his way quickly down through the great bowl of the forest, towards the valley, and the house.
Finally he crested the hill that overlooked the house, and saw that the windows were all dark, and the front door was still ajar, just as they had left it. Frank's blood was a long black trail in the grass, just visible in the moonlight. He would have to try and avoid it.
He made his way quietly down the hill, feeling his away as much as seeing it, trusting the same animal senses that had guided him through the trees. He came to the front door and stepped on in, closing it behind him.
“Grandpa? Are you there?”
No reply.
Had he shut himself down, then? Already?
“Grandpa. Please. I'm not going home.” Dilly called into the darkness, feeling his way along the wall of the hallway, searching for a light switch. “This is my home now, with you. Turps...Adam...is safely over the fence. He has a stronger story if I'm not around. People might think that Frank and I have just run off to some other town, looking for work maybe, or girls, something like that. It might be some comfort.”
He found the kitchen door and reached for the handle.
A wet shuffling sound came from just beyond the door, then the fast clacking of metal legs on tiles.
“Oh, you're still with us then,” said Dilly, opening the door.
He froze. There, cast in the dim moonlight that bled through the windows at the far end of the kitchen, stood Frank, head rolling lazily around, his arms and legs quivering spasmodically. The dead boy choked and spat and took a long, gasping breath...right as the last dark tendril shapes retracted into his head and pulled a dark fold of scalp over a glinting metal dome with a dull slap.
“...Take uffew days, yeah,” said the dark shape that had been Frank. “...Mona says it wull take uffew days to get myself patched up, linked up, connected...learn to stop slobbering...oh, there, that's much better. I've had to core his bones, though! Highly unpleasant. I'll spread it on my tomatoes I suppose. Might need to borrow an organ or two, if that's alright, my boy. Very nice of you to deliver like this; I'd hoped I wouldn't have to go searching for you in town.”
Dilly couldn't reply. There was a hand on his shoulder—a narrow, feminine hand, gripping him from behind—and from the forefinger of that hand sprouted a long curling tendril, and that long curling tendril was wrapped twice around his throat, and it was choking him to death.
###
The boy Frank filled out into full manhood at a remarkable pace. It was nothing short of amazing what a chemical tweak or two could do to the basic human template. The man who looked vaguely like the boy Frank walked hand-in-hand along the gaslit promenade of the new town, with a woman who looked not terribly unlike the boy Dilly's chronically absent mother.
“Mona, darling: you know, I've been thinking.”
“Yes, dearest?”
“I think it's time we had another baby. Someone to take care of us when we're older, you know.”
“You know; I think that's a lovely idea.”
1. This is over seven thousand words long. This was not my intention. I was going for something short.
2. It's a full story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. However, the plot--especially the ending--might make sense to me and only me. It might be one of those things that works only in my head. If so, if I didn't drop clear enough hints through the story, I'm sorry. I honestly just wanted to write something and get it out there.
3. It has a robot in it. Two, actually. The title is meaningless.
4. It's based on Donal's picture of the iron fence and Elimare's picture of the gentlemen in caps. It's set a post, post-industrial future.
5. I shouldn't have to tell you this.
6. I might do a couple of quick edits tomorrow, when I read it again and go "gah".
Off we go then.
------------------------------------------------------------------
The fence was about five feet high, iron railings with blunt spearhead points. The old lead paint was bubbling away and the bars were cratered with rust along what had been the blastward side, where they faced back towards the old city, towards the docklands.
Hollow-boned Dilly was first over, taking a short run, planting his hands between pairs of spearheads, then swinging his legs up and over like a gymnast over a pommel horse. He clapped his hands, rubbed them together, and smiled back at his friends. Frank and Turps looked at each other.
"You next," said Turps.
Frank shrugged. He was the largest of the boys, thickly and solidly built, a full head and a half taller than Dilly or Turps, the product of meat and potatoes, of pints of full-cream milk, of the cruel tutelage of four even bulkier and hairier brothers. He walked up to the fence, grabbed the bars, and shook them to make sure they'd take his weight. For all their rust and age they stood fast, utterly immovable. He gripped the band of iron between two pairs of spearheads, and with a groan he hauled himself up until his elbows were locked straight and his belt buckle was just above the jagged points. He paused like that for a few seconds, considering his options, imagining the sort of damage one of those blunt iron spikes might do to his scrotum. His upper arms began to shake.
He looked back towards Turps. “Give us a leg up.”
“No way,” said Turps. “One, you're some sort of giant. Two, your feet are soaking wet.”
“Don't make me kick your arse. Tell him, Dilly.”
“He'll do it,” laughed Dilly, who at this point had found a low bough on one of the knotted trees of the forest beyond the fence, and was dangling ape-like from it, swinging back and forth. “Don't exasperate him, cousin.”
“Exasperate?” Turps could do a spot-on impersonation of Frank's voice when he wanted to feign ignorance. “What does that mean then?”
“Piss me off!” shouted Frank, his cheeks glowing red. “Come on! I won't put my full weight on you, I promise. It's just for balance.”
Turps took a few steps forward, interlocking the fingers of his hands. Frank looked back. “I'll just use your shoulder,” he said, reaching out with a one of his big damp feet. “Come on, get under me, walk right up to the bars. Hug them tight.”
Turps grimaced as the heel of Frank's boot brushed his ear. He held on to the bars for support as Frank pushed down. The sudden weight took his breath away and gave him black spots in the corners of his vision. For a second he thought he could hear his collarbone splinter and then--
--Frank tumbled over the fence and fell in a heap. He sprung back to his feet, smiling and patting himself down, soaked from head to toe by the long and dewy grass. “Nothing ruptured!”
“We'll have to find another way back,” moaned Turps, rubbing his neck. “Your fatness never ceases to amaze me. I think you've broken my shoulder. Maybe monkey-boy will give you a leg up next time.”
“You forget I have the bones of a sparrow!” shouted Dilly, who had found his way up on to his bough, and stood there, balancing effortlessly. “My poor rubber back would just fold in two. Be thankful you have the fortitude to help our poor monstrous friend.”
“Monstrous, eh?” Frank barged Dilly's tree with his shoulder. The whole thing shuddered. Dilly smiled down at him, arms folded, greatly unperturbed.
“Help,” shouted Turps, struggling to haul himself over the bars. He'd managed to get one leg horizontal with the top of the fence, with his foot wedged between two of the spikes. He wasn't entirely sure what to do with his other leg. Frank grabbed him by the back of his trousers and the collar of his coat, steadied himself, then lifted him up and over. Safely back on land, Turps reached through the fence to pick his cap out of the grass, fixed the peak, and sat it back on his head.
“And now, gentlemen,” said Dilly, leaping down from his branch, “the surprise.”
“It's here?” asked Turps, looking around. All he could see were scorched-looking old trees, bent and knotted and somehow still holding on, and beneath them, tangles of brambles and sloping hills of thick gorse. Dark green spikes protected unripe berries and tiny yellow flowers. “This is the surprise?”
“Well no,” said Dilly, turning towards the darkness of the forest. “I suppose that was a bit premature of me. It's about half a mile that way. And, uh, there isn't much of a path, so I normally go between the trees. Normally takes about ten minutes.”
“He's right: you are a monkey,” said Frank. “Monkey-brained, too, if you think I'm going to risk my neck up there. Those branches are as brittle as matchsticks.”
“Don't be ridiculous,” said Dilly, searching behind a jagged and blackened stump that bristled with shelves of some ribbed orange fungus. He withdrew a long iron poker from the mulch—probably looted on one of his trips to the outskirts of the old city—and wiped the handle clean with the sleeve of his coat. “I've planned ahead. You're going to beat us a path, big man.”
###
It took them a full hour, with Frank moving ahead and whipping at thick ropes of brambles with the old poker, Dilly dangling from the branches above and pointing out the route. “Just climb over this,” he would say, pointing to a shelf of bare rock. “Hack through that,” he would say, pointing at a thin spot between two great mounds of thorns. “Watch out for the stream,” he'd said, just as Turps found himself up to his ankles in freezing water. “Careful, the ground falls away here...”
The sky beyond the treetops had started to grow dark when Dilly dropped down from his tree and finally said, “it's just through here.” Turps had been cut to shreds by this point; the skin of his cheeks stung wildly where branch after branch had whipped back and caught him. Towards the end he had learned to walk with his hands outstretched in front of his face, clawed and frozen, like one of those screaming girls in the late-night cinematographs. Frank had worked himself into a wild stupor, pushing ahead with a fixed grin, knuckles bleeding freely, his thick arms covered with long and curving red scratches. He'd clearly had the time of his life.
Frank trampled his way through an overgrown raspberry bush and suddenly—with the crack of old wood as a fanfare—they were out of the forest, in rare clearing, wading through knee-deep grass and the white flowers of wild potato plants. The breeze smelled faintly of garlic. They were right on the lip of a small hill; the forest ran down the sides, disappearing behind the grass.
Dilly ran ahead and stood on the hill's peak. “Up here. This is the first surprise, chaps.”
Turps clawed his way up the hill and peered over the edge.
In a small valley, surrounded by a wide circle of long grass and then the hard edge of the forest, was a solitary house, encrusted in crimson red ivy. Beneath the ivy was brick—red brick, not the grey concrete slabs that came after the war—which meant it was like the houses in the old city. But it was perfect. It was far bigger, for one, not like the rows of old tumbledowns they were used to. And the windows were still intact. A small tree with bright green leaves grew out of the chimney—but it still had a chimney! It still had a roof! The little valley must have formed a natural shelter. To one side of the house was a shattered greenhouse; a miniature forest of tomato vines sprang from its broken mouth. That same side of the valley was covered in the low flat leaves of wild garlic.
They slid down the hill until they were level with the house, and Turps felt his heart beat faster. They made their way around the house in a broad circle before coming to the front door. The doors, back and front, were intact, as were the ground floor windows. It hadn't been looted. Were they the first to find it? Two generations of looters had grown up since the war and they were really the first to find it?
Dilly walked up to the door and lifted the wide brass knocker. It looked something like a horseshoe dangling from a clamshell. Above the clamshell was an arcing band of glass set into the door, cut in some way as to obscure the view beyond, the grooves caked with years of spent fallout and sand and grit.
The knocker let out two bright cracks.
“You're expecting someone to answer?” asked Frank.
“That's the second surprise,” said Dilly, as something small and round and silver-grey moved in the dark obscurity just behind the door, something clicked, and Frank sprang back in terror, poker raised.
###
The door did not open. Instead, a small rectangular flap creaked open about halfway up the door. Two small metallic points emerged, pointing right at Frank's crotch.
“Tell your friend to put it down,” came a calm voice from behind the flap. “Or I'll zap his balls to dust.”
Dilly turned to Frank. “Put it down. He means it.”
“He'll 'zap' my balls?”
“Trust me. It's not pleasant. I can still feel the burns on my chest. It goes beneath the skin. First time I came here, I went up the side there and tried to slip in through one of the roof windows. This led to a bit of a misunderstanding, and a brief but violent altercation which I lost. Mainly because I was not armed with a beam weapon.”
“I'm still sorry about that, Master Dillbury. But you were being unreasonable.”
“That's fine,” said Dilly. “At least you didn't go for my balls.”
“I only wanted to knock you out. Your friend with the poker looks big and vicious though. Looks like maybe he wants a scrotum full of hot ash.”
Frank dropped the poker. “Okay. Okay.” He covered his crotch with his hands. “You gave me a scare, that's all.”
The flap sprang shut with a snap. Frank jerked in fear. “Perfectly understandable,” came the voice. The door swung open.
Behind the door was something like a silver skull with a hundred-or-so long wires dangling from it. Not dangling from it—supporting it. The wires were alive. Some reached down to form long, spindly legs, branching at the ends to form mobile, gripping feet. Others were arms and hands. Two ended in sharp metallic points—these retracted slowly up through the makeshift ribcage (again, a mesh of these shifting, living wires) and disappeared into the base of the skull. The skull itself had small black points moving in the eye sockets, and a mesh of smaller wires holding the jaw in place, and of course it was made of some silvery metal, but it was otherwise unremarkable, just like the bleached skulls you might find anywhere in the old city.
“Hi, Mitchell,” said Dilly. “These are the friends I was talking about. The strong one and the clever one.”
“Come on in,” said Mitchell. His jaw moved subtly when he talked. Turps had expected it to flap like the skulls in the puppet shows. But it didn't...it didn't flap. It moved just right. Just right. Just right...and the way it...he...turned and walked, too, bundles of wires shifting silently over each other like sets of muscles, just like in the books...
Turps stepped through the door—stepped right into a perfectly-maintained pocket of the late 21st century, complete with a living machine that was ushering them into some kind of dining room—and thought that his heart might explode at any second.
###
“You boys must be hungry,” shouted Mitchell, who was making a lot of noise in the kitchen while they sat on tall-backed chairs along a perfectly set dining table. “I try to keep the garden going, but I was always an indoorsy kind of fellow. It's especially tricky with my, my...you know. My condition. I was once a handsome man about town! But let me make you something! It's been years, boys, years. You must tell me how it all tastes.”
The smell of parsnip or turnip or something like that made its way slowly in from the kitchen. Turps leaned back in his seat to try and catch another glimpse of Mitchell. The tiny sliver of kitchen he could see was a flurry of silvery limbs, whipping about wildly, opening and closing drawers, withdrawing knives, washing vegetables...
Frank looked dazed. The cuts and scrapes on his hands were bleeding over the fine white tablecloth. “Frank,” whispered Dilly.
“Watch where you're bleeding.”
“Oops,” said Frank, staring lazily at his knuckles, his mind a thousand miles away. “What is he, Dilly? What is he, eh?”
“Why don't you ask him yourself? He won't bite.”
“What did he tell you?” asked Turps. “This is amazing. He's a service unit or something, isn't he? Some kind of mechanical servant. But think what he'll be able to teach us! Think what he'll be able to do for the Restoration!”
“My ears are burning!” shouted Mitchell. “Or they would be, if they hadn't fallen off fifty-six years ago! Listen boys, I'll answer your questions in just a minute. There's nothing to worry about. What's this talk of a Restoration, Master Turps? Can I call you Turps? Why are you called Turps?”
Turps took a deep breath. “The Restoration is...well, it's been the main function of government since the end of the war. Everybody works for the Restoration. The idea is that we can restore some of our past greatness by digging around in the rubble and trying to figure out old manufacturing methods, stuff like that. The problem is, the stuff made just before the war is mostly incomprehensible, as it was made by...” He paused there, trying to find the correct words. “...Alternative intelligences.”
“You can call us machines, it's quite alright,” shouted Mitchell, punctuated by the wild sizzling sound of something wet hitting a hot pan. “So what kind of progress have they made while I've been pottering about here?”
“Well, the Restoration is basically two movements now. Two big parties. Some people think that we should go right back—two hundred years!—and start with the basics...microprocessors and stuff. Things recorded in old books. Radio waves and moving pictures. They made an adding machine from the ground up last year. They call themselves Back To Basics.”
“My, my, microprocessors! Adding machines! Well done to them!”
“Yes,” replied Turps. Fried tomatoes. Mitchell was frying tomatoes. “On the other hand, there are Restoration factions that scoff at this—they're mainly concerned with reviving the remains of old Alternative Intelligences and having them do everything for us again. They're called Back On Track, and they're getting a lot of votes lately. They haven't made much progress as yet, but they say the future is always right around the corner. They make some pretty grand claims, and people get taken in.”
Suddenly the kitchen fell quiet, but for the gentle sizzling of tomatoes. The sound hung in the air for a full count of five. Frank pulled a face that said, oh-oh, you've said the wrong thing. Dilly shook his head, put his forehead on the table and ran his hands through his hair.
“I suppose they'd love to get their hands on a fellow like me,” said Mitchell, this time in a quiet, level voice. Then he snapped: “Would they make me lead engineer at the AI plant, Turps? Or would they just take me apart and fiddle with my innards? Fucking apes! Fucking fucking apes!”
The boys looked at each other. Frank slid his chair out from the table as quietly as he could. At that moment, Mitchell wheeled into the dining room, riding a mad wave of whip-like tendrils that seemed to grip every part of the doorway at once, covering their only exit. His jaw swung open and the multiple black points of his eyes fixed themselves on the boys...
...And from behind him, balanced on a single tendril each, came three steaming plates. He flowed on into the room and set the plates down. The sight and smell was astonishing...baked carrots and parsnips, perfectly crisp at the edges, tucked in beside fluffy mounds of mashed potatoes, big plump tomatoes bleeding juice and seeds over them. Chopped pickles. Fat onions, cut into rings, fried until they were caramel brown. Diced turnip in some sort of sweet berry sauce...
Mitchell knitted his tendrils back into a roughly human shape and sat at the head of the table. “I'd have liked to have given you some meat,” he said, “but it's in awfully short supply. I've been trying to catch rabbits with my zapper since Master Dillbury let me know you were coming—I've made a hickory smoker, and everything—no luck as yet, I'm afraid. I don't think my little forest friends like me very much.”
“...That's alright,” said Dilly, looking at the others. “We appreciate this, we really do. Um, come on gentlemen, tuck in!”
Frank lifted his fork and pushed his potatoes around, as if he was checking for something underneath them. “Yeah,” said Turps, nudging Frank, then stabbing a parsnip and lifting it to his mouth. “This is amazing, Mister Mitchell, sir.”
Frank shoveled a heap of potatoes into his mouth and smiled stupidly. “A bounty,” he added, through his mouthful of spuds.
Mitchell's bare skull flicked towards Frank. The movement was instant—like an editing mistake from the early cinematographs. His eye-stalks were fixed on the boy's bleeding knuckles. “What's happened here, then?”
“Just cut them a bit on my way here, sir,” said Frank.
“And bled over my tablecloth, I see,” said Mitchell.
Frank's face fell flat. He froze. “Don't hurt my balls,” he said, meekly.
“Oh no! No, I would never do a thing like that, dear boy! It's quite alright. Here—give me your hands.” Mitchell reached out with two tendrils; Frank reached gingerly back towards him. A tendril slid around Frank's wrist and looped around his thumb, gripping him tightly.
Dilly and Turps looked at each other, forks paused in mid-scoop.
“Now, here's something that your Restoration chaps would love to get their hands on,” said Mitchell, quietly. “Manipulation of tissues on a nanoscopic scale. You know what that means?” The point of the second tendril hovered above Frank's hand. It split in two. Then it split in two again, the original split becoming longer. Then those new points split in two again...and again...and again...until what was once a point became a fuzzy tree, the smallest branches of which (and branches five or six levels above those) were too small to see with the naked eye. The fuzzy tree settled on the back of Frank's hand like a soft, semitransparent sponge, and he let out a girlish squeal. He tried to pull away with all his strength; Mitchell held his hand perfectly still.
“It's hot!”
“No, it just feels that way. Tiny nerve endings being rebuilt and vital chemical patterns being reset, boy. Do you know what those are? I suppose not. Anyway...” The fuzzy tree looked busy. It became a shifting blur. Then—after just a few seconds—it withdrew and folded back on itself, becoming a single point again. The boys looked at Frank's hand. It was a little red, but the skin was perfectly intact. Mitchell released him; Frank drew his hand to his chest and rubbed it.
“Will I fix your other hand, Master Frank?”
He tucked is hand into his pocket. “No thanks, Mister Mitchell, sir.”
“Just let me know if you change your mind. I like to help where I can.”
They continued eating in silence for a full count of five before Mitchell's bare skull flicked around to look at Turps.
“Real conversation killer, eh?” said Mitchell.
“I thought it was fascinating, sir,” said Turps.
“I thought you might. Your friend gave you a strong recommendation, you know. Cleverest boy in class! And insatiably curious! Just the right combination to utterly ruin the world, my boy.” Mitchell reached out a hand—or a clump of tendrils shaped like a hand, anyway. He ran it through the boy's hair. “Why do they call you Turps? You never did tell me.”
The cold fingers remained. The machine was applying no pressure, but it felt like a terrible weight all the same. “It's a condition I was born with,” replied Turps. “My skin is all light and dark patches. You can't see it on my face much. But my father said I looked like I'd been bathed in turpentine. He has it too, though—his back is striped like a Zebra. He says it's a post-war thing, like Dilly's funny bones.”
“Not quite like Dilly's wonderful bones,” said Mitchell. “Those fitted a purpose, once upon a time. What's your real name?”
“Adam, sir. Adam Knox.”
“Knox!” Mitchell pulled his hand quickly away. This plucked a few hairs from his head. “Sorry, sorry my boy, but Knox! Did you ever hear of a Eddie or Linda Knox?”
“My grandmother was Linda Knox. Dilly's, too.”
“Fascinating! The original owners of this house had many friends, Adam. I got to know them all well. The eldest daughter of the house was friends with a young married couple by the names of Edward and Linda Knox. They were such sweethearts—not a care in the world! A very 80's couple, tended to constantly by a fleet of little machines. I kept an eye on them myself when I could. I often wondered what became of them after the war. I hope my Linda Knox is the same as your Linda Knox, eh? Little Linda learned to scrape an existence in the rubble like everyone else! Even helped to repopulate the world!”
“I...I hope so,” said Turps.
“Actually, hold on...” Mitchell paused and sank back in his chair, tendrils slithering up and into his skull. “Yes, you are related to her. I'm fairly certain.”
“How can you tell?” asked Dilly.
Mitchell's skull swiveled around to answer him. “I have my ways. Linda Knox is written all over him. Not Eddie Knox, however! It
would seem either Eddie didn't make it, or Linda was something of an unfaithful wife. There's an old saying: sucks to be him! Well, I suppose after a ninety-five percent population drop...needs must, don't they? The last remaining madman with his testicles wrapped in tinfoil suddenly becomes top stud.”
Frank finished his meal and set his knife and fork down. His plate was empty. He swallowed deeply, leaned back in his chair, held his stomach and burped. “Thanks, Mister Mitchell. That was great.” He reached down to his lap and brought up his cap, then planted it squarely it on his head. “I'll just be off before it gets dark. Chaps? Are you coming with me, or would you rather remain and enjoy the, uh, hospitalities?” He stood up from the table, and Mitchell mirrored his movements in a most perfect and disconcerting way.
“Won't you stay for seconds? Big healthy lad like you?”
“Oh no, sir, my mother would say I'd imposed on your hospitality, then I'd be in all kinds of trouble. No, I was taught that a good guest knows when to make his leave.”
“And now is not that time, Frank,” said Mitchell. “I've made ice-cream. Raspberry ice-cream. Come on, eat your ice-cream, then you can be on your way. You can take torches and proper blades to make your way back.”
“Well,” said Frank. Mitchell took a step towards him. “Well, okay.” Frank sat down and took off his cap.
A single tendril shot out from Mitchell's chest and straight towards Frank's face. A split-second before that terrible impact, it changed course, split in two, and wrapped itself around his plate. There had been no time to react. No time to dodge. No time to prepare. All Frank could do was sit still and quietly empty his bowels.
“Ice-cream coming up!” said Mitchell, cheerily, as he swung out of the door with Frank's plate. “And don't dawdle, boys,” he added. “There's ice-cream for you too!”
###
Dilly turned to Frank with a grave look on his face. “You've dunged yourself, haven't you.”
“I have,” said Frank. “I thought it was going to kill me. I just want to leave, Dilly. Your surprises were great but honestly I just want to leave now. You can have my ice-cream.”
“Nobody's leaving,” said Turps, quietly. He poked at a cold carrot. “There is no ice-cream. Nobody's getting out of here alive.”
Dilly leaned across the table, one long and bony finger outstretched. “And what makes you say that? He's my friend. You two are just ruining this. Ruining it for everyone. You know, he told me, he told me to go and bring you guys back here because I said you were okay and he wanted some company, but now look what's happened! Frank's shat himself and you, you think just because he's different, that he's automatically going to just murder you. You don't know him. I know him. Now look—you've made Frank cry.”
“I'm not crying,” said Frank, sniffing.
“So what makes you so sure we're going to die, Turps?”
Turps set down his knife and fork and leaned back in his chair. “One,” he listed, “he says he's making us ice-cream. Ten minutes ago, he said he had a hard time catching rabbits. Did you see any cows out back? Any goats? I'd settle for the iced-cream of voles but I don't think he's captured any alive.” Dilly sat back, arms folded, jaw set, waiting for two. “Two, and probably most importantly: he can't trust us. Even if we weren't, you know, who we were. He has to assume that we're going to go back to town and tell people about him. He's the holy grail for the Back On Track people. He has to know they would surround this place and take him apart bit by bit.”
“What did you mean, 'if we weren't who we were'?”
“That's point three, Dilly. Three: I don't think our host is meant to look like a disembodied skull on legs. I don't remember hearing about disembodied skulls in the stories my grandmother told me. No: the machine-men and women were partly human. Or humans were partly machines. The lines were blurry. They were called...cyberks. They wore human skin. I think Mitchell was a cyberk, but his body has rotted away or something, and here we are. Three healthy bodies.”
The boys sat in silence for a minute or so.
“The kitchen's gone quiet,” whispered Frank.
“He's out draining a fieldmouse for your ice-cream.”
“I'm sorry,” said Dilly.
“That's alright,” said Turps.
“No, I'm really sorry,” said Dilly. “There are some things you don't know about me. I thought I was telling a few white lies, that's all, just to get you here and get you to relax and...listen. But I didn't think he was going to do us in afterwards. I still don't believe it. So I'm going to tell you this...just in case.”
“Go on then,” said Frank, sliding uneasily out of his chair and pulling at the seat of his pants.
“Okay. I didn't just find this place last week. I've been coming here for years. My mother told me about it before she left town, and I came here just as soon as I was big enough to hop the fence. Mitchell isn't just a friend.”
Frank tested the weight of his chair, and glanced towards the window.
“He's not a cyberk either. If anything it's cyborg, and that's an archaic term. Sixty years ago, he lived here with his family. As head of the family. He wasn't a servant. It's not like the books tell you: the machines were not all servants. The truly living ones had homes and families of their own. That's what Mitchell was. He had a human body and a fully-human wife. He had three fully-human children with her, and a fourth, another human one, though she was conceived in error—I mean, without taking the proper steps—and by another woman. Turps, she was our—”
They heard the clacking of metal tendrils on the ceramic tiles of the hall. Frank looked towards the door, then turned and ran—in a sudden flash of movement—with his chair lifted in his hands. He screamed a low, animal scream, and hurled the chair towards the dining room window, which shattered outwards in a shower of tiny glass cubes. Without slowing, he jumped, found purchase on the sill, and followed the chair out into the dark, still screaming.
Mitchell flowed in through the door, tendrils plunging into the walls and ceiling for grip. He shot through the room and out of the window like a hail of machine-gun fire; plasterboard walls exploded and plates shattered in his wake. He had become a terrible, deafening, lightning-fast storm of flying metal with the gleaming shape of a skull—seen for just an instant before disappearing into the darkness beyond—riding the shock front.
His hundreds of pointed feet had made holes in everything except Dilly and Turps, who found themselves totally unharmed. They jumped from their chairs just before the ruined wood fell out from underneath them.
Dilly ran for the window. “Don't kill him!” he shouted. “Grandpa! Don't kill him! You can have me instead, whatever you want, it's not his fault! He doesn't understand!”
Turps turned and bolted for the door. Then—just as he passed through the rectangle of splintered wood—he skidded to a halt, looking at the floor. He turned to Dilly with his head in his hands. The hollow-boned boy was in a heap by the window, holding his hair in two clenched fists.
“Look at that,” said Turps. “There's three bowls of ice-cream in the hall.”
###
The front door swung open; Mitchell made his way in, dragging Frank's ruined body behind him. He dragged him along the hall without looking at the boys; he came to the kitchen door; he opened it with a single tendril and threw Frank's limp form into the dark.
Turps watched this from the doorway of the dining room. Some of Frank's blood had landed on the ice-cream during the airborne part of his trip to the kitchen. It ran slowly, like raspberry syrup.
“Did you have to kill him?” asked Dilly.
“I tried reasoning with him,” replied Mitchell, slipping smoothly into humanoid form. “I swear I did. I told him who he was. How important he was to me. When that didn't work, I tried threatening him; I told him I'd use my heat ray on him.”
“You don't have a heat ray,” said Dilly.
“Of course I don't. But he didn't know that. The thing with the letterbox had him duped. Anyway, it didn't work. He was convinced that I wanted to skin him alive. You could call it death by overactive imagination, I suppose. He was berserk, running in a straight line for the fence, tearing himself to bits on the thorns. I couldn't let him get out, son, it would have been death for all of us. The whole family would be snatched up by Restoration.”
“I know,” said Dilly. “I'm sorry I brought him here.”
“I asked you to,” said Mitchell. He backed against the wall of the hall, then slid down, limbs falling limp. “Maybe I should just end it, son. I've been around a long time. Maybe I'm not meant for this new world of yours. All I have to do is think it, confirm it, confirm it again, and I'm gone.”
Turps shook his head. “Don't do that,” he said.
“I've killed an innocent.”
“Can't you fix him?”
The tiny black stalks in Mitchell's eyesockets swung up to fix him with a stare. “What do you mean? Bring him back from the dead?”
“That's exactly what I mean. Like you did with his hand.”
“That's just a party trick I do. First aid. Mostly I just speed up the natural healing process by encouraging things along. This is different. No, even sixty years ago, you'd have needed a team of specialists linked to a medical nanoswarm to do a Lazarus job like that. It wasn't unheard of, just terribly, terribly difficult.”
The wind whistled in through the front door. The trail of blood in the hall had already begun to dry, losing its sheen. Turps watched, numb. “Is it true then—you're his grandfather?”
“Great-grandfather.”
“That's why I have hollow bones,” said Dilly.
“That's right,” said Mitchell. “The human part of me was engineered to suit my needs. No skull, no brain, hollow bones for my little metal tentacles to inhabit. Careful gene work. I had three children by my wife; their genes were reprogrammed in vitro so that they'd be fully human. My fourth child was by another cyborg, Mona. She...she was an expansive, astonishing, glittering mind, older than I was but from the same production run. We connected in ways I never could with my human wife. But we weren't careful enough. The child shouldn't have been viable, but...there you go. She decided that she wanted to keep it; she worked hard to make it survive. She found genetic material here and there to fill in the important gaps while the child was still just a few thousand cells old. She undid any nascent deformity while it grew in her womb. The resulting child's bones were hollow, and it was full of bits and pieces to support a machine mind that wasn't there, but it was human, and it was beautiful. We called her Linda.”
“Who later became Linda Knox.”
“Correct,” said Mitchell. “That's why you're here too, Adam. You carry some of her in you. And by extension, some of me, or some of who I was, anyway. Just like the poor boy in the kitchen.”
“Frank?”
“Grandchild by my only son.”
“So you were rebuilding yourself. Gathering parts. You were going to recombine us somehow. Grow yourself again.”
“No...no. Such imagination! Even if I wanted to, the kind of equipment to do so hasn't existed in over five decades. No, it's the end of the cyborg, boys, at least until the great carousel rolls round again. I only wanted to meet my family. Dillbury's mother visited now and then—before she left to go wherever it was that she went—and she spoke of the rest of you, and how you were all surviving so well, and I just wanted to clamber out through the forest and into town and meet you all. But I am, after all, a skull on legs. An old, old skull on legs. I first came blinking into the world one-hundred and fifteen years ago.”
Dilly knelt by the skull. A single tendril rose up to stroke his face. It left a smear of blood on his cheek. “You've been a good friend, young Dillbury. I'm so, so sorry. You boys should leave this place. Frank deserves a decent burial—but the facts of his death can never be known. They would strip you down, boys, in the hope that you had secrets buried in you. I'll look after him here. Then I'll shut down once and for all. An easy end is far more than I deserve.”
###
The journey back to the fence was a silent, solemn affair. Dilly led the way with an old electric torch; Turps followed closely behind, shuffling along, trying to follow the path of ruined foliage that their dead cousin had made. He became increasingly sure that there was a clever pattern to the destruction, a logic that might be puzzled out to arrive at something like an understanding of Frank's mind. Perhaps that was important somehow, now that Frank was gone. Or perhaps he was simply half-asleep.
The pattern was still just beyond his grasp when they came, finally, to the fence.
“You first,” said Dilly, kneeling down in front of the fence. Turps didn't argue. He put his hands on two of the spearheads and let Dilly heave him over.
“You're pretty strong for someone with a rubber skeleton,” said Turps.
“You're pretty light for someone full of marrow,” said Dilly, smiling without laughing. Then he reached through the bars and took Turps by the shoulder.
“Listen,” he said, “I don't want you trying to follow me. I know the way, you don't.”
“What do you mean? Get over here. We have to go.”
“You have to go. I brought you here. I brought Frank here. I can't do it; I can't go home and say we just lost Frank, and I can't leave him to end it alone in that house. You have to be the strong one; you have to say we both went off and left you at the fence because you couldn't make it over yourself; you waited around for us all night, but we just never showed up. You'll have to act surprised when we don't show up tomorrow, or the day after that, and then, ever.”
“Please don't.”
“I have to, cousin.” With that, Dilly turned and ran catlike back into the trees, throwing the electric torch far into the undergrowth and disappearing into the dark.
“You don't have to!” shouted Turps, gripping and shaking the iron rails. They shuddered for him. “You don't have to do anything! Come on back! You can't leave me with this!”
###
Dilly moved by the light of the half-moon, and where there was only shadow and black he moved by memory alone. He moved as fast as he'd ever moved by day.
He was rushing to get back to the house, wasn't he? He would get back to the house and either tell Mitchell that he didn't need to be alone, or at least he would bury his grandfather's spent shell with his grandson. But part of him knew there was another reason for this reckless haste: he wanted desperately to escape his cousin's pleas for him to return. He'd expected it to get easier as he put some distance between himself and the fence...but no, as his cousin's cries had grown fainter, the message they carried and grown stronger, until he couldn't hear his cousin anymore and all he could hear was the voice in his head screaming for him to turn back, turn back, before he was irretrievably lost.
Still, he had his momentum up, and he made his way quickly down through the great bowl of the forest, towards the valley, and the house.
Finally he crested the hill that overlooked the house, and saw that the windows were all dark, and the front door was still ajar, just as they had left it. Frank's blood was a long black trail in the grass, just visible in the moonlight. He would have to try and avoid it.
He made his way quietly down the hill, feeling his away as much as seeing it, trusting the same animal senses that had guided him through the trees. He came to the front door and stepped on in, closing it behind him.
“Grandpa? Are you there?”
No reply.
Had he shut himself down, then? Already?
“Grandpa. Please. I'm not going home.” Dilly called into the darkness, feeling his way along the wall of the hallway, searching for a light switch. “This is my home now, with you. Turps...Adam...is safely over the fence. He has a stronger story if I'm not around. People might think that Frank and I have just run off to some other town, looking for work maybe, or girls, something like that. It might be some comfort.”
He found the kitchen door and reached for the handle.
A wet shuffling sound came from just beyond the door, then the fast clacking of metal legs on tiles.
“Oh, you're still with us then,” said Dilly, opening the door.
He froze. There, cast in the dim moonlight that bled through the windows at the far end of the kitchen, stood Frank, head rolling lazily around, his arms and legs quivering spasmodically. The dead boy choked and spat and took a long, gasping breath...right as the last dark tendril shapes retracted into his head and pulled a dark fold of scalp over a glinting metal dome with a dull slap.
“...Take uffew days, yeah,” said the dark shape that had been Frank. “...Mona says it wull take uffew days to get myself patched up, linked up, connected...learn to stop slobbering...oh, there, that's much better. I've had to core his bones, though! Highly unpleasant. I'll spread it on my tomatoes I suppose. Might need to borrow an organ or two, if that's alright, my boy. Very nice of you to deliver like this; I'd hoped I wouldn't have to go searching for you in town.”
Dilly couldn't reply. There was a hand on his shoulder—a narrow, feminine hand, gripping him from behind—and from the forefinger of that hand sprouted a long curling tendril, and that long curling tendril was wrapped twice around his throat, and it was choking him to death.
###
The boy Frank filled out into full manhood at a remarkable pace. It was nothing short of amazing what a chemical tweak or two could do to the basic human template. The man who looked vaguely like the boy Frank walked hand-in-hand along the gaslit promenade of the new town, with a woman who looked not terribly unlike the boy Dilly's chronically absent mother.
“Mona, darling: you know, I've been thinking.”
“Yes, dearest?”
“I think it's time we had another baby. Someone to take care of us when we're older, you know.”
“You know; I think that's a lovely idea.”
Comment
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Comment by TadMack on May 23, 2008 at 12:27pm
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You didn't have to explain half of your explanations, AND the title isn't meaningless... it brought me the nausea-producing immediate thought of tomatoes. Ugh.
This is ...disturbingly ...good.
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Comment by Neil Struthers on May 11, 2008 at 2:50am
- No way. No way. It's killed my spacing again. NO WAY, says I.
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