“What are you trying to do?” Alex Shields’s voice leaped into my awareness.
“Do? I’m trying to get to my safe place.”
“That doesn’t look very safe to me.”
I was shocked. “How can you see?”
“I’m plugged in, Shannon. I have a connection port, too.” Within that swirl of colors I saw Shields materialize in front of me. “Here I am.”
“Nobody told you to plug in! Nobody told you to show up here! What if we freeze up or get dumped down into memory? Who in the hell is going to get us back to a traffic sector? Go on. Fade out and pull that plug. Get out!”
For the first time I saw Alex Shields smile. It was a strange wicked smile. “Nobody tells me anything, Shannon. Not you; not anyone. Not anymore. That was a modification I just performed on myself. Thanks for the use of the machine.”
“What modification?”
“The meld unit had the psych surgery modules in the case. They aren’t very clean, but they’re usable.” The wicked smile turned into a wicked grin. “Is there something I can chop up for you? A piece of your memory that makes the day gray? A fear that you can’t get around. They all reside in meat, and I’ve got the cleaver.”
He fell into silence, that smirk still on his face, the smear of the universe still whirling behind him. It was a special terror being under the complete control of someone who had never before had any power of his own. “What’re you going to do? Are you going to bring me up?”
He held out his hands, indicating the colors. “We still have to repair the whore, don’t we?” His words belied the bitterness in his voice.
“Are you serious? Do you really intend going ahead on the repairs?”
“Certainly.”
I shook my head and held out a hand. “Then what’s this rebellion all about? What’re you doing here?”
Again that smile. “Let’s just say that I’m the patient advocate. I’m here representing the interests of the android.”
“No.” I shook my head. “No. Bring me up. I won’t buy into this. Bring me up.”
I could hear ice forming on the lake, could hear it groan, crack, and sing with the changing pressures caused by the sun, by the rise and fall of the water beneath the ice. The colors swirling around us were whites, grays, and blues. “We’re wasting time,” Shields answered. “Repair Meyla Hunter.”
“This work is dangerous enough when I have control of my universe. If I have to clear everything with you, we’ll both be wiped clean or scrambled within seconds.”
The smears stopped. We were standing in a forest, the snow thin and fresh on the ground. The white expanse of the frozen lake stretched out to my right. “Very well,” said Shields. “I’ll take out my connection. You have control of the universe. Just keep in mind: I’m still on the knobs, so I have control of you.”
He faded. I was alone, walking the frozen wonderland of Meyla Hunter’s universe, Alex Shields peeking over my psychic shoulder. In the deep woods, surrounded by the gnarled roots of sleeping yellow birches, was a tiny warm water spring. Hoarfrost edged the opening and coated the roots and twigs above the water. Sunlight streamed through the trees making the canopy of branches sparkle with a billion diamonds. I looked about me and my heart ached at the beauty of the scene.
“Should I switch you to another traffic sector?” asked Shields. “Nothing seems to be going on.”
“Not yet.” The scene was too beautiful. It wasn’t a path that was devoid of events from not being traveled. It was peaceful here because this is where Meyla Hunter went to find peace.
The woods.
For some reason I remembered the woods.
There were trees in Meyla’s universe that were familiar. Woods. Snow. A wooded glen. They were the trees in that summer picture of the little boy with the halo of white hair.
I saw something on the path ahead. It came closer. It was a child bundled in an old fashioned down coat and leggings. The child was coming toward me. I raised my foot to take a step in the child’s direction and I felt something grab my leg. I looked down and something huge, green, jagged, and strong as steel was wrapped around my leg.
From the spring.
It came from the spring. It was the tail of the chimaera and it was dragging me into the black water of the spring. As I fell I grabbed at the roots at the edge of the spring, tearing my nails as I slid beneath the surface.
Choking. Hands around my throat, choking me—
I fled to my street. Still the tail of the chimaera was wrapped around my leg and was pulling me down into the broken concrete of the sidewalk. I reached out my hand and cried out. My cry was cut off by strong fingers around my throat. Colly Fry was choking me.
His face was strange, fading in and out, fading into and out of other faces. The little boy with the white hair looked at me, watched me being dragged into the underworld, his eyes saying: What about me?
Another street. No hands on my throat. At night. Walking. The smell of fresh rain in the air. I knew the street.
It was a real street. West 82nd in the bright lights end of the dead zone. Porno, strip, appliances, junk, and any kind of whore your sick little heart desired.
“Shields,” I said, “What sector am I in?”
“Lost you for a moment, Shannon. What happened?”
“Never mind. Where am I in the traffic now? What sector? I have to start plotting this or I’ll never find my way.”
A pause, then Shields’s voice in my awareness. “You’re not in any of the traffic sectors, Shannon. The readout shows a memory error. The way I remember the manual, this prompt means somehow you shunted straight into memory. Is that possible?”
“It’s possible.”
“Should I pull you out?”
Memory to an andy isn’t the same as memory to a computer. For an andy it’s the same as with a human being. Memory is stuff you remember; stuff you refuse to remember; the past; ancient history. In memory both Shields and I were powerless. What is is; what was was. You can’t change it. You can only leave it or cut it out with those surgery modules. I was in Meyla’s memory for a reason, though. Her monster dragged me there to see something. Would it kill me forever? It was a possibility. People are sick as hell with each other.
I called to Shields, “Don’t pull me out. There’s a reason I’m here. I just have to find out what it is. Back me up to an neural processing area, though, so I can work out whatever it is I find.”
The big horrors, the mind-killers, were the traumas the andys couldn’t or wouldn’t process: denial, anger, sadness, acceptance: what is is; what was was. The psych tech’s main task was to find those killers and process them.
“Okay, you’re backed up. You’re already there so you don’t have to call me to start.”
“Okay. Be prepared to yank me out, though, just in case.”
Along 82nd street, the glossy sports vehicles cruising the blocks, checking out the product. I wasn’t part of that product, though. I was different. Better. I had an appointment with an executive in the James House, an exclusive hotel on Flag Street.