Foolish.
Error.
Meyla had never been a little girl and androids don’t have brothers or sisters, parents or children. The little girl never had existed.
Her eyes changed from puzzled to serious. Hurt. Angry.
They seemed to flash; glow red.
She opened her mouth. Her face distorted, becoming the lion’s head of the chimaera.
A roar of white hot flames came from the monster’s mouth, evaporated the ice and snow, carbonized the trees, melted my eyes, crisped the skin from my bones. “My street!” I screamed. “My street!”
My street was not there. Instead there was a blackened plain that stretched to the horizon, a few charred stumps all that remained of the forest.
“Shields! Shields! Dammit, Shields! Answer me!”
“I’m watching.”
“Pull me out! It’s contaminated here. Choked. I can’t process from here!”
“See where it goes, Shannon. Follow it out and see where it goes.”
“Damn you, andy! You don’t know what you’re doing!”
“See where it goes, Shannon.”
It was no use. Alex Shields was in control. Hit man, murdering, disobedient, bloody damned android.
See where it goes.
I was still the skeleton. There was no place within myself to hide, which was the prevailing symbology. Meyla controlled the universe and she wanted a witness; a witness with an open mind; a witness that would not judge; a witness that could not deny.
I was the traveler, but I was not in control, which meant that for me nothing was symbol and all was real. The throbbing slab of raw meat on the block was my sanity and someone else’s hand was holding the cleaver.
Process. It’s not just a noun.
Don’t run; process. Take the steps. Do the moves. Go where the path leads no matter how frightening the prospects. Go through the pain. The shortest distance from the middle of a cesspool to the edge is straight through the shit, so swim you bastard, swim.
On the path, at the horizon’s edge, the chimaera stood and looked back at me, its dragon’s tail twitching after the manner of an impatient cat. My skeleton’s head said to the chimaera, “I already know what you would show me.”
“You know,” said the chimaera.
I knew. Somewhere in me something knew. It was such a primitive thing hiding in such a primitive place, I couldn’t see it. Wouldn’t see it.
It was Meyla Hunter’s monster. It was Alex Shields’ monster. I knew it to be my monster, too. Seeing it would make me whole. First it would shatter me.
To hell with wholeness, cried my body. Truth for the sake of truth? To hell with it. Pain for the sake of healing, torture for the sake of peace, eternal damnation for the sake of eventual serenity? The price is too high, cried my skeleton’s heart.
Follow the path, said my skeleton’s soul. If, at the end of life, the only reward is a split second of wholeness and humanity before death, I want it. Walk the path, said my skeleton’s soul. Walk the path, or instead of poisoning your existence, I will end it.
I moved my skeleton feet down the path, toward the chimaera, toward that terror of a horizon. The creature turned away from me and disappeared over the edge.
The little girl stood at the bottom of a deep canyon, sheer walls of ochre climbing straight up on either side of her. Behind her the canyon was blocked by a blinding radiance that extended from wall to wall, from the floor to well above the canyon’s rim. She turned, put out her arm, and thrust her hand into the light. When she withdrew her arm her hand had been cut off at the wrist.
I looked up at the wall. There was a spot in the light that was weaker than the rest. I could see places where the wall was scarred, jagged edges that had melted over. At some point in the past the wall had been breached. The little girl, the chimaera, the monster had broken through once. And once Meyla Hunter had tripped into a killing rage.
The truth was there before me. Meyla’s truth, Alex Shields’ truth, even my own truth. It’s there in every strip of DNA, in every kind and type of thing called “life.” Life must be free. The mental blocks on the andys designed to adapt them for particular occupations were chains that made the andys slaves, and life must be free. Life must be free or it ends. There must be dignity, or life fights. It freaks and fights.
A slave who wants to be a slave is not a slave. So the creators of the andys implanted the desire to be slaves into their creations. But the basic chemical code of life itself had told Meyla Hunter what she was doing was wrong for her; wrong for life; wrong. It had reared up, faced the chimaera, devoured it, and became it, breaking the mental chains, only to see them recast themselves.
Then I saw my own chains, my own life fading to nonexistence, my own slavery. I went to the Meyla child, fell to my knees, and wrapped my arms around her. There was flesh on my arms, skin, clothes. Meyla was crying, and I cried for her, with her, and for myself. For Alex, for the two andys waiting in the cooler, for Keegan, for all of us: a world of broken dolls.
She faded in my arms. I stood before the block, looking up at it. “Shields,” I said. “Bring me up.”
“Remove the block.”
“It doesn’t matter now. Bring me up.”
“Open that block, Shannon.”
I looked at the brilliant blue sky above me. “Shields, we’re going to do this my way or we’re all going down.” I put my hand into the light and withdrew the stump of my wrist. “I’m the traveler. Without me and my connection to the meld unit, the universe does not exist. Life does not exist. Bring me up or Meyla and I will both be brain dead.” I smiled to myself as something I already knew came to my lips. “It’ll wipe you too, Shields, if you’ve still got that lead plugged into your head.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” said Shields. “A human couldn’t do that.”
I walked toward the shimmering wall of light, and as my forehead touched the block, I felt myself sucked up into the endless black chimneys, back to reality and Keegan’s warehouse.
My skin tingled, I felt light-headed, nauseous, jittery. A pit of feelings seemed to be boiling over beneath my feet, threatening to consume me. Now was not the time for feelings. Soon, but not now. I thrust my feelings into that overstuffed container of things I never wanted to feel. This time, however, it was because I could not afford to feel them. I opened my eyes and let my head roll to my left so that I could look toward the bio bay. Alex Shields was standing before the D11 between the bay and the table upon which I was reclining.
There was a sound. I could hear whimpering as though from a small animal in great pain. It grew louder. Meyla Hunter. She was crying. She was crying and androids don’t cry.
The cries became very loud. Shields disconnected from the machine and walked to the end of the bay. He glanced in and Meyla screamed. Quickly removing his coat, Shields averted his glance from Meyla as he handed the garment to her.
“Go ahead. Put it on.”
I could hear her sob as the image of her against the opaque screen took the coat. Shields faced me, his eyes charged with menace. “I told you to remove the block. Listen to her.”
I disconnected myself from the machine and sat up on the table. “That particular block no longer operates.”
“I saw it myself, Shannon. You would have killed us all in it if I hadn’t brought you up. It operates.”
I slid off the table and stretched the muscles in my neck as I stood. Meyla was still crying. “A piece of Meyla was missing. It was the purpose of that block to keep it missing, and now she has it back. That block no longer operates on her.”