Terence turned over and punched his
pillow, hard, several times, though it certainly didn’t deserve such
punishment. He had to give Gerald an answer.
He knew his brother well enough. He wouldn’t quit with this idea of sending his two lab rats and his little brother haring out into the sand to some unknown place.
Terry tried. He really tried to be good. Weren't these strangers enemies of Xanadu? The boys… they really were just boys… were spies for someone and that they
were enemies and… and…
Gerry had brought him into the
laboratory, in secret, to see the young men.
They looked like Illiterates.
They looked like most of the servants he’d grown up with. They didn’t look evil. What haunted Terry more than the tormented
look on the older boy’s face, was the blissful smile on the other one. It looked frail and fragile, with as much
depth and opacity as a windowpane. He looked like a doll, with every emotion
erased from his face.
“The ones we worked on, before. Before they died, they were struggling to get
back things they’d lost when we erased their rebelliousness.” Gerald’s eyes
were haunted. “Their faces would twitch
into emotions as if playing with them, trying them on until they found one that
almost fit. But it was all masks. They were disconnected from those
emotions. Their creativity is gone. Their resourcefulness. Their autonomy, really. They sit until they are told to do something.”
Terry leaned forward to the screen. He couldn’t take his eyes off the young man in the laboratory cage,
still struggling to distance himself from this crack-brained scheme. “Gerald,
this is not a good idea.”
He couldn’t get the image of the boys
out of his head, even as he lay on his clean pillows, in a cool, firmly sheeted
bed. “Prime wouldn’t like it. Prime wouldn’t like
it,” the younger boy kept saying and the older one… “I’m myself. I’m myself. I’m still myself.”
“I’m
myself,” Terry said in his dream. He dusted off his gloves, straightened his cravat. He was at the carnival garden, an indulgence
he’d only seen the once, like any child of the Second class, since it was
usually reserved for Firsts and their children.
His cane tapped on the cobbles as he strolled in the rose and primrose
lined paths.
The carousel ahead of him was blue and
white and gold, almost blinding as it whirled around in its stately
course. The ship swing was off to his
left and there was an artificial pond… actual surface water... on the other side
of the lilies where paddle boats shaped like gigantic white swimming birds
floated slowly around their track.
He was just wondering how many litres of
water that really was when suddenly he was snatched up from behind. He dropped his cane and tried to yell but by
the time he found his voice he’d been set down, surprisingly carefully on the
neck of a gaudily dressed elephant, behind a veiled person.
A snowy white ferret climbed up on the
shoulder and chattered at him. *Caught you! Found you!*
In his dream his heart contracted and he
made to leap off into the flower bushes, but the elephant still had him by one
ankle and held him before the man… woman?... driving the elephant.
“Please stop that. I’m not from Prime, I’m looking for Terence
Cameron. Terence Charles Arthur
Cameron. I met his program on the moon,
looking for me. We almost met, the once. I’m Haraklez Vania aht Ruikart. We need to talk.”
“I’m… I’m Terry Cameron… look I realize
this is a dream but could you put me down?
This is terribly humiliating.”
“Oh, sorry. I had to fix what Tizrav…” he (she) waved at
the ferret now bouncing on the pachyderm’s head. “fooled you into thinking, and I couldn’t let
you run for it.”
She let Terry down and the elephant
waited, making an odd chuffing noise as it slowly swayed back and forth, while
he straightened his clothing. “What an
odd dream this is,” he said.
“Yes… it’s the only way I can talk
openly to you in the code without having Prime’s security turn your brain into
bleeding mush and me into a mindless husk."
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