Mist and Shadows: Short Tales From Dark Haunts (5 page)

So Daddy left and Ma raised me to be independent.
 

“You must be fierce,” she said.
 

Fierce.
When I thought of fierce, I thought of lions on the Savannah. Or of the aborigines who retook Australia. I thought of the miners who traveled to the asteroid belt to make enough to send money home to their families.
 

Fierce?
I could understand fierce. I promised myself I’d never cave into disease, love or fear. We didn’t have the luxury for those things.
 

Growing up, I managed to survive the fear. Love? It had its own agenda. But disease wouldn’t be ignored. Ma’s system was riddled with cancer from the chemicals she had to use every day. She was dying and I was the only one who could take care of her.
 

The SYSTEM provides insurance for family members, so when Ma’s old bitch of a boss kicked her out of the factory, I joined Algor and Ma got in to see a doctor. But it’s too late.
No hope
, they say. The cancer’s too advanced. Go home and wait to die. Too many people, not enough hospital beds. Even for those who have insurance. So I hire a nurse for the times I’m out Jumping, and I talk my way through it with Margaret. But sometimes I have to get away from the whole gray, bleak life. So I come here to drink whisky.
 

Joe stares at me. This is my fourth drink. I usually order three. “Things rough for your Mama, kid?”
 
He always calls me kid and I always call him Pop.
 

“Yeah, Pop. She’s going fast. I’m scheduled for another Jump tomorrow and I don’t know if she’ll be here when I get back.”
 

“Christ sake kid, you Jumping tomorrow and drinking like a fish?
 
If I known, I wouldn’t a give you that last drink. I don’t want the SYSTEM down on me cause one of they Jumpers get sick. Gimme that,” he says with that street slang crack-wide smile of his and pulls the whiskey away from me. I lunge for it, but he’s faster and he pours it down the sink. “What you thinking? Huh?”
 

I shrug. “Don’t yell at me. Listen, Pop, I hate my job. When I get home all I hear is my Ma crying because she hurts so bad. If I give her the pills she wants, they’ll lock me up because you know she’ll take them all. If I don’t, she hurts.”
 

Joe leans across the counter. He takes my chin in his hand and gently bops my nose. “Lisa, you a good girl. Your mama, she understands. Her hurting ain’t against you. The pain, it eating away her body. She die soon and be out of it. Don’ louse up you life just to speed up what come naturally.”
 

“I want a drink, Pop.”
 

“Nah.”
 
He presses a card in my hand. “Go play a game. Good VR shoot-em-ups over in the corner. Take out your stress.”
 

“I don’t feel like hooking myself up to another electronic monster.”
 

Gaming is too much like Jumping. I drop the card on the counter and wander over to the tables where they’re playing penny-card poker and dimesy-craps. Nobody has much spare change. The poor are very, very poor and the rich...they live out in the country. I’m one of the few left in the middle class. But the real money in Jumping will come when I pension-out. Then I’ll move to a tropical island and sleep on the beach.
 

Meanwhile, I toy with wagering, but before I can make up my mind, I hear a soft voice behind me. I turn around and there is a beautiful, (I mean,
exquisite
) woman. She has hair so black it makes me shiver. Coiling down her back in long, long ringlets, it ends right above her thighs. She’s ethereal and earthy, round and graceful in a way I could never be. Her eyes draw me in. They’re the brown of the soil, the brown of reality.
 

“You’re a Jumper, aren’t you?”
 
Her words hang breathless in my ear.
 

I wonder how she knows, then I realize that the implants on my head are visible. My own hair had to go when I joined Algor. I nod. “Yes, I’ve been in almost a year.”
 
I realize that I’m responding to her. I want to sleep with her. I want to feel her cream-colored skin under my wandering fingers.
 

She leans closer. Her breath tickles me, butterflies fluttering near my ear. “Tell me about the stars, Jumper woman. Come back to my place and tell me what it’s like to walk through the universe.”
 

We spend three hours in bed before I realize that I have to get home. I have to get up early, and the nurse will be waiting for me. I kiss Patrice on the eyes, the lips, the breasts, the stomach...I pull myself away and head for the door. She sits up, covered only by a thin sheet. “You will be back, won’t you? I don’t want you to walk out on me.”
 
I realize she means it.
 

“I’ll be back,” I say, and realize I mean it.
 

I am almost home when a man leaps out from behind a blue Ford and starts beating on me. He hits my head against the side of a brick building and I can feel a sheen of blood dripping down my cheek. “Money, if you got any you’d better give it over.”

Dazed, I point to my pockets and he rips them open and a splatter of coins falls to the ground.
 

“That all you got?”
 
I nod.
 

He doesn’t believe me because the next thing I know, he has smacked me against the wall again. I’m going to die. I know it. His fingers close over my hand and something breaks, then a snap echoes in my wrist where he’s got hold of me and I step out of my body.
 

I’ve heard other Jumpers talk about it. Once you’ve been plugged into the SYSTEM for awhile, whenever pain gets real bad or sometimes just for no reason at all, you’ll spontaneously slip out. It seems that once you trigger the brain enough, it can do it on its own.
 

Anyway, I am floating in a white fog and musing on whether I’m already dead and then it hits me that perhaps the SYSTEM has proved that there’s some sort of an afterlife when a jolt knocks me sideways and I’m back in my body and hurting bad.
 

Patrice is bending over the prone body of my attacker. He’s dead, that much is obvious. She silently helps me up and we get out of the area before the cops come. She takes me back to her place and cleans me up and then she takes me to a hospital. I don’t ask how she knew I needed help. I don’t ask what she did to the man. I don’t want to know. I
do
call the nurse to tell her I’ll be late and she says my mother died less than an hour before. That night, I move in with Patrice.
 

The Rift scintillates and I snap out of my fugue. A presence draws near. I’ve never felt anything like it before. I look around, hoping it’s Jorge but it isn’t and I stumble back, (it is possible to stumble over your own thoughts—this I have proved many times). There, peering over the edge of the Rift, is the gaseous form from which the life force emanates. And it’s hungry.
 

I spin and head out into open space. If I can get far enough away, fast enough, I can trigger the emergency code that will translate through the SYSTEM and warn them to get me the hell away from here.
 

The creature, or whatever it is, follows. I have never seen anything quite so beautiful. It is brilliant and vibrant and shimmering and part of the Rift itself. It drifts closer, like some ethereal cloud, but before it can reach me, the SYSTEM’s code kicks in and I am suddenly snapped back, like when you stretch out a rubber-band until it almost breaks and then you let go. The jolt as I hit back into my body hurts.

I have been out for seven hours. Margaret quietly unlocks the restraints. She puts me through a battery of tests but I don’t want to take them. I want to talk about the creature.
 

“Listen, that thing ate Jorge’s mind. I know it. Why are you wasting time examining me when you should be talking to OpCom and deciding what to do about the Rift Zone? If you want my opinion, it should be scrapped. Way too dangerous.”
 

She nods quietly. “OpCom has already been informed.”
 
There’s something she’s not telling me.
 

I push away the fourth needle she’s poked me with in the last hour. “No more blood, no more EEG’s, no more anything until you tell me what you’re hiding. You know more about this than you’re letting on.”
 

Margaret’s lips twist and I can tell she’s deciding whether or not to confide in me. And then I know. At least, I know part of it.
 

“You knew,” I whisper. “You knew that thing was out there and yet you sent me out anyway. I could have been killed—”
 

“Shut up.”
 
She locks the door and makes sure the intercom and recorder are silent. “All right, we knew. We’ve known about the creature for seven months. It didn’t eat Jorge’s mind, or any of the rest of them, for your information. They all walked. I’m telling you the truth,” she adds when I stare at her.
 

“How many Jumpers did you lose after you knew about it?”
 
I want answers.
 

“Only two. Yin Lee and Jorge.”
 

“Why did you send me out there?”
 

She sighs, then drops into a nearby chair. She looks exhausted. “You don’t want to know.”
 

I slide off the table. I’ve never been a violent person but now a rage so white, so hot filters through my fingers and before I know what’s happened, I find her throat in my hand. I slam her against the wall. I’m stronger than she is.
 

“Are you going to tell me the truth, bitch?”
 

Margaret gurgles and nods. She knows I’ve got her. She rubs her neck where finger-marks bruise the pale skin. “You win, but I guarantee you, you aren’t going to like it. And if you ever try that again, I’ll kill you. I’m wired with Methoclide, and I’m immune. One whiff and you’re dead. Do you understand?”
 

I back up now, horrified by what I just did. “Yeah.”
 
I’ve never hurt anybody in my life.
 

Margaret motions for me to hop back on the table. “We’ve been trying new drugs that affect the brain. We were hoping that one of them would give you control over the creature. Can you imagine what a weapon something like that would mean to the government if we could control it?
 
The creature could seduce an army into laying down their weapons.”
 

“Telepathic war,” I whisper.
 

“Psionic control,” she counters.
 

It’s too quiet as I think about what she said. Finally, I gather my courage. “It doesn’t look like your drugs are working. So what side effects can I expect?”
 

“Up until now, they’ve produced only mild side effects, within acceptable limits.”
 

“I’d like to know who decides what those limits are.”
 

Margaret gives me a bitter grin. “I’m violating the rules even telling you this. But I like you, Lisa. And I like Patrice. I don’t want to see anything happen to either one of you.”
 

“I don’t understand.”
 

She clears her throat. “You just saw one of the side effects. Today, after you Jumped, I injected you with a new formula, one that was supposed to give you the strength to take over that creature. It’s the same formula I gave to Jorge the last two times he Jumped. In between, he managed to beat up his wife so bad that she needed seventy stitches to repair her face. He also killed the neighbor’s dog for barking too loud. This is a man who has never been violent in his life. As soon as the seizure stopped, he was back to normal. When he realized what he’d done, he walked out.”
 

I stare at her blankly. “Did he know it was the drug that pushed him over the line?”
 

She shakes her head. “No. I wasn’t allowed to tell any of you. The drug is a neural-aggressor. It permanently affects the brain. We haven’t been able to develop a counter for it. Yet. We’re trying our best.”
 

“And that’s what you gave me this morning?”
 

Margaret lowers her gaze. She cannot look me directly in the face. “I was under orders to try it again. There will be more tests on more Jumpers...we can’t discount the possibility that it takes time to build up in the system.”
 

I do not know what to say. This goes beyond mere words. Finally I look at her helplessly and ask, “What should I do?”
 

“Watch your temper. If it starts getting too bad, send Patrice away for awhile. As I said, we’re working on a counter to it.”
 

“How
lovely
of you.” The sarcasm drips from my tongue.

“I’m just doing my job.”

“Isn’t that what the SS soldiers said?”

When she winces, I smile. I want my words to hurt her.
 

Two weeks later I’m back in the chair. A long scratch trails down my left cheek.
 

Margaret fingers it gently. “Patrice?”
 

I close my eyes against her touch and Patrice’s face flashes before my eyes. Beautiful emerald eyes surrounded by black bruises, faint purple streak down the cheek where my knuckles caressed her soft skin. Stood with the razor over my wrists for an hour after that until she came in and took it out of my hands. I told her what they did to me. Next morning she packed. I watched her go in silence.
 

“She’s staying in New York with a friend for awhile.” I don’t tell her that I told Patrice what they did to me. They’d hunt her down and silence her.
 

“You’re bitter.”
 
Margaret scribbles a note down on her pad.
 

“Bitter?
 
What makes you think I’m bitter?”
 
An acrid taste sizzles in my mouth. “No shit, I’m bitter.”
 
I’m antsy, I want whiskey...I want to go to Joe’s and drink until I pass out. But they’d find me. The SYSTEM doesn’t let go of Jumpers that easily. “Christ, I had one year left, Margaret. Why me?”