I snarled at her and let my eyes scare her again, but I didn’t stand up this time and intimidate her physically. I wanted until she turned to Bituba, and then I actually looked at my picture.
Odd how text and art can war. When I let my eyes unfocus so I can see the image I’ve been drawing instead of the words I’ve been writing, I see that Susie is right. I sketched some outlines to engage most of the paper, dusted in rancid smog here and there, and then hunkered down and wrote the outlines of a few buildings over in the corner, leaving the wider space without definition. Just now I’m coding in a fountain in the city’s central square. I like the ease of writing water.
Bituba just glanced at the chronometer and then at me. We only have ten minutes left in this session, and after that, who knows when we’ll be together again? I wish I’d never had all those stupid dreams.
I’m going to signal her now.
Everything fell into place, just as I planned it. Bituba and I overpowered our guards, tied up Susie with her own stretchy body stocking, stuffed her mouth with wadded up sketches, and made our way to Rehab’s Node Central, overpowering guards and security measures as we went. We collected our third conspirator, the station ferret, part of companion animal therapy (they apparently didn’t realize that he had been genetically enhanced for intelligence and opposable thumbs; he was instrumental in spying out a blueprint of the station and getting us the guard schedules, also in telling us where the necessary supplies were) and jumped many nodes in rapid succession. Bituba had stashed emergency identity-making supplies on one of the worlds where she’d been overthrown. She had a secret node to a deep dungeon there; she’d guessed that the Hero who succeeded her would never use it. So we kitted up, changed all our identifying marks, and jumped some more.
Bituba wanted to go back to the country she’d been ruling before her mother-in-law did the intervention on her. She was ready to chop off enough heads that she could regain her old power. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, myself. Once a populace has seen you taken down, they often won’t stand for your rising again.
I have lost some of my fire. All those murders I know I need to do? Can’t work up the energy for them. Just now I’m sitting on the balcony of a luxury resort in some winter mountains on an innocuous tourist world, with this piece of paper and a set of colored pens in front of me. The ferret’s a warm coil of furry weasel on my lap. He has a certain musky smell I don’t care for, but I owe him a lot, so I’ll learn to like it. Bituba and I had a custody battle for him; we decided to share, so we have to keep each other apprised of where we are. This is the kind of weak spot I would never have countenanced in my previous incarnation. Anyone who learns about this could bring about both our downfalls.
The picture I’m drawing, even though I no longer need to code my words because I can burn this document myself, is of a forest. Trees lend themselves to code. This is a coniferous needle-bearing forest, so I have the luxury of writing words in sweeps of branching green. For the bark I am reserving the names of all the people I would kill if I were my old self. The list is long enough to make for tall trees.
I plunged into the galactic newstream last night and sought out information about the current state of Ruritraya. Shrike the Impaler is running the country as a regent for Darkblood. A series of political cartoons lampooning some of Rusty’s more ridiculous mannerisms made me nostalgic. One caricature captured his nose by exaggeration in a way that was somehow more true than a photograph.
Just now my pen moved on the page and drew a picture of Rusty the way he looked when he was ten T.S. There were no words in this picture, and it doesn’t fit into my forest; his head floats in a space where I haven’t penned needlesprays. Now I am writing around his face, as if I could enfold it in foliage, make him part of my forest of confusion and revenge.
The ferret churrs and drops from my lap. He has spotted a vole on the edge of the balcony and wants to pursue it.
I am here in this distant place, where the maid service is invisible, the food is good, and the bed is comfortable, with enough money from Bituba’s stash to support me for a lifetime, a new face, eyes, fingertips, and footprints, and blurs on a few of my genes where they won’t interfere with life support. Only the ferret connects me to anyone else. Only my drawing connects me to who I was in Rehab. Yesterday, though, the waiter who brought my room service tray saw a sketch I’d done, my recollection of Bituba before she changed her skin color and the shape of her nose. He asked if he could have it.
I couldn’t see what appeal a picture like that would have for a creature shaped like a squared lump, with a few stumpy limbs, a featureless nodule for a head, and a bowtie. I was flattered, though. Then I thought twice. Perhaps he was the kind of creature who leaked things to whatever passes for media here, and he recognized Bituba. Can’t let any of that out. Plus, I’d coded on her face, and I can’t believe I’m the only one left who remembers Pitcairn pothooks. I drew a portrait of the waiter instead and gave it to him. He seemed just as pleased, if I interpret the flushes of color across his flesh correctly.
Here where it’s safe to wonder, I think about Ruritraya, and wonder if a Hero will knock Rusty off his regent’s throne before I go back there.
Maybe I’ll draw him a postcard. First I have to finish my forest.
About Martin H Greenberg
Martin H. Greenberg, often called the king of anthologists, has compiled more than one thousand anthologies, including the Murder Most…series and the American Ghosts Series. The president of TEKNO books, he lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
