Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
By Cory Doctorow
12
Mimi was back in bed when they got home. Alan took a shower and scrubbed at his feet, then padded silently around the shuttered bedroom, dressing in the dark. Mimi made a sleepful noise.
“I’m making dinner,” he said. “Want some?”
“Can you bring it up here?” she said.
“Yeah, sure,” he said.
“I just can’t face –” She waved a hand at the door, then let it flop back down to the bed.
“It’s all right, babe,” he said.
He and Brad ate dinner in silence in the kitchen, boiled hot dogs with cheese and sliced baby tomatoes from the garden and lemonade from scratch. Bradley ate seven. Mimi had three bites out of the one that he brought up to her room, and when he went up to collect her plate, she was asleep and had the covers wrapped snugly around her. He took a spare sheet and a blanket out of the linen closet and brought it downstairs and made up the living room sofa. In moments, he was sleeping.
This night, he was keenly aware of what had roused him from sleep. It was a scream, at the back of the house. A scared, drunken scream that was half a roar.
He was at the back door in a moment, still scrubbing at his eyes with his fists, and Bennett was there already.
He opened the door and hit the switch that turned on the garden lights, the back porch lights, the garage lights in the coach house. It was bright enough to dazzle him, but he’d squinted in anticipation.
So it only took him a moment to take in the tableau. There was Link, on the ground, splayed out and face down, wearing boxer shorts and nothing else, his face in a vegetable bed in the next door yard. There was Krishna, standing in the doorway, face grim, holding a hammer and advancing on Link.
He shouted, something wordless and alarmed, and Link rolled over and climbed up to his feet and lurched a few steps deeper into the postage-stamp-sized yard, limping badly. Krishna advanced two steps into the yard, hammer held casually at his waist.
Alan, barefoot, ran to the dividing fence and threw himself at it going up it like a cat, landing hard and painfully, feeling something small and important give in his ankle. Krishna nodded cordially at him, then hefted the hammer again.
Krisha took another step toward Alan and then Natalie, moving so fast that she was a blur, streaked out of the back door, leaping onto Krishna’s back. She held there for a minute and he rocked on his heels, but then he swung the hammer back, the claws first.
It took her just above her left eye with a sound like an awl punching through leather and her cry was terrible. She let go and fell over backward, holding her face, screaming.
But it was enough time, enough distraction, and Alan had hold of Krishna’s wrist. Remembering a time a long time ago, he pulled Krishna’s hand to his face, heedless of the shining hammer, and bit down on the base of his thumb as hard as he could, until Krishna loosed the hammer with a shout. It grazed Alan’s temple and then bounced off his collarbone on the way to the ground, and he was momentarily stunned.
And here was Link, gasping with each step, left leg useless, but hauling himself forward anyway, big brawny arms reaching for Krishna, pasting a hard punch on his cheek and then taking hold of his throat and bearing him down to the ground.
Alan looked around. Benny was still on his side of the fence. Mimi’s face poked out from around the door. The sound of another hard punch made him look around as Link shook the ache out of his knuckles and made to lay another on Krishna’s face. He had a forearm across his throat, and Krishna gasped for breath.
“Don’t,” Adam said. Link looked at him, lip stuck out in belligerence.
“Stop me,” he said. “Try it. Fucker took a hammer to my knee.”
Natalie went to him, her hand over her face. “Don’t do it,” she said. She put a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll call the cops.”
Krishna made a choking sound. Link eased up on him a little, and he drew a ragged breath. “Go ahead and call them,” he rasped.
Alan took a slow step back. “Brian, can you bring me the phone, please?”
Link looked at his sister, blood streaming down her face, at Krishna’s misshapen nose and mouth, distorted into a pink, meaty sneer. He clenched each fist in turn.
“No cops,” he said.
Natalie spat. “Why the hell not?” She spat again. Blood was running into her eye, down her cheek, into her mouth.
“The girl, she’s inside. Drunk. She’s only 15.”
Alan watched the brother and sister stare at one another. Blaine handed him the phone. He hit a speed dial.
“I need a taxi to Toronto Western Hospital at 22 Wales Avenue, at Augusta,” he said. He hung up. “Go out front,” he told Natalie. “Get a towel for your face on your way.”
“Andrew –” she said.
“I’ll call the cops,” he said. “I’ll tell them where to find you.”
It was as she turned to go that Krishna made a lunge for the hammer. Billy was already kicking it out of the way, and Link, thrown from his chest, got up on one knee and punched him hard in the kidneys, and he went back down. Natalie was crying again.
“Go,” Alan said, gently. “We’ll be okay.”
She went.
Link’s chest heaved. “I think you need to go to the hospital too, Link,” Alan said. The injured knee was already so swollen that it was visible, like a volleyball, beneath his baggy trousers.
“No,” Link said. “I wait here.”
“You don’t want to be here when the cops arrive,” Alan said.
Krishna, face down in the dirt, spat. “He’s not going to call any cops,” he said. “It’s grown-up stuff, little boy. You should run along.”
Absently, Link punched him in the back of the head. “Shut up,” he said. He was breathing more normally now. He shifted and made a squeaking sound.
“I just heard the cab pull up,” Alan said. “Brian can help you to the front door. You can keep your sister company, get your knee looked at.”
“The girl –” he said.
“Yes. She’ll be sober in the morning, and gone. I’ll see to it,” Adam said. “All right?”
Brian helped him to his feet and toward the door, and Andrew stood warily near Krishna.
“Get up,” he said.
Mimi, in his doorway, across the fence, made a sound that was half a moan.
Krishna lay still for a moment, then slowly struggled to his knees and then his feet.
“Now what?” Krishna said, one hand pressed to his pulped cheek.
“I’m not calling the cops,” he said.
“No,” Krishna said.
“Remember what I told you about my brother? I made him. I’m stronger than him, Krishna. You picked the wrong Dracula to Renfield for. You are doomed. When you leave him, he will hunt you down. If you don’t leave him, I’ll get you. You made this situation.”
Billy was back now, in the doorway, holding the hammer. He’d hand it to Adam if he asked for it. He could use it. After all, once you’ve killed your brother, why not kill his Renfield, too?
Krishna looked scared, a little scared. Andrew teased at how that felt and realized that it didn’t feel like he’d thought it would. It didn’t feel good.
“Go, Krishna,” he said. “Get out of this house and get out of my sight and don’t ever come back again. Stay away from my brother. You will never profit by your association with him. He is dead. The best he can do for you is make you dead, too. Go.”
And Krishna went. Slowly. Painfully. He stood and hobbled toward the front door.
Mimi watched him go, and she smiled once he was gone.
Benny said, “Kurt’s shop is on fire.”
They ran, the two of them, up Augusta, leaving Mimi behind, wrapped in her blanket. They could smell the smoke as soon as they crossed Kensington, and they could see the flames licking out of the dark black clouds just a moment later.
The smell was terrible, a roiling chemical reek that burned the skin and the lungs and the eyes. All those electronics, crisping and curling and blackening.
“Is he in there?” Alan said.
“Yes,” Barry said. “Trapped.”
“Call the fire department,” Andrew said, and ran for the door, fishing in his pocket for his keys. “Call 911.”
He got the door open and left his keys in the lock, pulling his shirt up over his head. He managed a step into the building, two steps, and the heat beat him back.
He sucked up air and ran for it again.
The heat was incredible, searing. He snorted half a breath and felt the hair inside his nostrils scorch and curl and the burning was nearly intolerable. He dropped down on all fours and tried to peer under the smoke, tried to locate Kurt, but he couldn’t find him.
Alan crawled to the back of the store, to Kurt’s den, sure that his friend would have been back there, worn out from a night’s dumpster diving. He took a false turn and found himself up against the refrigerator. The little piece of linoleum that denoted Kurt’s kitchen was hot and soft under his hands, melting and scorching. He reoriented himself, spinning around slowly, and crawled again.
Tears were streaming freely down his face, and between them and the smoke, he could barely see. He drew closer to the shop’s rear, nearly there, and then he was there, looking for Kurt.
He found him, leaned up against the emergency door at the back of the shop, fingers jammed into the sliver of a gap between the door’s bottom and the ground. Alan tried the door’s pushbar, but there was something blocking the door from the other side.
He tried slapping Kurt a couple times, but he would not be roused. His breath came in tiny puffs. Alan took his hand, then the other hand, and hoisted his head and neck and shoulders up onto his back and began to crawl for the front door, going as fast as he could in the blaze.
He got lost again, and the floor was hot enough to raise blisters. When he emerged with Kurt, he heard the sirens. He breathed hard in the night air.
As he watched, two fire trucks cleared the corner, going the wrong way down one-way Augusta, speeding toward him. He looked at Billy.
“What?”
“Is Kurt all right?”
“Sure, he’s fine.” He thought a moment. “The ambulance man will want to talk with him, he said. “And the TV people, soon.
“Let’s get out of here,” Brad said.
“All right,” he said. “Now you’re talking.”
Though it was only three or four blocks back to Adam’s place, it took the better part of half an hour, relying on the back alleys and the dark to cover his retreat, hoping that the ambulance drivers and firefighters wouldn’t catch him here. Having to lug Kurt made him especially suspect, and he didn’t have a single good explanation for being caught toting around an unconscious punk in the dead of night.
“Come on, Brent,” Adam said. “Let’s get home and put this one to bed and you and me have a nice chat.”
“You don’t want me to call an ambulance?”
Kurt startled at this and his head lolled back, one eye opened a crack.
“No,” Alan said. “No ambulances. No cops. No firemen. Just me and him. I’ll make him better,” he said.
The smoke smell was terrible and pervaded everything, no matter which direction the wind blew from.
Adam was nearly home when he realized that his place and his lover and everything he cared about in the entire world were also on fire, which couldn’t possibly be a coincidence.
The flames licked his porch and the hot air had blown out two of the windows on the second story. The flames were lapping at the outside of the building, crawling over the inside walls.
No coincidence.
Kurt coughed hard, his chest spasming against Alan’s back. Alan set him down, as in a dream. As in a dream, he picked his way through the flames on his porch and reached for the doorknob. It burned his hand.
It was locked. His keys were in Kurt’s door, all the way up Augusta.
“Around the back,” Bentley called, headed for the fence gate. Alan vaulted the porch rail, crashing though the wild grasses and ornamental scrub. “Come on,” Bentley said.
His hand throbbed with the burn. The back yard was still lit up like Christmas, all the lights ablaze, shining through the smoke, the ash of books swirling in it, buoyed aloft on hot currents, fragments of words chasing each other like clouds of gnats.
“Alan,” Kurt croaked. Somehow, he’d followed them back into the yard. “Alan.” He held out his hand, which glowed blue-white. Alan looked closer. It was his PDA, stubby wireless card poking out of it. “I’m online. Look.”
Alan shook his head. “Not now.” Mimi, somewhere up there was Mimi.
“Look,” Kurt croaked. He coughed again and went down to his knees.
Arnos took the PDA in hand and peered at it. It was a familiar app, the traffic analysis app, the thing that monitored packet loss between the nodes. Lyman and Kurt had long since superimposed the logical network map over a physical map of the Market, using false-color overlays to show the degree to which the access points were well connected and firing on all cylinders.
The map was painted in green, packets flying unimpeded throughout the empty nighttime Market. And there, approaching him, moving through the alleys toward his garage, a blob of interference, a slow, bobbing something that was scattering radio waves as it made its way toward him. Even on a three-inch screen, he recognized that walk. Davey.
Not a coincidence, the fires.
“Mimi!” he called. The back window was blown out, crystal slivers of glass all around him on the back lawn. “Mimi!“
Billy was at his side, holding something. A knife. The knife. Serrated edge. Sharp. Cracked handle wound with knotted twine, but as he reached for it, it wasn’t cracked. It was the under-the-pillow knife, the wings knife, Krishna’s knife.
“You forgot this,” he said, taking the PDA.
Then Davey was in the yard. He cocked his head and eyed the knife warily.
“Where’d you get that?” he said.
Adam shifted his grip for slashing, and took one step forward, stamping his foot down as he did it. Davey retreated a step, then took two steps forward.
“He set the fires,” Bentley said. “She’s as good as dead. Cooked. Won’t be long now, she’ll be cooked.”
Darren looked at him for the first time. “Oh, yes,” he said. “That’s about right. I never found you, no matter how I looked. You don’t get found if you don’t want to.”
Brent shook his head. “He set the fire, he used gasoline. Up the stairs, so it would spread up every floor quickly.”
Aaron growled and lunged forward, slicing wildly, but Davey’s scurry was surprising and fast and nimble.
“You’re going to stab me again, cut me again? What do you suppose that will get you?”
“He’s weaker than he was, then. We got six years, then. He’s weaker. We’ll get ten years. Twenty.” Billy was hopping from foot to foot. “Do it.”
Alan sliced and stabbed again, and the knife’s point caught Danny’s little bandy leg, like cutting through a loaf of stale bread, and Danny gasped and hopped back another step.
“He gave you the knife, didn’t he? He gave you the knife last time. Last time, he took me to the school yard and showed me you and your girlfriend. He explained all about girlfriends to me and about what it would mean once our secret was out. He taught me the words, taught me to say pervert. Remember, Billy? Remember how you taught me?”
Andrew hesitated.
“He taught me the ritual with your thumbtip, how to make the little you, and then he took it away from me for safekeeping. He kept it in one of his rabbit cages, around on the other side of the mountain. It’s not there now. Have you seen it? Does he still have it?
“He never liked having a little brother, not me or the others, but he liked having that little thing around to torture.”
Billy hissed. “She’ll be dead in minutes,” he said. “In seconds. Another one dead. His doing!
“Killed her, cut her up, buried her,” Benny chanted. “Sliced her open and cut her up,” he shrilled.
Alan let the knife fall from his hands. Benny leapt for Danny, hands outstretched. Danny braced for the impact, rolled with him, and came up on top of him, small hands in Benny’s eyes, grinding.
There were sirens out front now, lots of sirens.
A distant crash, and a rain of glass fell about his shoulders. He turned and looked up, looked up into the dormer window of his attic, four stories up. Mimi’s head poked out from the window, wreathed in smoke, her face smudged and eyes screwed up.
“Mimi!” he cried.
She climbed unsteadily onto the windowsill, perched there for a moment. Then she leaned forward, ducked her head, and slipped into the sky.
Her magnificent wings unfolded in the smoke, in the hot ash, in the smoldering remains of all of Alan’s life in human society. Her magnificent wings unfolded and caught the air with a sound he heard and with a downdraft of warm air that blew his hair off his forehead like a lover’s hand, smoky smell and spicy smell.
She flew.
The sirens grew louder and she swooped over the yard. She gave two powerful beats of her wings and rose higher than the roof, then she circled the yard in great loops, coming lower and lower with each pass. Davey and Benny watched her. Kurt watched her.
Alan watched her. She was coming straight for him. He held out his arms and she fell into them, enfolding them both in her wings, her great and glorious wings.
“Come on,” she said. Kurt was already limping for the alley. Benny and David had already melted away. They were alone in the yard, and the sirens were so loud now, and there were the reflections of emergency lights bouncing off the smoke around them. “Come on,” she said, and she put her arms around his waist, locking her wrists.
It took five beats of her wings to get them aloft, and they barely cleared the fence, but they banked low over the alley and she beat her wings again and then they were gaining altitude, catching an updraft from the burning house on Wales Avenue, rising so high into the sky that he felt like they would fly to the moon.
The day that Lyman and Kurt were on the cover of NOW magazine, they dropped by Martian Signal to meet with Natalie’s boss. Lyman carried the pitch package, color-matched, polyethnic, edgy and cool, with great copy.
Natalie met them. She’d grown out her hair and wore it with bangs hanging over the scar on her forehead, just over her left eye, two punctures with little dents. Three surgeries had cleared all the bone fragments from the orbit of that eye, and she’d kept her sight. Once she was out of the hospital, she quickly became the best employee Martian Signal had ever had. She quickly became manager. She quickly undertook to make several improvements in the daily operations of the store that increased turnover by 30 percent. She slowly and reluctantly hired her brother, but his gimpy knee made it hard for him to bend down to reshelve, and he quickly quit.
Kurt and Natalie hugged, and Lyman formally shook her hand, and then shook her boss’s hand.
It took less than an hour to convince her boss to let them put up their access point. On the way back, three different people stopped them and told them how much they liked the article, and swore that the first thing they’d do when they got home would be to open up their networks and rename them ParasiteNet.
Lyman handled the thank-you’s for this, and Kurt smiled and fiddled with his PDA and watched the sky, looking for a girl with wings as wide as a house.
I went to the house,
(she said, as he tended the fire, turning the yams in the coals and stirring the pot in which his fish stew bubbled)
I went to the house,
(she said, resting up from the long flight she’d flown from Toronto to Craig’s distant, warm shores, far away from Kensington Market and Krishna and Billy and Danny)
I went to the house,
(she said, and Andy worked hard to keep the grin off his face, for he’d been miserable during her long absence and now he could scarcely contain his delight)
I went to the house, and there was no one home. I had the address you’d given me, and it was just like you’d described it to me, down to the basketball hoop in the driveway.
It was empty. But it was as I’d remembered it. They’d lived there. I’d lived there. You were right, that was the house.
That was the house I’d lived in. I rang the doorbell, then I peeked in through a crack in the blinds. The rooms were empty. No furniture. Just blinds. It was night, and no one was looking, so I flew up to the third floor, to the window I’d stared out all those times.
The window was unlatched, and I slid aside the screen and let myself in. The room was empty. No carpet. No frilly bed and stuffed animals. No desk. No clothes in the closet, no hangers.
The only thing in the room was a small box, plugged into the wall, with a network cable snaking away into the phone jack. It had small lights on it, blinking. It was like the one you’d had in your attic. A wireless access point.
I remembered their names, then. Oliver and Patricia. They’d been my mother and father for a few years. Set me up with my first apartment. This had been their house.
I slept there that day, then, come nightfall, I set out again to come home to you.
Something woke Andy from his sound sleep, nestled in her wings, in her arms. A tread on Craig’s inviolable soil, someone afoot on his brother.
Slowly, he got himself loose of Mimi and sat up and looked around.
The golem standing before him was small, and its eyes glowed red. It bent over and set something down on the earth, a fur-wrapped bundle of smoked meat.
It nodded at him. He nodded back.
“Thank you,” he said.
Mimi put her hand on his calf. “Is it okay?”
“It’s right,” he said. “Just as it was meant to be.”
He returned to her arms and they kissed. “No falling in love,” she said.
“Perish the thought,” he said.
She bit his lip and he bit hers and they kissed again, and then he was asleep, and at peace.