The Book of Wanda, Volume Two of the Seventeen Trilogy Read online

  “Ernesto?” a voice called in Spanish from behind him, gentle but strong. “How are you doing, amigo?”

  The bicycle would never be fully fixed if the axle couldn’t be truly straight. He was doing this work to fix the bicycle, but it would never be fully fixed. More wax would help, but the bicycle would never be like it was supposed to be. Ernesto’s face felt hot. He was trying to make the bicycle work the way it was supposed to work, but the axle was bent forever and so the bicycle was broken forever. He could make it work well enough to be ridden, but it would always be broken inside.

  Soft footsteps came up behind him.

  “Ernesto?” a voice said.

  The rubber seal around the bearings was cracked in too many places to salvage. The washers, spacers, and locknuts had corroded, and though he could abrade away most of that damage, the washers, spacers, and locknuts would corrode again without a new rubber seal. He could make one out of old plastic bags, but it wouldn’t be durable so it wouldn’t last long. The bicycle wouldn’t stay fixed for long if he had to use plastic bags instead of a rubber seal, but the rubber seal was cracked in too many places to salvage, and the bicycle would never be fully fixed, not ever, because of the axle and the track and the bearings and the pits and corrosion.

  Something touched him!

  Ernesto gasped in shock, shouting and flailing to remove the hand from his shoulder. Ripping his attention away from his work was as difficult and painful as if his eyeballs had been in physical contact with icy metal. He turned his head and saw fingers and palms, not reaching for him but just empty palms pointed at him now.

  “Easy, cousin,” a voice said. Ernesto peered past the hands and found a face. It was narrow and smooth, with big brown eyes and a small tuft of beard under the chin. There were thick, bushy eyebrows and matching bushy close-cropped hair. The face was similar to the picture memories of Arrulfo that Ernesto carried in his mind. Picture after picture from his memory matched the face before him now, not exactly but close, close, one after the other. This was Arrulfo. Ernesto let his eyes return to his work.

  “I don’t like to be touched, Arrulfo,” Ernesto said, testing the track again with the ballpoint. Ernesto was ten years and forty-four days old. Arrulfo was seven years and fifty-two days older than Ernesto.

  “I know, amigo, I know. I’m sorry. This is important and I need to have you listen to me now. I touched you so I could make sure you’re listening.”

  The stone was making progress on the track, wearing down the little pits, but the corner he was using was wearing out. He turned it to a sharper one and ran it around the track again.

  “You can ask me questions,” Ernesto said. “Questions are a good way to tell if someone is listening.”

  “Okay, cousin. You’re right.”

  “You don’t have to touch me.”

  “I am sorry, Ernesto,” Arrulfo said. “I know you don’t like to be disturbed when you are working, but I have something important to ask you.”

  Ernesto looked back down at the cracked rubber seal. It was too cracked to salvage. “I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m working, Arrulfo,” Ernesto said. “You know I don’t like to be disturbed when I’m working.”

  “I know, Ernesto. I know. But this is an emergency. Mari is very sick and I need to take her to find a doctor in a different part of the Zone. There is a doctor there who can help her, but it is not safe for her and Rosa to go alone. It is dangerous for us to leave this area. If I go with them, there will be nobody to watch out for you here, so I’m going to have to take you along, also.”

  “I don’t like fighting, Arrulfo. Dangerous means fighting, and I don’t want to fight anyone. I’m not good at it. I don’t understand fighting.”

  “I will try to do all of the fighting for you, cousin, if I can. Will you come with me?”

  “Yes.”

  Corner of 6th and G, the Zone

  The threadbare brown jacket hung limply, doing a decent job of concealing her Corporate Green uniform on the dirty Zone street. Wanda turned in a circle, looking all around. A few bums sat on the ground in different spots, leaning against crumbling walls of buildings with glassless window holes, but she saw no one else at all. Where was the legendary mass of former corporate humanity, the Horde of the Departed?

  The stench here was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was the most powerful combination of urine, vomit, death, rot, sewage, and chemical smells imaginable, laced with a strange sort of electrical discharge and ozone scent she thought might just be her own terror. The sensory overload excused her tears, perhaps. This was her life, now: decay, desperation, and toxicity.

  Her EI told her there was a signal here, and briefly an idea flashed of trying to send a message to Nami. Such a message would never get past the corporate firewall, though.

  Down G there seemed to be a greater concentration of bums. Perhaps they had strayed from the Horde, or maybe the Horde had already migrated away from this location. In any case, there was no sprawling mass of desperate former corporates. She supposed the desk clerk could simply have gotten it wrong, and the Horde may never have been here at all. She walked farther that way, staying on the gravel in the middle of the street to avoid contact with the dirty and frightening people against the walls. Each face turned up to stare at her as she passed.

  Wanda felt the Zone wearing on her already, making her paranoid. Of course these people would watch her go by, she told herself.

  They have nothing else to do. It’s nothing more than that, no reason to imagine it’s a calculated, orchestrated observation for some nefarious purpose, even though…every single one of them is still looking at me.

  By halfway down the first block she had passed half a dozen, and one by one they had all risen to their feet. They now stood where they had sat, no longer leaning against walls, still staring. At the corner of Fifth Street, a cluster of them stood silently, more than she’d noticed there before, each one unabashedly watching her every move. With every step past Fifth Street, they seemed to close in a bit nearer to her. By the midpoint between Fifth and Fourth, a new one approached, fast, coming straight up into her face.

  “Hello, friend,” the man said quietly, but with a strange intensity that made the hairs stand at the back of Wanda’s neck. He was dressed in rags and had a long, scraggly beard, but he seemed to stand straighter than most bums she had seen, and to enunciate his words more clearly, too, though his voice was barely above a whisper. She hadn’t noticed him before he’d appeared a few steps away. Now he stood directly in front of her, blocking her path, and a quick glance from side to side showed at least seven others just slightly farther than arm’s reach, now, all standing, all peering into her face.

  “Where are you going?” he asked, as quietly and intensely as before.

  “I…nowhere,” she said. “I think I made a mistake. Someone told me I should come here, but I don’t think this is right.”

  “Yeah,” he said. Wanda found herself leaning toward him, listening intently so as not to miss a word he said in that disturbingly quiet voice.

  Where a moment ago there had been a small group standing and watching, there were now more than twenty. She gasped, pivoting her head from side to side to look over both shoulders.

  “I…Yes. I should go back. I was looking for…I’m sorry to have disturbed you.” She started to turn around and walk toward 6th again, but she thought better of it, stepping backwards rather than turning her face away from him.

  “Are you looking for someone?” he asked. His voice was that of a person talking in a library or study hall, eerily out of place on a Zone street.

  She turned then, angling away from him and taking a few quick strides. He matched her, step for step. She set her eyes toward the intersection where this had all begun, 6th and G, and tucked her chin, almost running. The number of people watching seemed to have doubled, crowding in as she ran past.

  The man stopped following her. She ran the last half-block, finally looking
over her shoulder as she returned to her starting point, breathing heavily, the stench stinging her nostrils and tongue.

  The same small group of bums sat in the same spots they had before. Nobody else was around.

  4

  Evans Household, the Zone

  Kym opened her eyes.

  Eye.

  She realized she could only see through one. The other still seemed to be there, though. It tracked achingly along with the seeing one from behind its swollen lid.

  It was dark. Still dark? Still the same night?

  No. She was lying in a drying puddle of her own urine and her stomach was empty. Probably a whole day had gone by. Maybe more than a day. She wanted to feel around, to get her bearings, but her body was too badly damaged to move. Her knee was wedged under something with a hard, straight edge… the kitchen cabinet beneath the sink. She was on the kitchen floor.

  Need help. But how can I get to Dok’s place when I can’t even stand?

  It was her last thought, and then she was unconscious again.

  A Zone business

  The door was made of many layers of plastic, wood, and particleboard, all glued and screwed together into a massive sheet. It slid in and out of a concrete wall so thick that the doorway seemed more like a tunnel. Scrawled in large black letters across it were the words “SYNTH INSIDE.”

  Wanda had been watching people coming in and out, trying to summon enough courage to try it herself. There was nothing else around here. As primitive as her surroundings felt, it wasn’t like she could go forage for nuts and berries or spear a wooly mammoth. Whatever sustenance she got would have to come from a synthesizer, and the black letters on that door were the only evidence of one she had seen in the Zone.

  She had figured out the pattern, insofar as it worked on this side of the door. There were two big goons standing out front, and customers approached with chips in their hands. The men would grunt at them and they would quickly open their palms to show they had means to pay. Then the door would be opened to admit them and quickly slid shut again after they entered. Wanda had positioned herself on the street at an angle that would allow her to see inside, but the interior was too dark to reveal anything.

  How many chips should she present? The patrons all held them too tightly and flashed them too briefly for her to see. Presumably they wouldn’t let her in if she showed too few, but would they demand she turn over whatever she did show? The company had always provided her with internal credits for such purchases and she had no idea how much things might cost out here.

  Finally her empty stomach and increasing lightheadedness won out. She approached the giants and showed them all the chips she had. She could only figure out her next step once she got inside.

  They slid the door open and she entered a dark room. Off to the left was a single light source, shining down onto the synthesizer. Wanda had only seen the interactive parts of them before, the dashboards through which users would order whatever product was wanted. The other parts had always been hidden behind walls and countertops. This one was simply sitting in a corner of the room, partially hidden by a battered cabinet and a man who was taking orders across it, but Wanda was still shocked by the sheer size of it. The synthesizer was at least three times the size of Wanda’s body, formed of a flat gray material she supposed was a kind of polymer, its shape obscured by hundreds of translucent pink tubes and valves. The interface she recognized was only one small rectangle right in the middle, though this one was severely worn and coated in Zone grime.

  Her eyes adjusted and she saw the line of customers, with three ahead of her. Someone else came in and stood behind her. Though synthesizers could make anything, everyone seemed to be buying patented energy drinks. It made sense, she supposed; they offered the most nutritional content for the money.

  Pulsarin, the Amelix brand, was the only one she had ever consumed as an Amelix employee. It took a certain amount of mental preparation to get the stuff down, with its numbing sensation and metallic aftertaste.

  But I’m not an Amelix employee anymore. I have no obligation to keep my credits inside the umbrella!

  She would try Vibrantia, a competing product she had always been curious about, though she’d heard it was virtually identical. Her life was coming to an abrupt end here in the Zone; why not allow herself the pitiful luxury of a new consumer experience?

  The person in front of her approached the counter and ordered.

  Nami. That’s why not.

  Her daughter Nami was still supported by Amelix, and Wanda would always do whatever she could to support the company as long as that remained true. Pulsarin it was, and Pulsarin it would be until she died.

  The man behind the counter nodded at her and she approached. “Pulsarin,” she croaked. “Loaded.” She presented her palm with all the chips, trying to appear bored with the process so that he would assume she knew how much it was supposed to be worth. He took a few chips and stared at her.

  She looked around. Everyone was watching her.

  “Cup?” the man asked, annoyed.

  A cup. No, she did not have a cup.

  Wanda dumped the chips out of the plastic bag Davi had given her and handed it across the counter. The man filled it with her dose of Pulsarin.

  Somewhere in This World of Filth, Death, and Pain

  Inti padded nervously down the gravel sidewalk. What had she done to deserve such a punishment as this? The memories she got from the other girl sharing this body showed that misery was nothing new here.

  There were no trees or plants in this place. Since she’d arrived she’d not seen a single animal. The people here were not kind or even merciful. There was nothing but gravel and crumbling buildings and desperate, murderous crowds.

  She couldn’t make herself prostitute the body, even though it belonged to this other girl, Addi, more than to herself. Somehow Addi had blocked most of the memories, but the tiny fragments Inti saw of her experiences had made her numb with horror.

  I am sorry to you, Addi. I should do it, too, so that you can be conscious for something not terrible once in a while. You feed us both, doing that. I will try to be strong for you.

  Her missing toe felt as if it were still there, burning and cramping. Every step sent an electric pain up her leg and spine.

  The bits of memory she found were enough to show her what to do and what she ought to charge for various tasks. Men and women wanted to use all parts of her body, and each thing was worth a different amount, paid in local casino chips. Those chips then bought things like food and clothes, and a shelf to sleep on in a windowless room shared with two other girls, the room itself so small that the shelves fit from wall to wall.

  She kept her head down, ashamed to be what everyone saw, and yet even more ashamed to not be doing what they thought she was doing. She should do those things, to support Addi, to justify herself.

  Nobody seemed to notice or care. Perhaps everyone was ashamed here.

  Her mind went blank as she found herself suddenly immobilized.

  Hands had grabbed her by her throat and scratchy pink hair. She wriggled and gasped, taking in only a fraction of the air she needed. The fingers tightened, cutting off blood into her head. She saw nothing but a section of brick wall across the alley above her, but now the image darkened and became spotty. Her feet dug trenches into the gravel as the hands dragged her off the main street and into a narrow gap between two empty buildings.

  “Where’s your boss, whore?” The voice was angry and male. The hands held her face against the wall, pointed up and away. Her heart beat faster and her breathing became shallower and faster. Her head was pulled forward, away from the wall, and then slammed back up into it. Her skull thudded hard against the brick. The attacker pulled her forward once more, faster and farther down, then back again, hard, against the wall. Her limbs crumpled, suddenly unable to support her weight. The voice got angrier, more threatening. “Where is your fucking boss?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t kn
ow!” she whimpered.

  The hands jerked her down the walkway and out the other side, onto some relatively empty back street. She could only see a bit of it with her head tilted the way it was. Inti struggled to keep her balance and avoid being dragged by her head. The man marched her quickly around a corner and then around another, and down a few more blocks. They went down a short flight of stairs and he kicked a door as if he were knocking. “Bridges!” He called. “Hey, lemme in, man! Look what I got!”

  The door unlocked and he pulled her inside by her hair, which ripped out as she was thrown to the floor of a dark basement. “One of the Garbageman’s girls!” her captor said. “We’re gonna send him a message.”

  The one who had answered the door made some empty but enthusiastic comment.

  From another side of the room a third voice spoke. “Awright, Magic! That fuck rips us off and kills our boy Murph? Fuck yeah the Bridges gonna make him pay!”

  The one who had brought Inti here slapped her hard and began tearing her clothes. “Garbageman gonna know he can’t fuck with the Bridges. He’s too much of a bitch to show his face, fine, we can still hit him. First we fuck up this one, then every other whore he’s got.”

  Amelix Building, CBD

  “Hello, Dr. Kessler, sir,” Keiko said, fumbling with her bag as she waited for his invitation to enter his office.

  Kessler nodded his head and spread his arms, “Hi, sweetie. C’mere.” She entered and slid against him sexily as she shut the door. “How are you today?”

  “Tired and sore, sir.”

  He took her gently but firmly by the arms. “But ready to serve.” His eyebrows were raised but he had not made it a question.