“The Appointees,” Ada says.
“That’s right. They keep giving themselves more and more power. To fight Ophisa, to save the princess … first they allowed the police to arrest and detain. Then they allowed them to kill. Now they’ve given them guns. We’re turning into Earth!”
“That’s why we’ve got to save her! So it’ll all go back to normal.”
“How do you know the princess even exists, Perry? Have you seen her?”
“I’ve seen the mini! Ada, where’s that figure?”
Ada puts it on the table. I hold it up. The princess still looks beautiful and pure. Pure silver and pure something else.
“That’s just a doll,” Mortin says.
“This ‘doll’ winked at me, okay? She needs my help.”
“You’re seeing things,” Ada says.
“It doesn’t matter. Perry, if you want to save the princess so badly, stick to the original plan and kiss Anna at your camp. I did the analysis on that one. They correspond. But I’m starting to think this whole thing is a setup and the princess was never kidnapped. And I’m going to the Badlands to find out.”
“And Ada’s going with you.”
“Yes.”
“And your brother’s going with you.”
“I’m gonna try and dry out,” Leidan says, staring at the water in front of him. He looks despondent, but then he claps Mortin on the back and perks up. “Maybe spending some time with my bro will do me good.”
“They’re quite serious; they’ve even refused professional companionship!” Iyatra says. “I said I could send one of my girls to keep the Enaws company, and they said they’d rather stay focused. Can you believe it? Mortin and Leidan, electing to keep their getmas on?”
“Mortin?” I say. “Fuck you.”
I slam my chair back from the table and storm upstairs.
I LIE IN THE BED I MADE WITH THE HEQUET. I can’t believe they want to send me back. Everyone else gets to do something important, and I get to go back to yurts and counselors and Ryu? What a joke. I should fight Mortin. I should get out my war hammer and bash his brains in and take over this quest myself. But I can’t—I’m not strong enough. After everything, I’m still not.
“Perry?” Mortin pounds on the door. “Let me in!”
“Go away! It’s locked!”
“You have to go back! You can’t stay here!”
“I’d rather die!”
I hear whispers.
“Who’s out there? Leidan? Ada? I hate
all
of you!” I know it sounds a little childish, but it’s true. Even Ada, right now.
“Okay, Perry,” Mortin says. “We understand you’re upset. Get some rest. Can we talk about this in the morning?”
“I guess so.”
“Good. Good night.”
Their footsteps recede down the hall. Huh. Better than nothing. I sit up in bed. I guess this is one of those moments
where I would read or play video games or mess around on the internet on Earth. It’s funny how you don’t miss that stuff. I think about all the arguments I can make in favor of me joining their quest: I picked Ada’s handcuffs in prison; I stood up to Officer Tendrile; I never gave up against the cynos. I’m really not bad. I’m not. Someone knocks again.
“Who is it?”
“Come see.”
It’s a woman’s voice, not Ada. The door has no peephole, so I have to open it to check. It’s the hequet with the plunging V who got me in trouble before.
“What do you want?”
“Iyatra sent me to comfort you.”
“Oh. That’s not necessary.”
“It looks necessary. May I come in?”
What the hell, I let her in. We sit on the bed. I watch her rounded bottom distort the sheets. My body reacts to hers and, even though I don’t want to, even though I shouldn’t for a lot of reasons, I flare up down below. I turn to the side to hide myself.
“Don’t be ashamed. I saw you look at me before.” She leans in. Her frog head is scary, but her breasts look so good!
“Wait! Stop! Is this like … are you trying to do this for
di-
?”
She shakes her head. She opens her mouth. I see her long tongue. I don’t want to brag, but if I go through with this and I go back to camp, I’ll have something unique to talk
about. I can be like, “Hey, not only am I not a virgin, I lost my virginity to a
frog-headed exotic dancer
.” Will that be something to brag about or something to be ashamed of? It’s funny; that was always clear to me before.
I let my Honor drop to 0 and close my eyes and open my mouth to kiss the hequet.
Something bitter drips onto my tongue.
I snap my eyes open. The hequet is squeezing her cheek, pushing out drops of green fluid that
plat
into my mouth.
“Agh! Hepatodes!” I try to kick her away, but she holds me down. I clamp my mouth shut but I can already feel the tiny creatures spreading along my tongue and commingling with my spit.
“I thought—
ptttt—
only male hequets—”
She smiles. “First impressions.” She has a much deeper voice all of a sudden, and I remember the telltale sign you’re supposed to look for with men versus women: the Adam’s apple. I never thought to look for an Adam’s apple on an other normal!
“Are you …” I start. I try to say,
Are you going to kill me?
but my tongue has gone heavy and dead. It protests the whole idea of working for me and sits in my mouth like a hunk of fish. My toes clench up. My feet freeze. I try to grab the hequet to escape, but my hands won’t respond.
Mortin, Ada, Leidan, and Iyatra walk into the room.
WHAT’RE YOU DOING?
I TRY TO YELL, BUT it comes out “Hrrgrbbbb …”
“You got him?” Mortin says.
“Secure,” the hequet says.
“Poor guy,” Leidan says. “I don’t blame you, little traveler. It could have happened to any of us.”
“Not
me
,” Ada says. “I can’t believe you, Perry. I didn’t think you’d go for it.”
“Earth men are all animals,” Iyatra says. “This one was well-behaved, to tell the truth.”
Mortin slings me over his shoulder. “Perry, sorry it had to end like this, but we saw no other choice.”
“Nurrr … ,” I say. My war hammer sits useless on the bedside table.
“The hequet poison will wear off soon. You’ll be fine.” Mortin carries me out of the room. My eyes face the floor. I see Ada’s sparkling toenails as she follows us to the stairs. I try to beat Mortin but I can’t move.
“Consider yourself lucky,” Ada says. “We can’t do an orbitoclasty on you here, so you’re going to remember all this. Most
people who come never remember.” Downstairs, Mortin carries me behind the bar. Leidan pulls the lever to open the trapdoor. Iyatra waves good-bye with her dancing girls, and they all curtsy to me. The male, the one who poisoned me, bows.
“Don’t tell anyone about us when you go back,” Mortin says. “They’ll just send you to the mental institution.”
Below the bar, in the “safe pit,” Ada lights candles on the wall. We’re surrounded by bottles and barrels—Leidan looks at them longingly, but I guess he really is trying to dry out because he shakes his head and pulls aside a burlap sheet on the floor. A thakerak sparks underneath, like it expects me.
No! Let me go!
I want to scream, but what comes out? “Uhhhrrrrrr …”
“It’s okay, Perry,” Ada says. “Next time just be a little more suspicious when strange women come into your bedroom.”
“
Mmmmmrrrrr!
” I manage, which is the paralyzed way to say,
I’m sorry; I don’t hate you; I actually might love you!
“Check his wounds,” Mortin orders. Leidan looks at my palms, my leg, my ankle.
“They’ll think he just fell. It’s not a very good camp, right?”
“It’s a ghetto camp. Perry,” Mortin says, “I want you to understand something. I owe you my life. In addition to that, I think you’re a pretty cool guy and I’ve had a good time hanging out with you. I have a feeling we’ll see each other again. But for now, you have to put all this behind you. You never should have gotten caught up in it, and it got out of hand. If I hadn’t had my addiction to pebbles—and you know now I have two
days clean, that’s a big step—I never would have been smoking over in your world, and I never would have been caught by you, and I never would have had to bring you over here for correspondence analysis, and so on. So just think about it as a really great dream and go back to your life, and let us worry about the princess and Ophisa and all the rest. Enjoy being safe.”
Dead
, I want to tell him. I’m dead when I’m safe. All my life I’ve been dead and I didn’t even know it.
“You remember how this works, right?” Ada asks. Mortin rests me on the thakerak. “
Don’t
think of Camp Washiska Lake....”
I try not to think of something else so that I think of something else. I try not to think of India, Australia, Antarctica, a place I can appear and instantly be killed so this will all be over. But the brain is a slippery thing. The image that comes to me instead is
me
, in the dining hall, pulling my pants down—I am going back to a world where I’ve just made an irretrievable fool of myself—I can’t—
please
—I’d rather—
The thakerak springs to life and sends me back to
THE ITCHING HARDLY BOTHERS ME THIS time. I come to on the ground in the dark and as soon as I feel it, I hit myself—a good strong punch to the face—and it dissipates. I crawl to Sam’s clothes, which I left by the tree. Someone’s messed with them. I remember leaving the pants folded with the shirt on top; now the shirt is folded with the pants on top. I spin around. I was followed.
“Dale?”
It has to be Dale. I think back to the acne handout I got at the nurse’s office, the one where I wrote
Ryu = Eric Chin.
I need another paper and pencil, to write
Dale Blaswell = Officer Tendrile.
It’s not just the mustache; Dale was following me when I escaped the dance. Then, when I went to the World of the Other Normals, Officer Tendrile was following me. That can’t be a coincidence.
But he’s not here now. Maybe the light of me coming back scared him. Or maybe Dale is biding his time because he
knows
about the World of the Other Normals. Maybe that’s why he works here. Maybe he knows what a “special place” Camp Washiska Lake really is.
Screw him. I raise my foot over the patch of mushrooms next to the Logo Spermatikoi battery. I pause—
do I want to do this?
—
yes—
I slam my foot down and squish them all, over and over, flattening them into a pale paste, cursing as I do. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but when you get emotional, things that make no sense make a lot of sense. I probably spend forty-five seconds stomping on the mushrooms before I realize—
how am I going to get back?
“No no no … ,” I say. I kneel down and touch the negative end of the battery. I put my finger in the mushroom biomass. Nothing. I’m stuck on Earth.
“No!”
I spot Mortin’s tail lighter, still by the tree. I go stomp on that until it’s splinters in the dirt. That makes me feel better, and I don’t mind that I’m barefoot: I have soles of steel.
I put on Sam’s clothes one by one—like a small boy, like an old man. I’m crying but I don’t acknowledge the tears. I let them fall to the ground without wiping my face as I walk back to camp wondering what the hell I’m going to do.
MAYBE I SHOULD BURN DOWN CAMP. See what kind of correspondence
that
causes for my “friends” in the World of the Other Normals. Maybe I should tell everyone what happened and test out some padded walls for a while. I want to hurt Mortin; I want to hurt Ada; I want to hurt myself. Then I realize one thing I can do: I can actually kiss Anna Margolis.
They don’t think I’m up to it—Mortin hardly even asked me this time. They’ve given up on me. But I’d like Ada to know it happened. I’d like her to
watch
me kiss Anna, actually, and see how that feels. It’s going to be challenging (because of the whole indecent exposure thing), but I can handle a challenge; I already have. I’d like to do it to prove to Ada that it was wrong to trick me and send me back. Not to save the princess: fuck the princess. I’d like to do it out of spite. I know spite is supposed to be a terrible emotion, but it stops my tears from falling and puts a smile on my face and gets me motivated as I get back to the dining hall.
The music of the dance is still pumping out. The banner is still over the door:
WELCOME TO CAMP WASHISKA LAKE!
I don’t see any counselors looking for me or girls comforting Anna. Did something happen to
erase
what I did? How incredible would that be? It would be like coming back from the dead!
I put my hand on the wooden banister and go up the steps. Inside, boys and girls are distributed in the same formations I left them in. The wallflowers are still on the wall; the dancers are still dancing for one another’s benefit; Miss K is still at the punch bowl. I
did
it—or my correspondent did. I took it back!
I jump and click my heels; I can’t think of another appropriate action. A kid sees me and snickers, and I snicker right back. What a stroke of luck. Now, where’s Anna?