Undead to the World (18 page)

“Buckle up, Charlie. This ride’s barely around the first curve.…”

I put the DVD in. I don’t know if Charlie’s TV will work like mine, but now’s the
time to find out. I go to the scene menu, looking for the one with the Sword of Midnight,
and find a scene that wasn’t there before: It’s titled
Azura,
and has a picture of her face. I select it and hit
PLAY
.

The image fills the screen but stays frozen. “Azura?” I say. “You there?”

“Maybe she’s in the john,” Charlie says. He’s eating an apple, which Galahad is regarding
with the same kind of expectant admiration he shows all food. “Sorceresses do that,
right?”

“I don’t know. Let me check my recently unlocked memories for detailed information
on magic and/or peeing and get back to you.”

The image abruptly stutters and comes to life. “Jace! I was starting to worry.”

“Starting? Better put it in gear, Blondie—you’re about three crises behind on the
it’s-time-to-freak-out train.” I let her know what’s happened since the last time
we spoke.

“Too bad,” she says when I tell her about Gretch. “She could have been an important
ally. But on that front, I have some good news.”

“The last time someone said that to me, she committed suicide with a sharpened number
two pencil. Don’t do that, okay?”

“You have my word. I have a much better idea, anyway. How would you like a few old
friends to drop by?”

“Oh, sure. Because the
last
person to visit really cheered me up—”

“I’m talking about the real deal, Jace. It’s tricky, but it’s still a lot easier to
send a mental link across the dimensional divide than a person. I can manage three,
in fact.”

“Wait. Three people? You can put me in touch with three genuine, not-mentally-screwed-with
people from Thropirelem?”

“Better than that. I can link those people to their counterparts where you are, put
them in control. You won’t be alone anymore.”

I’m thinking hard. “Which three?”

“Well, they have to have a counterpart there, of course, so your friend Gretchen is
out. I don’t know everyone who’s available, either—you’d have to choose.”

Great. Azura doesn’t know enough about my life to throw any names at me, and my memory’s
still too spotty to trust. I’ll have to go with what I know. “Charlie, for sure. Cassius
would be good, but I’m pretty sure he’s already here—”

“I’ll work on that. It might be possible anyway.”

Who else? I try to think and realize I can only come up with one other name. “Tair.
But he’ll be playing for the other side.”

“Mmm. A shame your Doctor Pete isn’t there, instead.”

“But … he is. He’s Tair—I mean Terrance’s—twin brother.”

She gives me a “you’re kidding” look. “Truly? That’s somewhat inspired, from a purely
evil point of view … Doctor Pete and Tair are a single being, Jace. Doctor Pete was
your friend and a fellow member of the NSA, while Tair is—well, an altered version
of the same man. He’s the sorcerous equivalent of an alternate reality counterpart,
a Doctor Pete who made some very bad choices early in his life. The ruthless criminal
you know as Tair had much the same thing done to him as Ahaseurus attempted to do
to you; his memory was manipulated with sorcery, giving him a history that never actually
occurred.”

A magic-induced multiple personality—but here, each personality had his own body.
Twice as many chances for Ahaseurus to mess with me. Maybe I can make that work for
me, instead.…

“Think you can link to Doctor Pete and not Tair? Bypass the bad and plug in the good?”

She looks doubtful. “It’s possible, I suppose. You’ll have to get him to cooperate,
though, and things could prove somewhat difficult on this end. The real Tair—the one
that’s still here, not there—is in control of the original body, correct?”

“From what I remember, yeah. And that body was in jail.”

“Oh, good. I haven’t broken into a jail since the last time we got together.”

“Sounds like fun. Wish I could remember it.”

“You will, Jace. You will.”

“Uh, excuse me,” Charlie says. “Did I hear right? The plan is to take some other guy’s
brain in another dimension and plug it into mine? ’Cause I gotta say, I don’t know
how I feel about that. Oh, no, wait, I do. No goddamn way.”

Uh-oh. “That’s understandable,” Azura says. “In fact, that’s exactly what Charlie
Aleph said you would say. So he told me to convey a private message from him to you.
Jace, would you back away, please? And Charlie, would you lean in close to the television,
as if I were going to whisper in your ear?”

I shrug and do as she asks. Charlie looks a little more hesitant, but he steps forward
and bends down.

There’s a brilliant white flash.

Charlie hurtles backward and lands on his back on the coffee table. It’s a sturdy
thing, made of thick, polished wood, and it doesn’t collapse.

“Aaah,” Charlie says. His eyes are unfocused, but he blinks a few times, then sits
up.

“Charlie?” I say. “You okay? Azura, what the hell did—”

“The message,” Charlie says, “was real simple.
I know you’ll never go for this, you stubborn gorilla, so let me explain it to you
from the inside of your skull.
I think he got it.”

“
Charlie?
” I repeat.

“Yeah. Hey, toots, nice to see you. Man, is this what it’s like to be made out of
meat? Feels
weird.
” He pokes at his own face with a forefinger.

“CHARLIE!”
I whoop, and tackle him.

Okay, it was meant more as a hug, but we wind up tangled together on the floor with
me on top. I push off him and look down at his face with undisguised glee. “
Damn,
sandman, am I glad to see you.”

He glares up at me. “I can tell. I’ve had genitals for all of thirty seconds, and
you’re already kneeling on them.”

I roll off him and spring to my feet. “This is fantastic! Charlie, you—”

I stop. Charlie’s still flat on his back, and his eyes have rolled up in his head.

“Charlie? Charlie, that’s not funny. Get up, or I’ll show you what it’s like to have
shins, too.”

“
Jace,
” Azura says, her voice urgent. “He’s not pretending. Something’s gone wrong with
the link—I think it’s the difference between lem and human minds, I don’t know—”

“Fix it!”

“I’m trying, but—I need your help, Jace. If the link breaks up, we could lose both
their minds between dimensions.”

“Tell me what to do!”

“Kneel down. Cradle his head in your hands. Yes, just like that. We’re going to do
something similar to what you and I did when we accessed your memories of a man named
Gibby. Do you remember?”

“What? No!”

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll guide you through it. We’re going to access a powerful memory
of Charlie’s, one that will resonate at a deep emotional level. It’ll act as an anchor,
bonding his mind—temporarily—with that of Mr. Allen. Just close your eyes and repeat
the words I say.”

I close my eyes, concentrating on her voice. She starts to speak, alien words with
odd syllables, first gutteral then sibilant. I’ve always had a good ear, and I repeat
what I hear as exactly as I can.

The darkness behind my eyes begins to swirl, and then I’m someplace else.

*   *   *

It’s 1962. My name is Amy Jorgunsen, and I’m seventeen years old. I know this because
Charlie knows it, and he knows it because Amy just told him. He’s sitting across from
her in a booth in the Olde Tyme Soda Shoppe, dressed in his neatly pressed army fatigues.
He is exactly two months old.

“So,” I say, taking a sip of soda water. “I always kind of figured you’d be green.”

Charlie looks confused. “Green? Why?”

“My brother has these green plastic army men. You’re sort of made from plastic, and
you’re in the army.”

“Oh, I get it. No, I’m kind of special. They call me an enforcement lem. Black volcanic
sand instead of the regular kind. And I’m charged up with something unusual, too.”

“What?”

“The spirit of a dinosaur.
Tyrannosaurus rex
—you know what that is?”

“Sure. One of those big meat-eating ones.”

“You sure all you want is a soda water? I could buy you a malted or even a sundae.
I don’t eat myself, but I hear they’re pretty good.”

I shake my head. “No, thanks. This is about all I can have, really. Have you seen
the menu?”

I point at the sign over the counter. A, O, and AB bloodshakes. Blood ice cream in
flavors ranging from porcupine to baboon. Sundaes with anticoagulant syrup.

Charlie frowns. His smooth, glossy black face looks different, somehow—even though
lems don’t age the way humans do, he still seems younger. More innocent. “Don’t they
have anything for nonpires?”

“Why should they? The whole town’s gone pire. That’s why my family moved here in the
first place.”

I hear snickering behind me, and glance over my shoulder. It’s a group of local teens,
every one of them pale skinned and red eyed. They’re looking at me with the malicious
pleasure teenagers get from singling out the isolated and vulnerable. Charlie gives
them a hard stare and they shut up.

“You got any nickels?” I ask him. “They’ve got some good dance songs on the jukebox.”

When he nods, I get up and pull him to his feet. He joins me at the jukebox, though
he protests he doesn’t know anything about music or dancing. I tell him I’ll teach
him; my father taught me when he got back from the war.

Like all new lems, he learns fast. By the second song he’s got the fundamentals down,
and by the third he’s pretty good. It’s swing music, of course, stuff that was popular
twenty years ago. There’s no rock and roll on the jukebox at all.

Afterward, we go for a walk. Even though it’s well past sundown, the main street is
lit up as brightly as a baseball stadium during a night game. Huge banks of lights
on tall posts stand sentry on each corner, illuminating every square inch of ground.

“Those are some lights,” Charlie says as we stroll.

“Aren’t they? I hear they got them from a studio in Hollywood. They play recordings
of birds, too. You know, to make it feel like it’s really daytime.”

The cars on the street are all at least ten years old: Studebakers, Chevrolets, Edsels.
Men and women are dressed in fashions from the 1940s. I don’t see anyone I recognize
as a thrope or a human, though I do see a few more lems in army uniforms.

“So, is basic training as hard as I’ve heard?” I ask. “My father complained a lot
about it in his letters.”

Charlie shrugs. “I don’t know. My sarge says I’m a natural. It comes pretty easy to
me, but I don’t have anything to compare it to.”

We stop in front of a haberdasher’s shop. There’s a double-breasted dark gray suit
in the window, with a matching fedora. “You’d look good in that,” I say.

He studies it seriously. “Really? It seems sort of … expensive. I understand clothing
that protects you, but other than that—”

I laugh. “You can’t wear an army uniform all the time. Besides—what else are you going
to spend your money on?”

Charlie looks thoughtful. “I don’t know. Those nickels I put in the jukebox were the
first time I ever spent money on anything. Other than your soda, I mean.”

“Well, being generous is nice, but you’re going to have to think of yourself, too,
you know. You can’t rely on other people to do that.” My own voice sounds a little
sad, but Charlie doesn’t seem to notice.

“Amy, I was wondering something. Why did you want to do … well,
this
with me?” He sounds genuinely puzzled.

I smile at him. “Because we both stand out, I guess. You’re the first black lem I’ve
seen in town, and I’m practically the only human. The only one who isn’t ancient,
anyway.”

“You think we’re alike?”

“Maybe. I wanted to find out.”

“And?”

“You’re a pretty good dancer, but we’ve
got
to do something about your fashion sense.”

He walks me home. I live in a little white house with a white picket fence—though
the pointed tops of the boards have all been rounded off. We stop outside the front
door. “That was fun,” I say. “We should do it again.”

“Sure. But I don’t know when I’m shipping out—they say I’m going to a country called
Vietnam.”

“Well, call me if you get another pass,” I say. “Or you can always write me from Vietnam,
if you like.”

“I’d like that.”

I give him an impulsive kiss on the cheek. “Good night.”

When I close the door, I vanish. These are Charlie’s memories, after all.

The next time I see him is the following week. We dance some more. We go clothes shopping.
We even get to spend a little daylight time together, when I sneak out of the house
after everyone else has gone to bed.

We stroll down the middle of the street, hand in hand. Charlie’s carrying a basket
of food I packed. There’s no one on the streets, and every window has its curtains
drawn. Heavy steel shutters cover glass storefronts and doors, a barricade against
the relentless sun. Post-apocalypse small-town America, before any decay has set in.

We spread a blanket on the grass of a small park, next to a statue of a Civil War
general. The general’s riding a horse and holding some sort of battle-axe.

I see the way Charlie keeps looking around, and chuckle. “Don’t worry. We won’t get
in trouble. It’s just that everyone’s asleep.”

Charlie shakes his head. He’s wearing the suit I picked out for him, an olive green
number with wide lapels. “Even your folks?”

I look away. “Especially my folks. They’re both pires.”

“But you’re not. How does that work?”

“My dad got turned against his will by a rogue pire. My mom decided to join him afterward,
so they could be together. My brother’s older, but he decided he’d rather be a thrope.
My parents weren’t happy about that—they haven’t talked to him since.”