Memorymakers (7 page)

“Quit lagging,” Squick said.

“But it’s dark,” Emily protested. “I can’t see.”

“I can see enough for all of us.”

“Do you see with magic?” Thomas asked, and he sounded not in the least afraid. The question surprised Emily, for Thomas had a scientific mind, she thought, and he didn’t believe in magic.

“As you wish” came the cryptic response.

Emily was jerked forward, with such strength that her arm ached. She scurried to keep up, but the fear of running into something had not disappeared.

She heard the shuffling of their shoes on a hard, smooth surface and identified Thomas’s steps—a rapid, echoing patter—then Squick’s less frequent but heavier sounds, and finally her own, a patter lighter than Thomas’s. Were they on concrete, or maybe hard-packed dirt? She couldn’t tell, couldn’t recall any details of the surface from the tunnel entrance.

Squick breathed heavily at her side, and she heard the clicking and grating of his eyeballs. Might he be a robot, one that could see in the dark? Such strange red eyes. But his hand felt warm and human, a little moist. Or was that perspiration from her own palm?

For an instant Emily thought she heard a whistle tone singing through the air, high and clear. She couldn’t pick out the sounds of Squick anymore, only the pattering steps of Thomas and herself in the darkness.

Malcolm Squick shivered as he recovered from the tugs and pulls of disunion. He was in two places at once, via a technology Gweens could never duplicate or begin to understand.
Poor, disadvantaged Gweens!
This Inventing Corps technology, associated with amoeba-cams and stealth mass-shifting methods, enabled him to divide the tangible spectra of his body into two sensory realms—leaving at least one of his five bodily senses in each realm.

This time he left only his sensation of touch in the tunnels with the children, and though he could not see, hear or smell them (and could not taste them had he wanted to), he felt their hands gripped in each of his own.

He set this division into motion with a precise whistle tone, one limited to the Ch’Var auditory range. Squick could activate the Divider from anywhere inside or outside the branch office structure, without limitation of range, and as with other Ch’Var technology, he didn’t concern himself much with its workings. He knew only that it was a mechanism built into the building, originally designed to aid fieldmen in escaping from Gween authorities as necessary. It included an automatic system that warned a fieldman of approaching police, wherever the fieldman happened to be.

If not overridden by a fieldman’s conscious effort, the Divider split a fieldman “four and one,” leaving only his sense of smell behind while catapulting the body, brain and other four senses to the nearest safe location. The body and brain always went with the majority of senses—with that grouping of at least three senses. Those senses remaining behind, though without body or brain nearby, functioned nonetheless, transmitting sensual data from the original location to the new one.

The system had never failed.

In this disunion Squick had split himself by conscious effort, and the particular whistle tone he selected specified the division of his senses, body and brain. So, while guiding the children through the entrance tunnel, he was simultaneously in a tiny, windowless room deep beneath the surface, ready to ship his embidium orders to the Director. A yellow panel dominating the wall opposite the door would open at the appointed time.

Squick stared at a tray of embidium vials that held purple liquid—those extractions he’d made in recent days. He zeroed in on Thomas Harvey’s vial, identifiable by its vial number, and saw the familiar stringy red glow of the Nebulon-encased embidium.

He considered withholding Thomas’s embidium, but Jabu knew of the extraction from the transmission to headquarters. Jabu couldn’t know he had the children, however, for they’d been kidnapped after the transmission of the Seven Sacred Questions, with answers.

Squick wondered if he should warn the Director this embidium was different, or that it might be different. Or should he just ship it? It would be interesting to see if the boy’s embidium, this unusual extraction, could be implanted, therapeutically inserted to give a recipient happy childhood memories. If it didn’t take, Jabu wouldn’t necessarily say anything. Rejections occurred occasionally for unknown reasons.

To hell with warning him. The boy’s fluid clouded when I tested it, so I’ve done my job, and now it’s up to Jabu to follow his own damn steps.

Squick had no knowledge of the implant procedure, only that certain careful steps had to be followed by the Director.

But this embidium might be unlike any Jabu had ever handled; it certainly was a first for Squick.

He felt a child’s hand trying to pull away—Emily’s—and he gripped it harder.

He knew he should say something to the Director about this extraordinary extraction, that he should speak up before the shipment was made. But something told Squick to keep his silence. He’d taken the Harvey children on impulse, out the side door of their home into his chameleo-van and away. It hadn’t been thought out, wasn’t logical. Did another force drive him to take the children with him in violation of procedures? He couldn’t be certain. But now these children were entirely within his control.

A shudder passed through Squick.

He tried to convince himself his preoccupation with these children wasn’t the loathsome, unspeakable type he feared so much. This seemed to emanate from some other driving force, a powerful, more compelling urge than any he had ever known. Something akin to the Nebulons, he thought, and on a vast scale. This urging would not be denied. It did not tickle him or nag him. It demanded his full attention.

In secrecy he would attempt another extraction from the boy, this potential goose with golden eggs. An unlimited supply of embidiums would be interesting, and if Squick controlled the source . . .

I’ll have to hide these children somewhere,
he thought.
Jabu could spot-check me at any moment, and the risk of that seems higher with what I’m sending him now.

The yellow wall panel slid open, revealing a small red cage.

Squick released Thomas’s hand, and in a blur of hand speed the fieldman lifted the cage top, set his tray of vials inside and reclosed the cage. When his hand was clear, the yellow panel slid shut. Once again he grasped Thomas’s hand. Squick didn’t know how the vial shipment system worked, only that it did. Director Jabu’s headquarters were linked to this and all other field buildings in a mysterious way, one of the secrets that only the Director and his prized Inventing Corps knew.

Certainly Mother Ch’Var had never had anything like this.

Squick wondered what the alpha-mother would want him to do in this circumstance, and he tried to tell himself he wasn’t behaving selfishly, that the Harvey information was safest with him.

But the troubled fieldman could not convince himself, and from all angles of thought he realized more than ever that he wanted to be Director, that this factor would have to be entered into the complicated equation of his actions.

Chapter 7

“Sometimes it matters most not what is there, but what might be there.”

—Emily to her brother in a dream

Emily gave up trying to pull her hand away. The grip was too strong, and it disturbed her that she hadn’t heard a peep from Squick for several minutes. She squinted, shifted her parallax in increasing light and saw Squick seem to appear from midair, taking shape from a thickening mist of human form.

An impossibility. A trick of lights or from the drugs, she decided.

In the back of Emily’s mind she thought she heard a high, clear whistle tone like the earlier one, faint and brief in duration.

“Kidnapper!” Emily shouted.

“A harsh word,” answered Squick. “I look on your circumstance in a different light. You are guests about to take a tour of facilities. Think of this occasion as a special treat, one we usually don’t extend to clients.”

Emily’s voice rose. “Treat? Mistreat is more like it. My dad has the police after you, and you’ll go to jail forever! They’re looking for us now, and you’d better let us go!”

The crescendo of her voice silenced her. What good did it do to shout? Squick was large, powerful and in total control. And while her father searched for her, what would this stranger do to them? Who was Squick—or rather, what was he? With his personality shifts, he might he a psychopath, without conscience. A shudder of fear shook her, and she decided to behave more cooperatively, at least until she could discover a way to escape.

Light from ahead filtered into the tunnel way, enabling her to see Squick and her brother more clearly.

Squick released his grip on Thomas, and the boy increased his pace, moving by himself several meters ahead. Emily could tell by the way Thomas’s head cocked to one side and the manner in which he slapped his right hand against his leg that he was totally and blindly fascinated by this place.

“What’s up ahead?” Thomas asked.

“You mean down ahead?” Squick retorted with a chuckle.

“Yes!” There was no animosity in the boy’s tone, only playfulness, and Emily wished he could be more perceptive. He didn’t seem cognizant of any danger, but Emily sensed otherwise.

Why has this man taken us?

Squick’s voice intruded upon her thoughts, and he spoke low enough that Thomas didn’t hear. “I don’t have to let you go, as you put it. While I was in your home, after administering the drugs I left a little message on your answering machine that turns your threats into . . . nothing.”

She turned her head and glared.

They entered a narrow, brilliantly illuminated room, and a door that Emily hadn’t noticed snapped shut behind them. The light in the room metamorphosed from white to a wild array of sparking colors, creating the illusion they were in the midst of a noiseless fireworks explosion.

“We’re in a stealth-lock,” Squick said, “becoming invisible to anyone . . . outside.”

Emily experienced a pleasant tingling, and before she could phrase a question the room opened to a wide, brightly lit chamber filled with party supplies arranged in neat rows on storage racks. Two pyramid-shaped robots worked the aisles, and a short, jowly man in a shiny yellow onesuit seemed to be supervising them while they transferred objects back and forth. Emily recognized some of the same articles she had seen in Squick’s briefcase—party hats, tablecloths, food sample packets . . .

Thomas ran to one of the racks, examined a plastic bag of toy cars.

“You’re wondering about the answering machine,” Squick said to Emily. “Isn’t that right, little one?” He smirked and released her hand.

She moved a short distance away, afraid to go farther or to call out for her brother.

“Want to know the message I left?” Squick asked. “I altered my voice to sound like your father’s—we’re trained to do that. I copied his voice from the master tape and told your housekeeper that Victoria and I—your father, that is—picked you kids up and took you to San Margarita.” He grinned. “Nobody’s gonna miss you for days.”

Emily shook her head as she watched Thomas peer into the sealed cello bag of toy cars. Such intense interest in his eyes, and she realized her brother’s curiosity kept him from fear. At least for the moment. She wanted to get to him, to talk with him.

“Dad will call,” Emily said, “and he’ll get through to Mrs. Belfer.”

“Maybe not. Victoria will keep your old man busy, count on that.”

Emily choked back a sob.

Squick pointed to a stairway just to Emily’s left. “Down the stairs,” he ordered. “Thomas! Over here!”

Thomas replaced the cello bag on the shelf and ran to join his sister and Squick. “Neat-o stuff!” the boy said.

“One of our warehouse areas,” Squick said, sliding toward the doorway. “We have warehouses all over the world, full of lots of things. We manufacture toys and tanks and guns and dolls and drugs and, well, you name something and we handle it

“I thought you were a caterer,” Emily said.

“That too,” Squick said. “It’s a diversified operation. The man in the yellow onesuit is my assistant, Peenchay. Not very bright, but a hard worker. That’s all we can count on these days, isn’t it, labor problems being what they are?” When the children didn’t respond, he added, “Say, you like that bag of cars, Tom-Tom? It’s yours.”

“Yay!” Thomas retrieved the bag of cars.

Metal clanged as they descended the stairs, playing ugly music in Emily’s ears. For a while she counted the number of flights: two, three, four, five . . . they kept going. The air in this passageway was filled with an assortment of odors, and Emily identified some: paint and glue and wet paper. What was this place? She resisted voicing the question, afraid she would irritate Squick. He might not be truthful anyway.

At the bottom of the steps they reached a door with a sign on it that made no sense to Emily: “nebulon power!”

“What’s that mean?” asked inquisitive Thomas.

“Exactly what it says,” Squick answered. He opened the door and led them into a golden room. Sparkling bric-a-brac cluttered long tables, dripped from the walls, lay on the floors. Golden ribbons, chains, loops and bows and spools of metal lace, all glitter and flash.

“It’s beautiful,” whispered Emily, and instantly hated herself for saying anything pleasant to Squick.

“Minor part of our operation,” Squick replied. “We construct party favors on this floor, and this is the gold room. Come along, more to see. You wait here, Tom-Tom. Emily will appreciate the next room more than you.”

“We’d like to stay together,” Emily said, but her voice was small and seemed to go unnoticed.

Thomas, Emily observed, was busy inspecting a golden train set and didn’t notice when Squick ushered her forcibly from the room.

“Thomas,” she squeaked, and was immediately silenced by a sharp twist Squick gave her arm.

“No complaints,” Squick warned in a low voice. “Let’s not upset your brother. Say something nice to Tom-Tom, Emily.”

“Stay here, Thomas,” Emily said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Such a good girl,” Squick whispered, a rasp. He hustled her out and down a long, barren corridor lined with doors, pushed one open and they entered darkness.

“This is the place,” Squick said in a flat, cold voice.

“Where are we?” Emily asked.

“Not quite the lowest level, but what do you care?”

The game he had played in Thomas’s presence ceased, all pretense of joviality vanished, and Emily was left alone with a man who had the freedom to do whatever he wished with her in an unlit room. What would he do? She remembered Mrs. Belfer’s warnings about strange men in strange places who did strange things. She thought about school and how the eighth grade girls discussed s-e-x with one another and giggled over its knowns and unknowns. Some of the more knowledgeable girls, the ones who watched soap operas and read romance novels and had dates, were more specific about the details.

Emily had but one experience, during the previous summer vacation. It was a story she’d never related to any of the other girls, fearing their derision. She’d always had trouble forming friendships because of her shyness. She was smaller than the other girls in her class, too, and this bothered her.

Her experience, if she could call it that, concerned an older boy who had taken her sailing. He was the son of a bank executive and his parents belonged to the tennis club, so Victoria gave immediate permission for the date. At the first opportunity when they were on the water, the boy tried to pull Emily’s blouse off. She kicked him hard in the groin, dove overboard and swam to shore. Not much chance for that sort of escape now, and she had Thomas to worry about as well.

Squick turned on the light. “Welcome to our game room.”

The room was filled with gadgets, games and dolls. A puppet theater dominated one corner, with red velvet curtains across a gilt-edged stage. Two exquisitely fabricated puppets dangled from the curtain rod. Their tiny wooden hands clung to the strings that held them, each finger a perfect replica of a human’s.

One of the puppets, with glitter-green eyes, looked a bit like Thomas.

“Have fun,” Squick said. “I’ll be back for you.” He stepped through the door, closed it.

Emily heard the click of a lock.