Charlie Huston - Sleepless

I asked him what else was on the drive.

He looked at me with little expression.

“What else could matter?”

He tended his wife. I cradled his daughter in one arm and looked further.

There was Hydo Chang’s photography, quite accomplished, I thought. Records relating to the buying and selling of Chasm Tide artifacts and gold. Bank account numbers and codes. Pornography. And a second partition.

The drive was divided in half. I opened the second partition, expecting to find it was a simple backup of the first, and found, instead, a wilderness preserve. A fragment of Chasm Tide, isolated on the drive, populated by three characters.

In a glen, bordered by trees beyond which the evening blue sky became blank slate, three adventurers sat around a waning fire. A woman warrior, half her face disfigured by horrible burns, broadsword across her back, armored in opalescent black shells harvested from acid beetles. A young and slight ferrous mage, armed with an iron staff and gauntlets, his skin stained in mottled rust. And an aged nether troll, spindle-limbed, two fingers missing from his right hand, the other eight tipped with yellowed and cracked ivory nails, barefoot, wearing wine-stained white tuxedo trousers and a swallowtail coat over his wrinkled bare chest.

Deeper in the partition were the logs and files, the digital souls of the characters. Also a bill of sale.

I opened my mouth.

“Ah.”

Park looked from the bed.

“What?”

I touched the screen.

“I have found what I was looking for.”

He turned back to Rose.

“What now?”

Rose had been whispering all the while. Now her tone changed; she spoke with authority and excitement.

“Tab, tab, control-space, triple shift-jay-up arrow, space, space, space, backspace, down arrow, ex.”

She buried her face in the mattress and screamed, rolled over sweating and grinning, reached up, grabbed Park, pulled him down, and kissed him.

“I did it! Fucking did it! No one thought it could be done. But I did it. Alone. I conquered the Clockwork Labyrinth.”

Park smiled, pushed damp hair from her forehead, and kissed her.

“So I heard. That’s great. I wish I could have seen it.”

She scooted up in bed.

“It was so cool, Park. I just realized that I had to stop trying to run through that last gap before it closed. If I just waited, it swung back around. I used the Rod of Torquine, jammed it in there, slipped through, and I was in the center.”

He put a hand on the side of her face.

“What was there?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was just quiet. It was just so perfectly fucking quiet.”

Then she was gone again, repeating her adventure, starting with the first up arrow.

Park looked at the wall beyond which we had killed the three invaders.

“How much longer are we safe here?”

There was no calculation I could conjure to answer that question.

“We are not safe now. Every second we spend here increases our risk. But I cannot say for certain when the risk will outweigh the benefit of having a single position to defend rather than committing to travel.”

He thought.

“Will they come back before dark?”

“Would your neighbors question the appearance of black-clad men with assault rifles storming your house in broad daylight?”

“Now? Today? I don’t know.”

I shrugged.

“Then there is a risk that they will come in daylight.”

He took his wife’s hand.

“I have to do something.”

He looked at his daughter.

“And I have to know she’s safe.”

With great discomfort I stood and brought the baby to him.

“We are, none of us, ever safe.”

He put his free hand on her head and looked up at me.

“I just need to know she’s somewhere safe. Just until I come for her. Just until I do what I have to. Do you know a place?”

I felt the weight of the gun holstered on my ankle, the knife strapped against my crotch, the lines burned into my legs. And I thought about somewhere safe for a baby girl.

“Yes, of course. I know a place. Until you come for her.”

Omaha grunted. We both wrinkled our noses.

Park squeezed Rose’s hand and stood up.

“Come on, I’ll show you how to change a diaper.”

He did. A simplicity that I watched carefully, certain I could never master it.

And, knowing what course of action he was committed to, and the resolve that he required, I showed him something as well. A crime. A coldblooded act. Irrefutable guilt. Armor in his cause.

7/13/10

WE’RE ALONE AGAIN. Rose. I’ve done things. Things I believe are right. Things I have to do.

I think you would agree with me. That there wasn’t any choice.

You said I couldn’t take care of her. And I can’t. I can’t take care of her.

She can’t be safe. Not as long as the world is this way.

Jasper says it’s just changing. As if that is a small thing. Which I suppose it is.

Everything is always changing. Look at how you changed me. How we changed each other. How Omaha changed us both.

But it’s still my world. The world where my father and mother met.

Where she called him Peaches. Where I ran away from them to try to find a different way of understanding. Where I met you. This is the world where you wouldn’t let me go. Not that I tried to run. This is the world where my mother died and my father killed himself because he couldn’t live in it without her. This is the world where you got pregnant.

Or is it? Or is that the world that was? Is this already the new world? The world where you got sick. And where Omaha was born. If it is, then it is her world. And she’ll need to know how to live in it.

But only if it has time to breathe.

Afronzo Senior said they were “tapping the brakes.” Trying to slow things down, give the new world a chance to be born.

My daughter’s world. A world that should not have the crimes of the old world polluting its birth.

I have to do something. You understand, Rose. I know you understand.

You said it when we met. I will die one day wandering into traffic. But I’m not wandering. I’m walking straight across all five lanes.

I have to do something. Someone has to do something. Otherwise, why?

I love you.

Good night.

WHEN I ARRIVED AT LADY CHIZU’S OFFICE, MY HANDS WERE not in my pockets, but they were full.

In one hand I carried the gift I had promised, a flower, a random lily, plucked from a withered bush in Rose’s garden, fragrant. In the other I carried Omaha Garden Haas. Sleeping still. As she had been since I took her from the car seat Park had showed me how to install in my Cadillac.

Lady Chizu received the flower with all her long-accumulated graciousness. The child she received into her presence with a slight pursing of thin lips.

“This is unexpected.”

I said nothing.

Chizu indicated the breakfast laid out on her low desk, set for two, noodle soup with spicy egg and salt cod.

“Is she old enough for milk?”

I tipped my head at one of the well-mannered, fabulously cheekboned young men who had escorted me in. A countermeasure in light of my hands not being pocketed. One carried the diaper bag I’d had draped over my shoulder when I came off the elevator.

“I have powdered formula. If someone would be so kind.”

She nodded.

I looked at the man.

“Three scoops, six ounces filtered water. Room temperature, please.”

Both bowed and left.

Chizu took a slight step back. I walked past her toward the table.

She observed my stride.

“Your wounds.”

There was a small blue vase standing empty on the table. I slipped the stem of the lily into its mouth.