Elizabeth Hand: Winterlong

In the early stages of her work, shortly after I arrived at HEL , Dr. Harrow attempted a series of neuroelectrical implants between the two of us. It was an unsuccessful effort to reverse the damage done by the biochemicals. Seven children died before the minimum dosage was determined: enough to change the neural pattern behind autistic behavior; not enough to allow the patient to develop her own emotional responses to subsequent internal or external stimuli. I still have scars from the implants: fleshy nodes like tiny ears trying to sprout from my temples.

At first we lived well. Then the Governors decided this research might lead to other things, the promise of a new technology as radical and lethal as that which had first loosed the mutagens upon the countryside nearly two centuries before. As more empaths were developed and more Ascendant funds channeled from the provisional capital, we lived extravagantly. Dr. Harrow believed that exposure to sensation might eventually pattern true emotions in her affectively neutered charges. So the Human Engineering Laboratory moved from its quarters in a dark and freezing fouga hangar to the vast abandoned Linden Glory estate outside the ruins of the ancient City.

Ascendant neurologists moved into the paneled bedrooms. Psychobotanists imported from the momentarily United Provinces tilled the ragged formal gardens and developed new strains of oleander within bell-shaped greenhouses. Empties moved into bungalows where valets and chefs once slept.

In an earlier century Lawrence Linden had been a patron of the arts. Autographed copies of Joyce and Stein and the lost Crowley manuscripts graced the Linden Glory libraries. We had a minor Botticelli, two frayed Rothkos, and many Raphaels; the famed pre-Columbian collection for which a little war was fought; antiquarian coins and shelves of fine and rare Egyptian glass. From the Victorian music room with its decaying Whistler panels echoed the peacock screams of empties and patients engaged in therapy.

Always I remained Dr. Harrow’s pet: an exquisite monster capable of miming every human emotion and even feeling many of them via the therapy I made possible. Every evening doctors administered syringes and capsules and tiny tabs that adhered to my temples like burdock pods, releasing chemicals directly into my corpus striatum. And every morning I woke from someone else’s dreams.

Morgan sat in the gazebo when I arrived for our meeting, her hair pulled beneath a biretta of indigo velvet worn to a nap like a dog’s skull. She had already eaten, but HEL’s overworked servers had yet to clear her plate. I picked up the remains of a brioche and nibbled its sugary crust.

“None of you have any manners, do you?” She smiled, but her eyes were red and cloudy with hatred. “They told me that during orientation.”

I ran my tongue over a sweet nugget in a molar and nodded. “That’s right.”

“You can’t feel anything or learn anything unless it’s slipped into your breakfast coffee.”

“I drink tea.” I glanced around the Orphic Garden for a server. “You’re early.”

“I had trouble sleeping.”

I nodded and finished the brioche.

“I had trouble sleeping because I had no dreams.” She leaned across the table and repeated in a hiss, “I had no dreams. I carried that memory around with me for sixty years and last night I had no dreams.”

Yawning, I rubbed the back of my head, adjusting a quill. “You still have all your memories. Dr. Harrow said you wanted to end the nightmares. I’m surprised we were successful.”

“You were not successful.” She towered above me when she stood, the table tilting toward her as she clutched its edge. “Monster.”

“ Sacred monster. I thought you liked sacred monsters.” I grinned, pleased that I’d bothered to read the sample poem included with her chart.

“Bitch. How dare you laugh at me. Whore—you’re all whores and thieves.” She stepped toward me, her heel catching between the mosaic stones. “No more of me—you’ll steal no more of me.…”

I drew back a little, blinking in the emerald light as I felt the first adrenaline pulse. “You shouldn’t be alone,” I said. “Does Dr. Harrow know?”

She blocked the sun so that it exploded around the biretta’s peaks in resplendent ribbons. “Doctor Harrow will know,” she whispered, and drawing a pistol from her pocket she shot herself through the eye.

I knocked my chair over as I stumbled to her, knelt, and caught the running blood and her last memory as I bowed to touch my tongue to her severed thoughts.

A window smeared with garnet light that ruddles across my hands. Burning wax in a small blue glass. A laughing dog; then darkness.

They hid me under the guise of protecting me from the shock. I gave a sworn statement for the Governors and acknowledged in the HEL mortuary that the long body with blackened face had indeed shared her breakfast brioche with me that morning. I glimpsed Dr. Harrow, white and taut as a thread as Odolf Leslie and the other Ascendant brass cornered her outside the emergency room. Then the Aide Justice hurried me into the west wing, past the pre-Columbian collection and the ivory stair to an ancient Victorian elevator, clanking and lugubrious as a stage dragon.

“Dr. Harrow thought that you might like the Home Room,” Justice remarked with a cough, sidling two steps away to the corner of the elevator. The brass door folded into a lattice of leaves and pigeons that expanded into peacocks. “She’s having your things sent up now. Anything else you need, please let her know.” He cleared his throat, staring straight ahead as we climbed through orchid-haunted clerestories and chambers where the oneironauts snored and tossed through their days. At the fourth floor the elevator ground to a stop. He tugged at the door until it opened and waited for me to pass into the hallway.

“I have never been in the Home Room,” I remarked, following him.

“I think that’s why she thought you’d like it.” He glanced into an ornate mirror as we walked. I saw in his eyes a quiver of pity before he looked away. “Down here.”

A wide hallway ended in an arch crowded with gilt satyrs.

“This is it,” said Justice. To the right a heavy oaken door hung open. Inside, yellow-robed Aides strung cable. I made a face and tapped the door. It swung inward and struck a bundle of cable leading to the bank of monitors being installed next to the huge bed. I paced to the window and gazed outside. Around me the Aides scurried to finish, glancing at me sideways with anxious eyes. I ignored them and sat on the windowsill. There was no screen. A hawkmoth buzzed past my chin and I thought that I could hang hummingbird feeders from here and so, perhaps, lure them within reach of capture. Anna had a bandeau she had woven of hummingbird feathers that I much admired. The hawkmoth settled on the BEAM monitor beside the bed. The Aides packed to leave.

“Could you lie here for a moment, Wendy, while I test this?” Justice dropped a handful of cables behind the headboard. I nodded and stretched upon the bed, pummeling a pillow as he placed the wires upon my brow and temples. I turned sideways to watch the old BEAM monitor, the hawkmoth’s wings forming a mask across the flickering map of my thoughts.

“Aggression, bliss, charity,” droned Justice, flicking the moth from the cracked screen. “Desire, envy, fear.” I sighed and turned from the monitor while he adjusted dials. Finally he slipped the wires from me. The others left. Justice lingered a moment longer.

“You can go now,” I said, and tossed the pillow against the headboard.

He stood by the door, uncomfortable, and finally said, “Dr. Harrow wants me to be certain you check your medications. She has increased your dosage of acetelthylene.”