Robert Charrette - Find your own truth

"Foolishness."

Sam couldn't tell if the old man was referring to him or to the elf.

The lights of Seattle were seductive. Across Puget Sound the myriad denizens of the metroplex were going about their nightly business. Salary men and cor-porates were on their way home, or perhaps still clacking keyboards and tapping in orders in an effort to impress their bosses and get a leg up over their fellows. The street haunts were crawling out to scene, shift for a buzz, or wrangle for turf. The hopeful relaxed, another day successfully completed, and the hopeless sagged with another one survived and only the night to face. On the edges and in the shadows, the runners were doing their biz. She could not see any of them, but the lights of the plex shone on all those scurrying little people. And the lights sang of their doings, burning the song into the air and promising such a rich feast of life. Oh yes, the lights were seductive.

Janice looked at them and felt her stomach growl. The hunger grew with each day. Had it been an ordinary hunger, the pangs would have stopped days ago. When a human starves to death, hunger dies within his empty belly long before his body surrenders to death. Meat she had had, but not real nourishment. The steady diet of small furred things Ghost was providing kept her alive, but failed to sate the hunger.

How many more nights until she could stand it no longer?

She was tired, worn from her struggle. She lay back, feeling as though she might sleep. She had fought off the urge all day, through her normal sleeping time, just to avoid the dreams. She had lain restless within the darkness of the basement of the house where she and Ghost hid, waiting for her brother to come up with a solution. A slim hope, at best. And didn't she know better than to hope? There had been no word from him for days and he was probably dead. So why did she wait?

She was tired, but sleep brought the nightmares. She didn't want to sleep, but somehow she fell into its embrace.

In sleep, they waited for her. They waited, the facesj. all as one and one as all. She slipped deeper into the dark realms, past the places of rest. She hung at the doors of the precincts of restoration and looked through the locked panels wistfully. Satiating the hunger was the only restorative for her now. A small voice whispered of another way, but she didn't believe what it said. The voice belonged to a man, and all men were liars. They proved their perfidy when they pounced.

She laughed with joy when his arms went around her. He held her close, slipping easily into the compass of her great, brawny arms. For all his elven slim-ness, her Hugh was strong. He reminded her of Dan Shiroi, but that was impossible, because she hadn't met Dan yet. Hugh laughed at her confusion. But his eyes didn't laugh. How could they? Those golden orbs did not belong to Hugh, but to the evil one who had brought the change.

She tore herself from the grasp of the golden-eyed

Hugh and ran, but she could not escape the eyes. They bore down upon her and pinned her to a table. Cold steel pressed against her naked back and straps bound her wrists, ankles, waist, and brow to the hard metal.

Empty white coats drifted around her in a dance of scientific enquiry. The eyes had their own questions.

" She had questions too. Why? Why? And why?

The terrible gold eyes stared through her as though she didn't exist. The man who owned them didn't an 198

Robert N. Charrette swer her questions. He ignored her pleas and asked the questions that were his and not his. She tried to answer, but he was always disappointed in her. Why should he be any different from other men? She wanted to answer him, he deserved her answers. He was authority, and her life was his to redeem or cast away. She knew that was true because he told her so.

She remembered him leaning close to her ear and whispering his name. She knew this was a real memory, just as she knew what had seemed a nightmare at the time was real. He was so very real, even if his eyes were not. His identity had made her tremble, for it meant the end of the world as she had come to know it. He had spoken his name and laughed, telling her that the drugs would take it away and leave her only with the memory of having known it once. She had screamed at him for mercy until she cried, but he had seemed to think her reaction all the finer a jest. She had been human then. She hadn't known real pain. He had taught her. Or rather, the white coats had. "Not the solution," they said, in a ghostly chorus of disembodied voices, when they had finished. "She has told all and tells nothing."

"Unacceptable," Gold Eyes said in her brother's voice.

"She cannot be restored," the coat chorus pronounced.

"Unacceptable." Always the same judgment.

The biggest of the white coats moved to Gold Eyes' side. "An experiment that will at once provide data and dispose of the problem. Data. The BioDynamics formula. Data. Metamorphosis. Data. Paradynamic perturbations in the Kano actualization curve. Data. Data for all." Gold Eyes looked at her, sliding along her legs, past her crotch and over her breasts. When' she stared into those eyes, he spoke. "Proceed." Unacceptable!

Needles! Too many needles! But Hugh was there to comfort her, and the awful table was gone. They lay on the scratchy, vermin-infested bed they had called home on Yomi. In thunder and lightning they made love, and he filled and drained her simultaneously. She loved him and pledged him her life again, as she had on Yomi. He caressed her breast and fur sprouted after the passage of his hand; he smoothed her hair and her sandy blond tresses thickened and turned a frigid white. His kiss lingered on her lips. His tongue flickered into her mouth, only to draw away and pull her canines into fangs.

She cried with the pain and he laughed. They all laughed until the sound became a wail of mourning.

Janice Verner was dead. Betrayed and murdered. Her dreams were ashes.

Her mother's eyes were filled with tears and her father's eyes glistened. He was too much a man to shed tears. She ran toward them, wanting to bury herself in their arms. She passed through their outstretched arms like a ghost. But it was they who were ghosts, not she. She could not yet join them.

Why should she want to? They had not been there for her when Gold Eyes had given her to the white coats, or Ken had spurned her, or the boat had carried her to Yomi. They had not been there for her since that awful night when they had left her with Sam. Sam, the strong older brother who had carried her away and taken her to the embrace of dear old Renraku. Sam, the protector who had left her with Gold Eyes. Sam, the defender who had let them ship her to Yomi. Sam, the slayer of the only true lover she had known.

Her stomach growled with hunger. Righteous hunger. She was awake.

Dodger slammed his fist into the telecom's keyboard. The soft flesh of his hand protested the treatment, promising to bruise for days as a reminder of its limitations. What did it matter? It was only meat. Confining, restrictive meat.

How could they do this? How could they dare?

It was bad enough that they had the temerity to rip him from the Matrix. But to steal his cyberdeck! Even the telecom was disconnected from thq Matrix and locked into a house-only circuit. He was not a child anymore. This time the old punishment wouldn't stop him.

Though no longer surrounded by the glories of cy-berspace, he knew where he was. He knew it too well. How he had gotten here was a mystery, but it was a mystery of the flesh and that wasn't important.

He had to get back into the Matrix.

How long had he been gone? Her time was not meat time. Did she miss him? Or was he a fading memory, like last year's news, or last century's? Away from the Matrix, he was not part of her existence. Was it already too late?