Katherine Dunn - Geek Love

Miz Z. came clapping her hands down the line around noon saying there would be a special Aqua Man service at 1

P.M

. They all scurried for clean bandages, barking at the novices to get ready

.

It was a short service with only the Admitted admitted. Arty came in to a tape of “The Ride of the Valkyries” and a roar of bubbles that subsided to reveal him floating in a hot-pink spotlight. He had a lot of gleam gunk on for the occasion and he made one of his more dynamic impressions. His talk was actually a chant — rhythmic: “She served us — she served us all — now we serve her,” while an honor guard of one-fingered novices rolled out a wheeled cot with what remained of Doc P. ensconced in white satin. Chick tagged along behind. When the cot stopped in front of Arty’s tank and the white spot hit it, Chick stepped up and peeled back the top sheet

.

The crowd of amputees took a minute to catch on to who it was lying trussed like a leg of lamb. No mask. No cap. Only the spectacles glinting over her closed eyes were familiar. A short mop of grey hair spread around her face. She was still completely out. Those glasses were as useful to her as shoes, right then, but Arty, the clever little snot, knew the folks would need something to pin her identity on. Arty waited while the murmurs started and spread. Finally somebody down front yelled, “Doc P.!” and the joint went up like an ammo dump

.

When the roar died down, the spectral voice of Arturo, from the glowing tank above the cot, introduced Doc P.’s replacement

.

“The Apprentice — the Student — the Assistant. Now come into his own with his first act, this, the ultimate service to his teacher!”

Chick was charming — flushed pink and gold — his child body bobbing in an embarrassed bow to the storm of applause. Funny how all the Arturans adore him. They’re delighted that he’s now the surgeon .

I’d expected Chick to fume endlessly about nipping Doc P. but he surprised me. In the act he was businesslike. Afterward he was gently nostalgic. He stood very close to her until the ambulance took her off. She was going to an Arturan rest home near Spokane. Chick also blossomed, as Mama would say, in his new fame as full-fledged surgeon. Arty claimed not to be surprised.

“That blush-and-shucks game of his was a dead giveaway. The kid always wanted an act of his own.”

An act he had. The Arturans treasured him. On his eleventh birthday he was in the surgery for fifteen hours straight. He had a talk with the nurse on the day he was named successor. That cool and efficient personage became his dog and priestess on the spot. She’d never cared for Doc P.’s bullying. The Arturans pestered him constantly. I’d laugh, seeing some patriarch in a wheelchair rolling madly to catch up with the barefoot towhead kid in the dusty coveralls, or the two hard-bitten motorcycle vets sitting on a trailer hitch so this scrawny runt of a kid could peer into their big spongy ears or lift up an eyelid to examine the exploded blood map underneath.

“Well,” Chick confessed, “I don’t need to touch them or even look at them to tell what’s wrong. But they like it, so I do it.”

They gave him no rest. Mama grumbled about his health and his lost childhood as she sewed baby clothes on her machine in the dining booth of the van.

“When does he climb trees? When does he sneak candy from the booths? Where are his friends to coax him into teasing the cats or giving Horst a hotfoot? They’ll drive him into the ground. They’ll suck him out of his natural growth. Look at his wrists and elbows! He’s knobby!”

Arty was pleased in a guarded way. He kept an eye on Chick in case delusions of grandeur should beset him, but privately Arty was convinced that with Chick as “The Knife” he was safe from revolutions. “He’s a loyal little insect,” Arty would grin. But Arty was intent on keeping the Arturan act solid. He toured the camp every day, supervised the office work, did his shows three times a week, conducted interviews, sent out advance men, advised Papa about the midway, and stayed away from Mama and Iphy.

Papa expected to assume Doc P.’s supervision of the twins’ pregnancy but Arty slid Chick into the job. Papa sulked and spent more time drinking and playing checkers with Horst.

Iphy didn’t bother to look up from her book when we came in. Chick sat on the floor and wiggled his toes in the carpet. I went my rounds with the dust cloth and made the bed and sorted the twins’ laundry. Iphy read all the time. She liked mysteries. Every week’s mailbag brought her a new lot of paperbacks. She took her daily walks and did her exercises grudgingly, wanting to get back to the book of the moment.

I came out of the bedroom with the laundry basket and looked at Chick. He hopped up and waved goodbye to Iphy as he opened the door for me.

“You’re getting so used to doing things with your hands!” I said as we went down the ramp. He chirped, “Elly is coming back some.” I felt myself swerving an inch above the ground, giddy and happy.

“Put me down!” My feet touched and my stomach dropped into place. “Are you sure?”

“Iphy knows but she’s scared Arty will find out. Don’t tell, Oly. Promise?”

“Are you doing it?”

We were near the laundry truck by then and Chick stopped and looked at me, startled. His hair was hanging down around his ears, I noticed. Mama would be wrapping him in a towel soon, making him sit on a stool in front of the van, and stepping around him with scissors as she prattled and he squirmed.

“Are you doing it?” I repeated. He blinked and shook his head.

“I never thought of it. Do you think I could?”

“How do I know? I thought you could do anything.” I was impatient with him. It was one thing to be eleven years old when you were memorizing geography, but this was supposed to be the region of his gift, the terrain of his purpose.

“Well, I mainly take things apart. I can take anything apart,” he said. An amazed wideness settled on his eyes as he stared blankly at the door of the laundry truck.

Watching his possibilities dawn on Chick, I decided to ask the question that I’d been carrying for weeks. Ever since I’d realized how limited my own possibilities were.

“Chicky, listen. Remember how you used to pick pockets? Well, you know the sperm in Arty’s balls?” I had his attention at least. “Could you move that sperm — the wiggly little things — could you move them into me and get ’em into the egg thing in me so I could have a baby like Iphy?”

That, Miranda, was how I came to ask. Chick was hesitant, scared at first. He was afraid of botching the job. He insisted on trying it out on the cats first.

The next week he managed to impregnate an elderly and irritable tigress whom Horst had never successfully mated. She had such a nasty attitude that she sliced up any male who propositioned her. Chick accomplished the miracle of Lilith, the tigress, early one morning while sitting on an overturned bucket in front of the cat wagon. I paced and fidgeted, ready to warn him if any of the Arturans should come along to distract him. He took what seemed like a long time. His hands clenched in a knot at his knees, his face flushed and beaded with sweat.

The male, at one end of the row of cages, slept through the process. Lilith, who had been named after Mama, paced and coughed and glared and switched her tail at the other end.

There was nothing to see. I was getting bored when he finally let out a long, cautious breath and looked at me. He rubbed his eyes with his fists. “Wow,” he said, “I think it worked.”