Borne. Jeff VanderMeer

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СКАЧАТЬ they began to tire of their games, they broke everything not of value, stood on one another’s shoulders to snuff out my fireflies.

      Then they found Borne—he must have moved or somehow attracted their attention. Soon their interest in me faded. On their way out, they decided to take Borne with them—through one bleary, blood-encrusted eye I saw them snatch him up.

      That was the first time I pleaded with them, when they took Borne. That was the first time I truly knew Borne was important to me. But it didn’t matter. They took Borne and left me in the dark, cheek laid open, face and arms and legs bleeding, some of the wounds deep. My skin burned. My skin was numb. My open flesh felt cold against the heat. I didn’t have the strength to get up.

      The city had visited me, to remind me that I meant less than nothing to it, that even the Balcony Cliffs wasn’t safe. That every wire in my head connected to our defenses could be snapped, just like that.

       ¤

      Time passed, and I existed in a quivering, exposed, horrible state. I was howling and shrieking, and there was nothing of restraint left in me; the pain took care of that. When I came to for the third or fourth time, my head lay upon Wick’s lap and he was looking down at me with a curious expression on his face. His body flickered a light green with his stress, a side effect of giving a home to the diagnostic worms. My body felt soft and warm as he tended to me, with an ache behind it that threatened to become all-consuming.

      “I’m so sorry,” Wick said in a quiet voice as if talking to a corpse. The concern I hadn’t seen in him came through in his voice, so thick and heartfelt, as if he had been crying, that it transfixed me, became something horrifying. I didn’t need his devastation but his strength. “Just lie still. You shouldn’t feel pain for a while.”

      I did feel pain, muted yes, but I felt it. But I nodded to give us both comfort, my vision blurring as I stared up at him. I could still make out the precise and beautiful architecture of his face, god help me. That still mattered to me.

      He ran a diagnostic beetle over my body. It was old and worn, its carapace scratched, but its legs felt smooth, glossy. Everywhere it touched me, I felt an immediate, fast-fading glowing sensation. Wick had already closed up my wounds with the help of surgical slugs. I remembered the cool-cold sensation of their progress from the last time I had suffered an injury. My attackers had been creative, had cut me in patterns, writing words that had no meaning to anyone, least of all them. And so the movement of the slugs had retraced those paths, those words, given them a meaning by accident.

      “I would hold you,” Wick said from far away, “but I’m afraid I would hurt you.”

      Then I remembered they had taken Borne and wanted to ask Wick … what? To go after them? But Wick told me not to speak, said, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I’m sorry they got through.” He was in a different place than me, worried about different things.

      “How badly did they hurt you?” he asked then, with a particular emphasis, and I knew what he was really asking. The question was medical but not medical. He had been re-creating my attack in his imagination and seeing the worst—and he needed to know just how invasive to be with his diagnostics.

      “Just what you see,” I said, and there was a noticeable relaxation of Wick’s taut stance that somehow agitated me.

      My attackers had been too single-minded or too inhuman to rape me. The one with the gray eyes, the oldest, had been about eleven years old. With sandy blond hair and delicate hands. I might not have told Wick the truth even if they had, but they hadn’t. Two of the wasp-eyes had shoved their tongues in my mouth as they cut me, but it had been as if trying to contaminate me with something. A metallic aftertaste still lingered on my tongue.

      Now I was crying—just a steady stream of tears without the expression on my face changing at all. There is only so much you can take before you begin to feel that the effort to survive is too much to endure. It would have been better if I had been attacked in the street. It would have been better if I lay out there now in a heap than to lie in the middle of the Balcony Cliffs and have to absorb Wick’s guilt, his concern, his regard. To be seen, when all I wanted was to crawl away into a dark hole to die or recover from my wounds.

      But I let Wick do his work and also told him how it had happened, so he would know how to bolster our defenses. I was alive, and from past experience I knew in time I would forget enough to again pretend that we could someday be free. Of the city, of Mord, of all of it. I don’t know if that was hope. Maybe it was just stubborn inertia.

      “And they took Borne, too,” I said a little later, not sure my words were coming out right. Borne being gone was a concept I had to think around or I wouldn’t make it.

      Wick frowned from the chair next to my bed. “But they didn’t take Borne.” He nodded toward the living room. “He’s right in there.”

      Even through my numb discomfort, the beetle crawling across my torso, I felt an overwhelming confusion and relief.

      “Did they bring him back?”

      “I don’t think so. He was in the hallway by the door. Your attackers got away. I brought him back in.”

      “Thank you,” I said, knowing that might not have been an easy decision.

      “He’s bigger,” Wick said.

      I said nothing. I didn’t dare. For the first time I realized Wick looked worried or preoccupied for reasons that might have nothing to do with me. I’d managed to keep Wick away from Borne for two straight weeks.

      The beetle had finished its work.

      Wick got to his feet. “You need to rest. I’ve brought food for the kitchen. I’ve put up better defenses. I have to go out for a while, but I’ll be back soon.”

      I understood. He needed to make sure my attackers were really gone. He had to change the locks, make sure no one else could enter the same way. All of which meant eating up more resources we didn’t have, putting us both at risk much sooner.

      The burn, the sting—the screaming agony—of what had happened would not return for hours, as if it was coming toward me from light-years distant. I extended my arm to touch Wick’s cheek, the edge of his mouth, but he was too far away.

      “I should have been here,” he said.

      “If you hadn’t come back, I might be dead,” I said, but this was no comfort. If the city had really wanted to kill me, it would have killed me, as it had so many others.

      “I should take Borne with me,” Wick said, trying to sound casual.

      I winced. “No. Please. Don’t.”

      It would have been better for Wick’s peace of mind if I had shouted it out or said it just as casual. But I didn’t. I said those three words in a small, broken voice, and Wick couldn’t push back against them.

       ¤

      At some point after Wick left, I realized I couldn’t sleep and decided to get up. It hurt but I was already restless, unused to bed rest. I wanted to go see Borne. In my altered state I worried my attackers might have injured him as well. Or maybe I just wanted to be sure Wick hadn’t taken him away.

      He СКАЧАТЬ