Specimen Days

Catareen said nothing. She held her talons to the kid's scrawny neck.

When Simon tried to speak, he found that his voice was not working. He tried again. In a low tone he was able to say, "We're just going to drop you off in a little while. You can walk back. You'll be fine."

His voice had taken on a mechanical laxity. He felt as if he were driving drunk. He devoted his attention to steering.

The boy whimpered in Catareen's grasp. Simon drove as well as he could. He wavered slightly but was able to stay on the road.

When they saw a side road approaching, Catareen said, "Turn here."

"Oh, God, oh, no," the boy said. He must be thinking they meant to kill him.

He said, "Please, please, please."

Simon went blank then. His workings ceased. He could see, but he could not move. He saw his hand frozen on the pod's steering stick. He saw the side road go by.

Catareen said, "Not turn?"

He couldn't speak. He could only sit as he was, frozen, watching. The pod drifted to the right. Simon couldn't correct it. By the time Catareen understood that he had no powers of control, the pod had veered off the road and onto the dirt and grass of the shoulder. It shuddered slightly.

Catareen removed her claws from the boy's throat. As she put a hand over Simon's immobilized one to ease the pod back, the boy opened the passenger door and jumped.

Simon, still frozen, looked in the mirror globe and saw the boy tumbling onto the dirt. His vision began to cloud. He fought to remain conscious. He saw the boy flip twice in the dirt, raising a dust cloud, growing more distant as the pod sped on. His sight started failing. A whiteness gathered around the periphery of his vision and began closing in. He struggled and strained. He saw the boy sit up.

Simon's vision returned. His fingers on the steering stick began to have sensation again. He brushed Catareen's hand off his own, turned the pod sharply, went back for the boy.

"No go back," Catareen said. He ignored her. He had no choice.

He stopped the pod at the place where the boy sat limply on the dirt. He got out and went to the boy.

He said, "Are you all right?"

The boy was cadaverously pale. He sat with his legs folded under him. His cheek was bruised. Simon felt his metabolism slow again. He felt his vision begin to whiten.

He said again, "Are you all right?"

Slowly, the boy nodded. Simon squatted beside him, checked his arms and legs. Nothing appeared to be broken.

"You seem to be all right," Simon said.

The boy started crying then. He had a scattering of blemishes on his forehead. He had a hawkish nose and pale, silly eyes.

"Do you think you can stand?" Simon asked.

The boy could not speak at first, for crying. Then he blubbered, "What are you going to do to me?"

There was an unmistakable note of excitement in his voice.

He was a level seven, then. Simon's circuits hummed. He heard himself say, "I will kill your sorry ass."

The boy screamed. He scrabbled backward in the dirt. He turned himself over and began crawling away, into the grass.

No. Repress. Concentrate.

Simon said, "I want your sweet, fat ass. I want you to stick it high in the air for me so I can plow it with my big tattooed dick."

Fuck.

The boy howled. He crawled into the grass and got uncertainly to his feet. He fell again. Simon's felt his synapses firing and his cognition shutting down. It was unfortunate but not exactly unpleasant.

He said, "Sure as the stars return again after they merge in the light, death is as great as life."

Then Catareen was out of the pod and after the boy. Simon watched helplessly. He saw her take hold of the boy, who was sobbing, who had turned the color of cement. He saw her rifle through the boy's pockets and remove his vid. He saw her return and, with some effort, march him, Simon, back into the pod. He was able to move at her urging. During shutdown, early phase, he could still respond to directions, though he could not initiate action of any kind.

She put him in the passenger seat and got into the pilot's. She turned the pod around and drove, fast.

Gradually Simon's powers of movement returned. He felt them coming back. It was a growing warmth, an inner blooming. He was able to say, "Guess I went a little zonky back there, huh?"

"Yes," she answered. She was focused on the road. "Circuits. Programming. Nothing I can do."

"I know." And yet she was angry. He could feel it. They hove on in silence.

He had seen her jump on a boy like a lizard seizing a beetle. He understood that some of what was said of Nadians was probably true. They had animal aspects. They were capable of doing harm.

Finally he said, "We don't have much time, you know."

"Yes," she said.

"All that kid has to do is flag down some Samaritan in a pod. Which may have happened already. In which case, Magicom is about to be majorly on our asses."

"Yes."

"In which case, we should not be on the main road."

"No."

And yet she drove on with relentless, orange-eyed focus. Lizard, he thought. Fucking lizard.