Читать книгу Fragments of Me - Eric G. Swedin - Страница 9

CHAPTER FIVE

Trees fly past the moving car, momentarily exposed by the headlights, like the columns of an endless Greek temple. Joanna sits beside me. Why had I taken her? It seemed like a good idea, a way to rid myself of the body known as Dr. Barash and start anew. Several times before in my life the authorities have sought me, forcing me to elude them by switching. They had not sought me, since no one had ever known about me, but rather they sought my host. Now I am known by the enemy, and a switch now will not achieve anything. The enemy knows my nature and will deduce that a woman missing from the hospital where I worked is possibly a new host body for my core. Even so, two bodies is a much better idea than just one.

I have gone from complete control over my life to no control.

Joanna reaches over to touch my shoulder. My fragmental in her and my core in Barash are then in direct contact, self to self. While this is my natural mode of communication with myself, we decide that Joanna should talk and exercise her vocal cords.

The sound of a voice that had been mute for so long startles me. “We should discard this car.”

“I agree, though it would be nice to get to the cabin first.”

“That’s two hours away.”

In the distance ahead of us the bright red of brake lights flash. I remove my foot from the accelerator and we coast towards a roadblock. Two police cars block the road with flashing lights. Flares have been placed farther forward to guide the traffic into a single lane. A line of cars and a truck and its trailer wait. I slow to take my place at the tail of this awkward snake.

Joanna is the safer host for the moment.

I turn to her and move my core self into her body. Now only a fragmental remains in James Barash.

Exiting the car, I walk toward the police. It has been forty years since I have taken complete control over a female. So different than a male body. The lower center of gravity, the sensitive skin, and the breasts getting in the way of moving my arms. The ability to walk is not part of the self, but a training of the nerves and muscles. I move awkwardly as I struggle to master a body that has had very little exercise for far too long.

“What you looking for?” I ask a police officer who is directing his flashlight into the trunk of a car. My voice rasps in my throat, demanding a drink of water.

He spins around in surprise, reaching towards his holster.

I smile and suck in air, expanding my chest. His eyes naturally focus on my smile and then on the movement below. I do not need a fragmental inside his mind to see the effect of the smile of a pretty, young woman and the resulting surge of hormones.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I say, gently touching his arm.

He is part of a massive manhunt. Four counties have been mobilized, calling in all their personnel and setting up numerous roadblocks. Seared into his mind is a faxed image of James Barash. He knows nothing of Joanna Prall.

“That’s okay,” he says. “Will you please return to your vehicle.”

I nod, smiling again as I walk away.

The line is moving slowly, so it will be a few minutes before it’s my turn. I walk up to the side of the car and James rolls down his window. I retrieve the remaining fragmental and he slumps to the side of the car door, his brain paralyzed and his autonomic functions slowly failing.

Trying to dash into the woods, I stumble and scrape my hands on the pavement as I break my fall. The body is just not used to such activities. Shrubs grow only a few feet from the road and I crawl past them before rising back up to my feet. The forest provides excellent cover.

The police officer knew of a small diner only a mile down the road, beyond the roadblock. Hopefully the discovery of my other body will be such a shock that I will have time to gain other transportation. It is probably too much to hope that the officer will forget a young blonde woman.

My steps disturb the carpet of dead leaves, causing smells of decomposition and renewal to float past my nostrils. I pause to inhale deeply, gratified by the intensity of life around me. Knowing the void that some people move in, so self-absorbed that they do not notice other people or their surroundings except as they apply to themselves, I have long ago learned to relish every moment. I kneel down and rub a handful of leaves between my fingers and palm. The leaves crumble in a shower of decay while the stems resist destruction.

I bring the leaves to my tongue, tasting them. I swallow and my throat spasms with the gag reflex. Closing my eyes, I return to the smell...so musty...so intoxicating. A person can so easily lose themselves in their senses.

A whiff of cigarette smoke tickles my nostrils, pulling me back to rationality. Dimly I remember that the other police officer had been smoking. I am not too far away, certainly not out of danger. Grasping at the threads of fear, I use them to find the strength to haul myself to my feet and stagger through the woods.

Blinking my eyes furiously to push away the sensory overload, my groping hands find a large oak, and I work my way around, tripping over roots, but not quite falling. A path. Probably used by deer. I rush along it, fleeing the enchantment of smell and taste.

Branches whip against my face, waking me even more. I trip and smash my chin against a small rock on the ground. A stab of pain explodes back through my skull, down my spine, to the ends of my body. My testicles contract, or so it feels like, since I do not have testicles anymore.

I jerk up from the ground, bringing up my hand to my face. It is wet with blood, but the enchantment is gone. It has been so long since I have transferred my core self to another host. I have tended to forget the hazards of being in a new body. While people see much the same, our senses of smell and taste diverge in subtle and wonderful ways from individual to individual. Until I get used to the change, it is so easy to surrender to its allure and wallow in its wonder, like a pleasant LSD trip.

There is time enough for that later; now there is only time for survival.

Marybell’s Diner is a combination café, gas station, and convenience store. Several of the letters on the neon sign are burned out or flicker on and off at irregular intervals. A dozen or so pickup trucks and cars are parked haphazardly about in the manner that one sometimes finds outside of the city, where drivers are not used to parking lines and order.

My sneakers crunch across gravel after I leave the cover of the woods. The sound seems far too loud, as if it will alert the police officers down the road. Which car to steal? A couple of years ago I examined a man at the hospital who had a habit of taking cars that he did not own. From him I learned how to hot-wire many models.

Two men come out of the diner and I freeze. In their early twenties, they are dressed in dirty work clothes. Construction workers perhaps. They are laughing and walking away from me.

I make up my mind and hurry after them.

“Excuse me,” I call.

They stop and turn. One is red-haired and clean-shaven, with an abundance of freckles covering his face and bare arms. The other is bigger and a dark bushy beard covers his face. One of his bottom teeth is missing.

“Could you give me a ride?”

“No problem, honey,” the redhead says.

Needing more than a ride, I reach out to touch them both.

* * * *

I am a fragmental, a complete duplicate of my core self. I have my own memories and think my own thoughts. When I reintegrate with my core, our memories resynchronize and we know all that has happened to each other. My core remains behind in Joanna.

The redhead is named Greg. His thoughts about Joanna are unimportant. The sight of a vulnerable pretty woman so often resonates with the most basic desires to procreate. Taking absolute control of his body, I push his self deep down into his brain. He is vaguely aware of my presence, experiencing me as a irritating headache pounding at his temples. Greg has just finished two beers with a dinner of chicken-fried steak. The beer is a good idea, so I reach back to touch Joanna and the other man. A rapid conference and Willard, the other man, goes to the store to buy a case of beer.

The truck has a large toolbox in the bed up against the cab. Greg keeps various odds and ends in there and a quick examination reveals that there is room for the woman to hide in there. I do not want my core exposed if we are stopped by another roadblock.

Five minutes later, I am behind the wheel heading south. Greg was born in Copley twenty-two years ago and still lives with his widowed mother. He is a good man who supports his mother and younger sister in spite of a weakness for drunken parties. Trolling his memories for possible escape routes reveals a pond on a large farm that a friend’s father owns. He and his friends often fish there while drinking. A road through that farm passes near the freeway that circles past Akron.

A quick touch and the fragmental in Willard agrees with my plan. We find the entrance to the farm road a bit later, and Willard climbs out to open the gate. It is unlocked, since there is not anything of great value beyond. Moments later we are bumping down the farm road past fields of corn and soybeans. The scale of modern agriculture never ceases to amaze me. Hundreds of acres farmed by a handful of men, not like the life that I knew for so many centuries when nine out of every ten people served the needs of the land.

Willard touches me and I slow to a stop. We open the toolbox and help Joanna out. The bumpy road has already bruised her forehead. A pang of guilt at my own thoughtlessness. To some it might seem curious, to feel guilty of what one has done to oneself.

Joanna sits with us as we creep along the road with the lights turned off. We approach a copse of trees that surrounds the pond of Greg’s memory. Coming around it, we see the lights of passing cars on the freeway. A rig pulling three trailers rumbles past. Leaving the road, we jolt across rows of half-grown corn.

At the end of the corn, we stop. A small forest obscures the freeway. The trees are placed by the chaotic logic of nature, not the linear logic of man who thinks in straight rows. Willard takes some wire cutters from the toolbox and clips a path for us while I help Joanna back into hiding. Her body is so exhausted that we are concerned that she might collapse.

After waiting for a moment, there is no oncoming traffic. We crawl up onto the freeway and then race south, having successfully circumvented any possible police roadblocks around Akron.

The radio is tuned to a country-western station. Personally, I normally listen to a classical station, but now was not the time for relaxation and contemplation. I scan for an all-news source and find WNES on the AM band. The various reports cover sports, the economy, the infidelity of an Akron councilwoman, and then comes the top story.

After a brief introduction, a recording of a police spokesperson is played. “At six forty-five p. m. today, Senator William Handlin was found dead at the Euclid office of Dr. James Barash, a psychiatrist. He was bludgeoned to death and Dr. Barash is being sought for questioning.” The recording ended and the announcer continued, “Senator Handlin was the junior Senator from Ohio, serving his second term after winning re-election two years ago.”

We leave the radio on as the dim ghosts of the night flicker by.

Later comes an update. “Further information is becoming available about the mysterious Dr. Barash, who is being sought in the death of Senator Handlin. An anonymous source within the Federal Bureau of Investigation has informed UPI Radio that a search of the doctor’s home found child pornography. He said, quote, ‘boxes full of videos and still photos.’ Another source reports that there were also negatives, which would mean that Dr. Barash produced this material himself.”

A search of my home? Child pornography? How had the other one got hold of such vile filth in so short a time? After a while, I begin to think about the radio broadcast, what was said and what was not. It had been unusually well informed, as if the police were freely releasing information to the press. They did not even bother to use the word alleged when referring to me. None of this was normal. The enemy must be manipulating the release in order to increase the frenzy of the search for me.