Dead Water Zone - Kenneth Oppel [43]
Paul thought there was a pleading quality in his voice, but he tried to block it out, wishing he felt nothing.
“There’re some things I need to tell you,” said Sam, again almost confidingly. “I want you to understand why I’m doing this.”
“You hated your body; you always did.”
“But you never truly knew what it was like. You probably think the worst thing was the humiliation of getting bullied, my helplessness, my hatred of the Randy Smiths of this world. But the worst of it was the guilt.”
Paul stared in astonishment.
“The guilt of needing to be protected, needing to be taken care of, needing special attention, needing pills—always, always needing! But worst of all, the guilt that I’d failed myself. Every time I went to the doctor’s, they weighed me. It seems like such a simple thing, doesn’t it? But I was sweating when I stepped onto that scale. They’d adjust the weights, starting high, and work down, down, down. The numbers were the same almost every time, maybe a few pounds lighter, but never heavier. I felt responsible: it was my fault. Somehow, there was something I wasn’t doing right! And the nurses and doctors would look at me, look at the weight on the scales, then write the number in my file: silent, invisible blame.”
“It’s just not true. How could it be your fault? It’s nobody’s fault.”
“Ah, but it doesn’t work that way, does it? You blamed me, too, Paul.”
Paul was about to protest, but he faltered, remembering his reaction when Sam told him he wasn’t going to live a full life. He’d felt pity, grief, but revulsion, too—a drawing away, an angry pointing of the finger. This is your fault.
“And Mom and Dad weren’t any different,” Sam went on. “They wanted me to get better—I really do believe that. They took me to the best doctors they knew, spent hours with me in hospitals. But I wasn’t performing—that’s the way they thought of it. I could see it in their silences, the way I caught them looking at me sometimes. They were putting x into me, but I wasn’t putting y out—like some math equation! When it came right down to it, I was an embarrassment, their failure. They were glad when I left for college. It was a big sigh of relief for them.”
Sam paused, wiping a hand across his mouth. Paul realized with a start that he felt strangely happy; there was something connecting them again. Sam needed him—even if it was just as an audience.
“With the refined water,” Sam said, “I’ll finally be able to heal myself. On the diskette, I said I was hyperaware of my body’s structure. Now I can start to focus on specific groups of cells. Soon I’ll be able to control them individually. Didn’t you ever find it incredible that millions of things go on in your body without you even knowing? Only the body knows how to do these things. But now I’m linked up. I’ll witness all the subatomic secrets scientists and doctors have been theorizing about for decades. I’ll be able to repair all the damage that was done to me before I was even born!”
“But how?” Paul wanted to know, mistrustful of the unwieldy excitement in Sam’s voice. “Tubes into your veins? Let all the blood out, so that you look like Sturm?”
Sam shook his head, a condescending smile on his lips. “Sturm’s totally dependent on the water. Interrupt the flow and he’d be dead in minutes. He’s a slave. I need to take a huge amount of the refined water all at once. And in that single burst of awareness—that’s when I’ll be able to do the work with my mind. A bloodless operation, Paul.”
“An overdose.”
Sam shrugged. “I wouldn’t have used that term.”
“I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid you’re going to kill yourself.”
“No. I’m going to make myself perfect.”
Paul thought of Leonardo da Vinci’s perfect man—Sam’s version, the one whose body was half machine. In his head he heard the oiled push of steel pistons, the rustle of rubber hosing. He heard the low roar of a powerful furnace and realized it was the sound of a steel heart pumping relentlessly, flawlessly, without feeling.
“Perfect,” Paul said, his voice almost a whisper. “What does that mean, Sam? That your body will