Machine Man - Max Barry [26]
Cassandra Cautery turned. Moments passed. Her eyes were on me but her brain was far away. Her head spasmed a nod. But I didn’t think she meant it, and from the absence of Lola Shanks that followed, she didn’t.
A MAN filled my doorway. His neck burst out of his collar like a tree. His hands were black shovels. His gray shirt pulled against muscles I didn’t have. He was a security guard. “Hi.” He had a book. A novel, I thought. I wondered if it was for me. Maybe Cassandra Cautery had noticed I had nothing to do. “I’m Carl. From Better Future.” Seconds passed. I usually like to interact with people who don’t speak until it’s necessary but I was intimidated by Carl’s physique. I didn’t feel inferior so much as incompatible. Carl existed on a plane where success was measured by physical feats. He had a brain because his body needed it, rather than the opposite. I didn’t understand such people. I didn’t know what they wanted, or might do.
Carl nodded, as if we had resolved something. He left. I heard a chair scrape in the hallway. Time became punctuated by the sound of him turning pages.
WHEN A nurse came into my room, to give me food or medication or check I wasn’t leaking, Carl followed her in. He stood with his shovel hands folded in front of him, his eyes on each of the nurse’s moves. I didn’t know what he was doing, but I grew to like it, because he made the nurse nervous. One time I pressed the call button, and after two minutes had passed with no response, Carl’s chair scraped back. I heard his black shoes rapping down the hall. When he came back he had Nurse Mike in tow.
“I want my phone,” I told Mike. “And I want to see Lola Shanks.” This hadn’t been why I pressed the call button. I had wanted a TV guide. But now he was here, I was testing.
Nurse Mike glanced at Carl. “I’m sorry, Dr. Neumann. I can’t help you with that.” Carl said nothing. Mike’s shoulders eased. So it was not a victory. But still, my position had clearly improved.
CARL STOPPED turning pages. He was there. I could hear his chair squeak. But he wasn’t reading. I decided to talk to him. I could be social, when I’d had time to think about it beforehand. “Carl?”
His frame appeared in the doorway. “Yes, sir?”
“Why are you here?”
“Pardon me?”
“Why are you here?”
“I don’t know, sir. I go where they send me.”
“Are you meant to stop me escaping?”
“I don’t think you’re in a position to be escaping, sir. With respect.”
“So why?”
He shrugged, like heaving mountains. “I guess the company wants you looked after.”
I found this unsatisfying. But I couldn’t think how else to probe. “Did you finish your book?”
His eyebrows raised. “Yes.”
“What was it?”
“Nothing special. Just something to pass the time.” I waited. He cleared his throat. “It’s about a man who goes back in time. To rescue his fiancée.”
“From what?”
“A fire.”
“Does he do it?”
“He does. But he creates a time rift, and has to go back again and murder her.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” said Carl. “It’s kind of sad.”
“Could I read it?”
“I don’t know if you’ll like it. It’s not a smart book.”
“I have nothing else to do.”
He went out to the hall and returned with the novel. The title was Ripples in Everwhere. A man stood silhouetted against a burning building. Its pages were curled and yellow.
“Looks like a favorite.”
“Yeah. My fiancée died.”
“Oh.”
“Not in a fire, though. Car crash.”
“Oh.” I struggled to think what to say. I hadn’t planned for this. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. It was eight years ago.”
“I never had a fiancée.”
“Oh,” said Carl.
“I would like one.”
“Yeah, I can, uh … recommend it.” There was silence. “They understand you. You don’t really get what it’s like to be understood until you’ve had it and … don’t.”
I nodded. That was pretty much what I figured. I turned the book over in my hands.
“That cover irritates me,” Carl said. “In the book, he’s never standing outside a house like that. It’s an apartment. And he can’t get the door open. That’s why his fiancée dies. She’s inside and he can’t bust down the door. He’s not strong enough.