The Flame Alphabet - Ben Marcus [90]
When I spoke my voice was quieter than his, less convincing.
“It’s the work you seemed to want,” I offered. “There’s no equipment here, nothing. So I’m creating scripts, alphabets. You said yourself that the solution was in scripts, visual codes. You said that.”
“Correction. Murphy said that. Slightly different person. Dead to me now, in any case. Along with his so-called ideas, thank god.”
“Well, how would I know?” I said. “There’s not exactly an open channel of communication. If I could get my gear, I think I could get back to some of the medical stuff.”
“We have real doctors for that. We have people who actually know what they’re doing. Your little purses of smoke, I popped them over my children’s heads to make them laugh. Kids love their own little mushroom cloud. They’re tchotchkes, and they stink. Seriously. They smell awful. That’s probably why your house is still abandoned.”
He checked his watch.
I wasn’t sure how much more I wanted to say. This was the first conversation I’d had in months, and the muscles of my face had gone soft.
“Maybe I should give you a tour of the real research wing,” said LeBov. “We should have ‘Bring a Naïve Pretender to Work Day,’ and then I’ll let you check out the pros.”
I did not respond. The antagonistic foreplay had lost its appeal. In my limbs, in my head, I felt the heaviness of what they’d shot me with. It was rough, unrefined, but I wished I could get my hands on it.
I had questions, too. How long did a dosage last? What were the side effects? What exactly was the fucking stuff, and … I didn’t even want to think through this last question, but at what cost comes this serum? What does the extraction do to its … host?
LeBov held up one of my finer pages of cuneiform, some Presargonic panels I’d written about a poisoned body of water in the netherworld. Experimenting with one of my Aesop’s templates.
“Has it occurred to you that these things are useless if people can’t decipher them? You’ve given cuneiform to people who barely read English?”
“Yeah, that did occur to me. Right around the time that you were drawing fluid out of children’s bodies.”
“But you did it anyway? See it through to the end even if it’s obvious?”
“Well, have you stopped to wonder why that very script, which you say they can’t understand, is still making them sick? Isn’t that a little bit curious to you?”
LeBov checked his watch again. He closed his eyes in some exaggerated show of irritation.
“Do you have any confirmation that we’re even showing them your stupid alphabets? Have you verified that?”
I thought of my time on the observation deck, watching the subjects spoil in the heat, get carted off. Wagons of paper were brought to them, unloaded, shoved in front of their eyes, and they pored over it like dutiful patients, scrutinizing it until their vitals flared and someone called a code. This was my work that sickened them, even if I could not see it precisely. It must have been my work they saw. But I knew that I was never on-site confirming that, never actually down there to be sure. Such vigilance hadn’t occurred to me.
It should have been a relief to discover, to even consider, that I had not caused more pain for all of those people.
But I somehow did not feel relieved.
LeBov stood up, pushed my alphabets into the trash. “C’mon,” he said. “We’re going for a walk.”
He helped me up. I didn’t realize I needed it, but I was unsteady, a bit nauseous once I got out of my chair. His hands under my arms felt like metal tongs. We’d be back soon and I’d feel better, LeBov assured me. There was something small he wanted to show me, something he thought might be of interest.
Into the halls of Forsythe we went. We climbed the ramp and came upon the assembly area, but this usually hectic space was empty. Everything was quiet.
We took the stairs to my wing. On the landing we stepped through the side door that brought us to the observation deck, where I’d only ever stood with crowds of other scientists, looking down at the testing below.
Again I saw