Bloodchild and Other Stories Page 5

  “So do I,” she said. “I know what they’re like in hospitals, and I know what it’s like here.” She waved a hand toward an abstract painting that looked like a photo I had once seen of the Orion Nebula. Darkness broken by a great cloud of light and color. “Here we can help them channel their energies. They can create something beautiful, useful, even something worthless. But they create. They don’t destroy.”

  “Why?” Alan demanded. “It can’t be some drug. We would have heard.”

  “It’s not a drug.”

  “Then what is it? Why haven’t other hospitals—?”

  “Alan,” she said. “Wait.”

  He stood frowning at her.

  “Do you want to see your mother?”

  “Of course I want to see her!”

  “Good. Come with me. Things will sort themselves out.”

  She led us to a corridor past offices where people talked to one another, waved to Beatrice, worked with computers.… They could have been anywhere. I wondered how many of them were controlled DGDs. I also wondered what kind of game the old woman was playing with her secrets. We passed through rooms so beautiful and perfectly kept it was obvious they were rarely used. Then at a broad, heavy door, she stopped us.

  “Look at anything you like as we go on,” she said. “But don’t touch anything or anyone. And remember that some of the people you’ll see injured themselves before they came to us. They still bear the scars of those injuries. Some of those scars may be difficult to look at, but you’ll be in no danger. Keep that in mind. No one here will harm you.” She pushed the door open and gestured us in.

  Scars didn’t bother me much. Disability didn’t bother me. It was the act of self-mutilation that scared me. It was someone attacking her own arm as though it were a wild animal. It was someone who had torn at himself and been restrained or drugged off and on for so long that he barely had a recognizable human feature left, but he was still trying with what he did have to dig into his own flesh. Those are a couple of the things I saw at the DGD ward when I was fifteen. Even then I could have stood it better if I hadn’t felt I was looking into a kind of temporal mirror.

  I wasn’t aware of walking through that doorway. I wouldn’t have thought I could do it. The old woman said something, though, and I found myself on the other side of the door with the door closing behind me. I turned to stare at her.

  She put her hand on my arm. “It’s all right,” she said quietly. “That door looks like a wall to a great many people.”

  I backed away from her, out of her reach, repelled by her touch. Shaking hands had been enough, for God’s sake.

  Something in her seemed to come to attention as she watched me. It made her even straighter. Deliberately, but for no apparent reason, she stepped toward Alan, touched him the way people do sometimes when they brush past—a kind of tactile “Excuse me.” In that wide, empty corridor, it was totally unnecessary. For some reason, she wanted to touch him and wanted me to see. What did she think she was doing? Flirting at her age? I glared at her, found myself suppressing an irrational urge to shove her away from him. The violence of the urge amazed me.

  Beatrice smiled and turned away. “This way,” she said. Alan put his arm around me and tried to lead me after her.

  “Wait a minute,” I said, not moving.

  Beatrice glanced around.

  “What just happened?” I asked. I was ready for her to lie—to say nothing happened, pretend not to know what I was talking about.

  “Are you planning to study medicine?” she asked.

  “What? What does that have to do—?”

  “Study medicine. You may be able to do a great deal of good.” She strode away, taking long steps so that we had to hurry to keep up. She led us through a room in which some people worked at computer terminals and others with pencils and paper. It would have been an ordinary scene except that some people had half their faces ruined or had only one hand or leg or had other obvious scars. But they were all in control now. They were working. They were intent but not intent on self-destruction. Not one was digging into or tearing away flesh. When we had passed through this room and into a small, ornate sitting room, Alan grasped Beatrice’s arm.

  “What is it?” he demanded. “What do you do for them?”

  She patted his hand, setting my teeth on edge. “I will tell you,” she said. “I want you to know. But I want you to see your mother first.” To my surprise, he nodded, let it go at that.

  “Sit a moment,” she said to us.

  We sat in comfortable, matching upholstered chairs—Alan looking reasonably relaxed. What was it about the old lady that relaxed him but put me on edge? Maybe she reminded him of his grandmother or something. She didn’t remind me of anyone. And what was that nonsense about studying medicine?

  “I wanted you to pass through at least one workroom before we talked about your mother—and about the two of you.” She turned to face me. “You’ve had a bad experience at a hospital or a rest home?”

  I looked away from her, not wanting to think about it. Hadn’t the people in that mock office been enough of a reminder? Horror film office. Nightmare office.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to go into detail. Just outline it for me.”

  I obeyed slowly, against my will, all the while wondering why I was doing it.

  She nodded, unsurprised. “Harsh, loving people, your parents. Are they alive?”

  “No.”

  “Were they both DGD?”

  “Yes, but … yes.”

  “Of course, aside from the obvious ugliness of your hospital experience and its implications for the future, what impressed you about the people in the ward?”

  I didn’t know what to answer. What did she want? Why did she want anything from me? She should have been concerned with Alan and his mother.

  “Did you see people unrestrained?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “One woman. I don’t know how it happened that she was free. She ran up to us and slammed into my father without moving him. He was a big man. She bounced off, fell, and … began tearing at herself. She bit her own arm and … swallowed the flesh she’d bitten away. She tore at the wound she’d made with the nails of her other hand. She … I screamed at her to stop.” I hugged myself, remembering the young woman, bloody, cannibalizing herself as she lay at our feet, digging into her own flesh. Digging. “They try so hard, fight so hard to get out.”

  “Out of what?” Alan demanded.

  I looked at him, hardly seeing him.

  “Lynn,” he said gently. “Out of what?”

  I shook my head. “Their restraints, their disease, the ward, their bodies …”

  He glanced at Beatrice, then spoke to me again. “Did the girl talk?”

  “No. She screamed.”

  He turned away from me uncomfortably. “Is this important?” he asked Beatrice.

  “Very,” she said.

  “Well … can we talk about it after I see my mother?”

  “Then and now.” She spoke to me. “Did the girl stop what she was doing when you told her to?”

  “The nurses had her a moment later. It didn’t matter.”

  “It mattered. Did she stop?”

  “Yes.”

  “According to the literature, they rarely respond to anyone,” Alan said.

  “True.” Beatrice gave him a sad smile. “Your mother will probably respond to you, though.”

  “Is she? …” He glanced back at the nightmare office. “Is she as controlled as those people?”

  “Yes, though she hasn’t always been. Your mother works with clay now. She loves shapes and textures and—”

  “She’s blind,” Alan said, voicing the suspicion as though it were fact. Beatrice’s words had sent my thoughts in the same direction. Beatrice hesitated. “Yes,” she said finally. “And for … the usual reason. I had intended to prepare you slowly.”

  “I’ve done a lot of reading.”

  I hadn’t done
much reading, but I knew what the usual reason was. The woman had gouged, ripped, or otherwise destroyed her eyes. She would be badly scarred. I got up, went over to sit on the arm of Alan’s chair. I rested my hand on his shoulder, and he reached up and held it there.

  “Can we see her now?” he asked.

  Beatrice got up. “This way,” she said.

  We passed through more workrooms. People painted; assembled machinery; sculpted in wood, stone; even composed and played music. Almost no one noticed us. The patients were true to their disease in that respect. They weren’t ignoring us. They clearly didn’t know we existed. Only the few controlled-DGD guards gave themselves away by waving or speaking to Beatrice. I watched a woman work quickly, knowledgeably, with a power saw. She obviously understood the perimeters of her body, was not so dissociated as to perceive herself as trapped in something she needed to dig her way out of. What had Dilg done for these people that other hospitals did not do? And how could Dilg withhold its treatment from the others?

  “Over there we make our own diet foods,” Beatrice said, pointing through a window toward one of the guest houses. “We permit more variety and make fewer mistakes than the commercial preparers. No ordinary person can concentrate on work the way our people can.”

  I turned to face her. “What are you saying? That the bigots are right? That we have some special gift?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s hardly a bad characteristic, is it?”

  “It’s what people say whenever one of us does well at something. It’s their way of denying us credit for our work.”

  “Yes. But people occasionally come to the right conclusions for the wrong reasons.” I shrugged, not interested in arguing with her about it.

  “Alan?” she said. He looked at her.

  “Your mother is in the next room.”

  He swallowed, nodded. We both followed her into the room.

  Naomi Chi was a small woman, hair still dark, fingers long and thin, graceful as they shaped the clay. Her face was a ruin. Not only her eyes but most of her nose and one ear were gone. What was left was badly scarred. “Her parents were poor,” Beatrice said. “I don’t know how much they told you, Alan, but they went through all the money they had, trying to keep her at a decent place. Her mother felt so guilty, you know. She was the one who had cancer and took the drug.… Eventually, they had to put Naomi in one of those state-approved, custodial-care places. You know the kind. For a while, it was all the government would pay for. Places like that … well, sometimes if patients were really troublesome—especially the ones who kept breaking free—they’d put them in a bare room and let them finish themselves. The only things those places took good care of were the maggots, the cockroaches, and the rats.”

  I shuddered. “I’ve heard there are still places like that.”

  “There are,” Beatrice said, “kept open by greed and indifference.” She looked at Alan. “Your mother survived for three months in one of those places. I took her from it myself. Later I was instrumental in having that particular place closed.”

  “You took her?” I asked.

  “Dilg didn’t exist then, but I was working with a group of controlled DGDs in L.A. Naomi’s parents heard about us and asked us to take her. A lot of people didn’t trust us then. Only a few of us were medically trained. All of us were young, idealistic, and ignorant. We began in an old frame house with a leaky roof. Naomi’s parents were grabbing at straws. So were we. And by pure luck, we grabbed a good one. We were able to prove ourselves to the Dilg family and take over these quarters.”

  “Prove what?” I asked.

  She turned to look at Alan and his mother. Alan was staring at Naomi’s ruined face, at the ropy, discolored scar tissue. Naomi was shaping the image of an old woman and two children. The gaunt, lined face of the old woman was remarkably vivid—detailed in a way that seemed impossible for a blind sculptress.

  Naomi seemed unaware of us. Her total attention remained on her work. Alan forgot about what Beatrice had told us and reached out to touch the scarred face.

  Beatrice let it happen. Naomi did not seem to notice. “If I get her attention for you,” Beatrice said, “we’ll be breaking her routine. We’ll have to stay with her until she gets back into it without hurting herself. About half an hour.”

  “You can get her attention?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Can she? …” Alan swallowed. “I’ve never heard of anything like this. Can she talk?”

  “Yes. She may not choose to, though. And if she does, she’ll do it very slowly.”

  “Do it. Get her attention.”

  “She’ll want to touch you.”

  “That’s all right. Do it.”

  Beatrice took Naomi’s hands and held them still, away from the wet clay. For several seconds Naomi tugged at her captive hands, as though unable to understand why they did not move as she wished.

  Beatrice stepped closer and spoke quietly. “Stop, Naomi.” And Naomi was still, blind face turned toward Beatrice in an attitude of attentive waiting. Totally focused waiting.

  “Company, Naomi.”

  After a few seconds, Naomi made a wordless sound.

  Beatrice gestured Alan to her side, gave Naomi one of his hands. It didn’t bother me this time when she touched him. I was too interested in what was happening. Naomi examined Alan’s hand minutely, then followed the arm up to the shoulder, the neck, the face. Holding his face between her hands, she made a sound. It may have been a word, but I couldn’t understand it. All I could think of was the danger of those hands. I thought of my father’s hands.

  “His name is Alan Chi, Naomi. He’s your son.” Several seconds passed.

  “Son?” she said. This time the word was quite distinct, though her lips had split in many places and had healed badly “Son?” she repeated anxiously. “Here?”

  “He’s all right, Naomi. He’s come to visit.”

  “Mother?” he said.

  She reexamined his face. He had been three when she started to drift. It didn’t seem possible that she could find anything in his face that she would remember. I wondered whether she remembered she had a son.

  “Alan?” she said. She found his tears and paused at them. She touched her own face where there should have been an eye, then she reached back toward his eyes. An instant before I would have grabbed her hand, Beatrice did it.

  “No!” Beatrice said firmly.

  The hand fell limply to Naomi’s side. Her face turned toward Beatrice like an antique weather vane swinging around. Beatrice stroked her hair, and Naomi said something I almost understood. Beatrice looked at Alan, who was frowning and wiping away tears.

  “Hug your son,” Beatrice said softly.

  Naomi turned, groping, and Alan seized her in a tight, long hug. Her arms went around him slowly. She spoke words blurred by her ruined mouth but just understandable.

  “Parents?” she said. “Did my parents … care for you?” Alan looked at her, clearly not understanding.

  “She wants to know whether her parents took care of you,” I said.

  He glanced at me doubtfully, then looked at Beatrice.

  “Yes,” Beatrice said. “She just wants to know that they cared for you.”

  “They did,” he said. “They kept their promise to you, Mother.”

  Several seconds passed. Naomi made sounds that even Alan took to be weeping, and he tried to comfort her.

  “Who else is here?” she said finally.

  This time Alan looked at me. I repeated what she had said.

  “Her name is Lynn Mortimer,” he said. “I’m …” He paused awkwardly. “She and I are going to be married.”

  After a time, she moved back from him and said my name. My first impulse was to go to her. I wasn’t afraid or repelled by her now, but for no reason I could explain, I looked at Beatrice.

  “Go,” she said. “But you and I will have to talk later.”

  I went to Naomi, took her hand.

&nb
sp; “Bea?” she said.

  “I’m Lynn,” I said softly.

  She drew a quick breath. “No,” she said. “No, you’re …”

  “I’m Lynn. Do you want Bea? She’s here.”

  She said nothing. She put her hand to my face, explored it slowly. I let her do it, confident that I could stop her if she turned violent. But first one hand, then both, went over me very gently.

  “You’ll marry my son?” she said finally.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You’ll keep him safe.”

  As much as possible, we’ll keep each other safe. “Yes,” I said.

  “Good. No one will close him away from himself. No one will tie him or cage him.” Her hand wandered to her own face again, nails biting in slightly.

  “No,” I said softly, catching the hand. “I want you to be safe, too.”

  The mouth moved. I think it smiled. “Son?” she said.

  He understood her, took her hand.

  “Clay,” she said. Lynn and Alan in clay. “Bea?”

  Of course,” Beatrice said. “Do you have an impression?”

  “No!” It was the fastest that Naomi had answered anything. Then, almost childlike, she whispered. “Yes.”

  Beatrice laughed. “Touch them again if you like, Naomi. They don’t mind.”

  We didn’t. Alan closed his eyes, trusting her gentleness in a way I could not. I had no trouble accepting her touch, even so near my eyes, but I did not delude myself about her. Her gentleness could turn in an instant. Naomi’s fingers twitched near Alan’s eyes, and I spoke up at once, out of fear for him.

  “Just touch him, Naomi. Only touch.”

  She froze, made an interrogative sound.

  “She’s all right,” Alan said.

  “I know,” I said, not believing it. He would be all right, though, as long as someone watched her very carefully, nipped any dangerous impulses in the bud.

  “Son!” she said, happily possessive. When she let him go, she demanded clay, wouldn’t touch her old-woman sculpture again. Beatrice got new clay for her, leaving us to soothe her and ease her impatience. Alan began to recognize signs of impending destructive behavior. Twice he caught her hands and said no. She struggled against him until I spoke to her. As Beatrice returned, it happened again, and Beatrice said, “No, Naomi.” Obediently Naomi let her hands fall to her sides.