Huddling as close as she could to the scabrous trunk of the large oak where a shaft of moonlight slithered down over her hands, Rose made out the stains of dried blood in the cracks and lines of her fingers: Roddy"s blood.
A twinge of guilt wedged itself in there somewhere. And grief. But she had to make it to the outlaw camp of the Ungatosonrisas on the other side of the river. Her feelings could wait.
Another voice howled from the far end of the woods: "Over here!"
The snapping of twigs and limbs ceased for a second. If Rose remembered correctly, protocol for the vipers dictated confirmation of verbal instructions before they shifted directions. The Ungatosonrisas were said to employ annoying tricks to draw a posse from its prey.
Rose waited a moment, trembling against the craggy wood, wondering if the distant voice could indeed have been help. Was she close?
Not that the Bachyritas would ever give up. "Stop" wasn"t an option for them, except to stop the ma.s.ses from supposedly harming themselves. "For the protection of all" were the first words flashed through the pleasure goggles. That was their mantra, and it was the biggest lie ever. Bondage was not freedom.
Rose bit her bottom lip, cradled the case closer, and tried to see through the bushes ahead. She didn"t know how to stop either. Moving as quickly and as quietly as she could, Rose shoved her way through the stands of p.r.i.c.kly brambles and bristly scrub while legions of dark trees, limbs swaying low, clawed at her clothes and skin. She hadn"t gone far when she reached a sharp drop. Below, in the moonlight, the waters of the river roiled on innocently enough. And for a moment, Rose wasn"t a thief on the run. She was little Rosie MacGregor, big sister to Ellie Bug, and the river below was their secret fishing spot. There would be a "huge-mongus" tree whose long branch would stretch out over the water. And dangling from that branch would be the coa.r.s.e rope she and Ellie Bug latched on to swing themselves out over the calm, plunging into the cool, deep murk amid unrestrained laughter.
Rose swatted a mosquito away from her ear. But those times were long gone, and the children of the Bachyritas might never know such innocent, carefree delights.
Swimming, like nearly every other endeavor, had to employ some element of pleasure. "All we are saying is give piece a chance!" was off-used expression. Nothing quite official, but certainly accepted. There was no reason to be embarra.s.sed or ashamed about something so natural as s.e.xual satisfaction. To "Make Love Not War"-which was one of the official slogans-was a beautiful thing.
The windows of the downtown department stores, which once had featured elaborate displays of animated skaters and Santas at Christmas time, had been redesigned to mimic the peaceful love-ins of still-revered writers and peace advocates John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Most people didn"t really know a lot about the couple. The yellowed and peeling posters of what they did over a hundred years ago that lay plastered on abandoned storefronts or in alleyways all around the city did offer their images, but that was about all. What they had begun was far more important.
But people engaging in public pleasure was simply old hat, boring even, except for the few who engaged in the bagism ritual where the couple would enter either a black bag or a white one (if one of the parties was a true virgin). One by one, articles of clothing would be shed through the closing, dangled aloft almost theatrically before being dropped as the hand disappeared back inside. Unlike the couples who made love in the store windows, those employing bagism did offer the added feature of sound.
Self-reflection, self-actualization, self-satisfaction: Those were more watchwords of the renaissance. Watchwords. It always came down to the words. And choices.
Rose threw her hands to her face and felt her tears mixing with the scratches and grime. Maybe she had made the wrong choices and for the worst of reasons: selfishness. But she had told herself she wouldn"t indulge her feelings just now. There would be time later. Later. There had to be a later.
Then Rose spotted the yellow glow of the torch.
"She"s at the river!" someone shouted, unexpectedly and surprisingly close.
If her body heat had betrayed her before, the burning sensation she felt from the gla.s.ses case under her shirt was no doubt delivering her presence to the pit vipers this time. Their sounds could have all been a ruse to flush her out.
But as she glanced out at the waters below, Rose gripped more strongly the warm booty to her chest. A few hours ago, she"d determined this treasure was worth saving. And more. It was worth her life and Roddy"s to get this to the Ungatosonrisas. They would know how best to use the treasure.
"She"s ahead on the right. Less than a thousand feet."
"Get her!"
"I see her!" the Franklin shouted. "There!"
"We"ve got her now."
Taking only a few steps backward, Rose turned and broke into a run. Pulling the case close to her body, she sailed off the cliff, diving toward the dark water below.
"Think different!" she screamed into the night.
As the moonlit ink swallowed her whole, Rose thought of the color blue. Not black for death or white for baptism or even red for a fiery h.e.l.l, but blue: the scrubbed denim of her father"s workshirts, the crisp cold paleness of a winter morning"s sky.
Roddy Bach-y-Rita"s blue eyes.
On good days, Roddy called the pit vipers "Pop Rocks," after the candy that gave a fizzy, tingling sensation to the tongue. That was the same sensation the BrainPort emitted when its helmet-held computer eye fixed on warm objects-its prey.
Roddy"s chief beef with the entire movement was how it had besmirched his family"s good name and his great-great-grandfather"s honorable intentions by branding themselves "Bachyritas."
"They were the G.o.dd.a.m.ned military. Soldiers!" He"d spit the last word. Roddy spit a lot in his screeds. Yet like some ancient sage, he"d retell the same tale all over again, varying little except in the expletives he used.
Rose couldn"t decide whether he played storyteller for her benefit, like a peac.o.c.k with his feathers flaunted, or whether Roddy simply wanted to unleash his ire at the injustice done to him personally. He"d never asked to be born to such respected linage.
It didn"t matter, because the telling was part of the fabric of who Rodman Bach-y-Rita was. Plus, anger made his blue eyes bluer. Like the searing cobalt in a flame.
They"d shared pleasure the first time following one of his tirades. For Rose, they used a white bag.
"They weren"t even the real army," Roddy said. "Our real army was gone, mostly killed over all the oil c.r.a.p during the Fifty-Year War."
"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."
Roddy riveted his pa.s.sionate blues on her.
"I didn"t mean our guys were b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, Roddy."
"You"re tired of hearing this, aren"t you?"
"No!"
"Yes, you are. You"ve become complacent."
"You"re wrong. I"m as angry about what"s happened as you are."
"You have no idea how friggin angry I am about anything. Was it your family that mucked it all up while selling everybody salvation? h.e.l.l in a handbasket... let"s give peace a chance... fill in the blank..."
"Roddy, I-"
"Do you even have a family, Rose? Are you anybody"s great-great-anything? You can"t know what life is like for me. You can"t have any friggin idea the generational burdens I carry. Sins of the great-great-grandfather..."
Every time Roddy turned on his heels, facing Rose, she flinched.
"Then who are the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, Rose? The stupid s.h.i.ts who perverted my great-great-grandfather"s discovery and turned his good to evil? Why don"t they call themselves the Lennon/Onos? No, they curse my family, curse me!"
Rose"s head replayed known history: The Bachyritas had successfully put down an insurgency of foreign-born revolutionaries through primary employment of the guerilla device that allowed the army the shrewdness of "pit vipers." The signals of these "Brain-Ports" were routed to soldiers" helmet-mounted cameras, allowing them to zero in on the enemy. Heat-sensitive signals were sent to a device on the soldiers" tongues as fizzy tingles, but their brains read the information as though they were "seeing." The one thing the rebelling Ungatosonrisas couldn"t hide was the heat their bodies generated.
But Roddy told the story with more panache than the chronicles. That and his blue, blue eyes flashing angrily made the words worth hearing over and over again.
"Ole great-great-grandpa Paul was a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin. He explored brain plasticity as it relates to sensory subst.i.tution and brain-machine interfacing, in his search for a way to help the blind "see." Not a bad thing, huh? Anyway, his team-a team, Rose-routed camera images to different parts of volunteers" bodies. Trial and error, Rose. Basic s.h.i.t. But what he found was that the tongue was more useful than tasting stuff like lemons, peppers, chocolate..."
Rose remained quiet as she rummaged through the papers stacked on her desk, scouring the photographs of paintings where the artists had added reading gla.s.ses of the famous to lend an air of scholarship and intelligence.
"d.a.m.ned military." Roddy was making those grumbling sounds of his. "What could he have been thinking to have surrendered anything to them? He should have taken the BrainPort and fallen down a hole somewhere. Gotten lost. Or given copies to the Ungatosonrisas. Leveled the playing field. Imagine that."
Rose perched two papers directly in front of her eyes and squinted at the images. One was a copy of Tommaso da Modena"s painting of Cardinal Hugh of Provence seated at his desk, scribing away with rivet spectacles. At another desk on the other page by another artist sat a bespectacled St. Jerome. The latter was the patron saint of scholars and, in some quarters, the patron of gla.s.ses. Hadn"t Roddy had her convinced that lying to the ma.s.ses had been invented by the Bachyritas? Yet both the church men had lived and died before spectacles had come into use, and both works of art had been created a long time before Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita had lived.
Rose tossed the papers back on her own desk and laughed. It was just a small chuckle, really, but enough to shake Roddy from his familial conundrum.
"You think this is all a joke, don"t you?" Roddy"s puffing face told Rose that no matter what she said right now, it would be the wrong thing. Roddy threw up his hands and lowered them in fists on her desk. "Dammit, Rose, you have no idea what it"s like being a Bach-y-Rita."
"I"m one of the faithful, Roddy."
"Faithful? Faithful? What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"
Rose backed against the nearest wall. When Roddy flew into one of his rants, it was useless to attempt reason; all she could do was try to avoid "accidentally" getting in the way of his flying hands.
He must have seen her fear, because Roddy chuffed and ha-rumped and then fed his explosion into his private office. It seemed the entire wall shook as he slammed the heavy wooden door. On the other side a few loud noises arose-books being thrown about, no doubt, or a chair in the way of his foot-and then there was quiet again.
Rose compressed herself against the wall a little harder until the familiar click of his lock broke the silence. It was only when she heard herself exhale that she realized she hadn"t been breathing at all.
A month ago, when a bundle of historic spectacles had arrived, Roddy had gone ballistic over the haphazard way the specimens had been bundled. His airborne fist struck a bullseye on Rose"s face.
She tried to contain the bleeding, but he"d broken her nose. Blood shot everywhere, drenching the papers on her desk and splattering several of the newly arrived spectacles she was to catalog and archive. The incident also caused her own bra.s.s frames to snap in the middle. n.o.body fixed gla.s.ses. Few even wore them. If people had sight problems, they were either fitted with pleasure goggles for occasional use, left to squint, or offered a miracle surgery that gave them instant 20/20 vision. Only the perfect vision eventually dwindled to a horrible, painful blindness.
She"d managed to put off the required medical follow-up visits for her nose, returning to work just two days ago without a clearance. She was afraid the doctor might have strayed from her nose injury and decided to toss in a vision exam. That she couldn"t risk. If anyone else found out her eyes were beginning to show their age, she"d be rea.s.signed.
When Roddy had first caught her struggling to read a report, he seemed angry. He"d grabbed the box-cutting knife and aimed it at her only to slam it down at the last second, hacking into a newly arrived box, plucking out a pair of wire-rimmed gla.s.ses and placing them gently on her nose.
"Scared you at first, huh?" Roddy said.
"I hadn"t cataloged those yet," Rose said.
"I know. I"m a bad boy, huh?" Roddy" s playful grins were nearly as magical as those eyes of his.
"But..."
"It doesn"t matter, Rose. No one will ever know but us."
"But they"re numbered. And they belonged to somebody famous."
"Ha! Famous? Who cares?" Then Roddy took the remainder of the box of gla.s.ses and tossed them all into the trash. "For some reason we catalog these spectacles. For some reason our jobs matter just now. But once we do all the research, checking the facts, comparing notes, examining the specimens, and entering it all down in our journals, then what?" Roddy"s glower along with his fists set firmly on his hips told Rose he was truly expecting an answer from her.
"We... rebox the specimens, attaching the catalog number, and send them to the archives."
"Which are where?"
Rose gave that some thought. Was she supposed to know that? She"d never thought to ask.
Roddy removed her gla.s.ses, gusted a breath of fog on the lenses, then wiped them clean with the tail of his shirt. "My dear Rose..." He replaced the gla.s.ses on her face, adjusting them carefully. "There are no archives. Everything is destroyed once we finish with them. They think I don"t know, but I do." His sarcastic laugh followed him all the way into his office.
Despite Roddy"s unchecked brutality, he loved her. She knew he did. That"s why he"d given her the gla.s.ses and hadn"t told anyone about her failing eyesight. That"s why she hadn"t lost her job when the accident happened.
Roddy loved her. He was just afraid to let anyone into his miserable life. He was ashamed of what his family had done to society. If only he"d drop his own fear of truly sharing himself with her. Not inside some bag, but in one of the windows. Then people would know Roddy Bach-y-Rita and Rose MacGregor were making love and not war.
To the side of the stack of copies of artists" renderings of people wearing spectacles lay an official-looking paper. "From the Office of Rodman J. Bach-y-Rita," it said across the top. The page was a blanket woven with words, tiny words. The type he"d used for the single-page directive-whatever it was-had to have been no larger than nine points.
Straining to see, Rose made out: "a.s.sistant Researcher Nancy Fleishman."
There had never been any other a.s.sistant as far as Rose knew.
Rose held the paper closer to the window, hoping to better discern the other words, only they were too small to make out. Holding the message directly under the lamp on her desk proved no better.
"Fleishman." Rose whispered the name as she sat down hard in the chair behind her desk. She knew that name well, but not a Nancy. Dr. David Fleishman was the most recognizable name in the study of spectacles. An esteemed former ophthalmologist, Fleishman had done the most exhaustive and extensive research and cataloging of eyewear ever. The stacks of papers on Rose"s desk were copies of his work. Roddy nearly bowed every time the man"s name was mentioned.
Rose"s scrutiny of the paper blurred as her eyes refocused on the box of exhibits that had arrived the day of her accident. It sat wedged between several other boxes beneath one of the windows. Rose recognized it because of the dark stains left from her splattered blood.
Nancy, if she was some new a.s.sistant, obviously had not cataloged its contents.
Without moving her head, Rose flashed a look at Roddy"s closed door and listened intently. Once he went inside his little sanctuary, he rarely popped out without her first being able to hear the click from his unlocking the door.
She kept her back to the door as she opened the box. Inside were the pitifully wrapped specimens. Several cases were marked with numbers only or had doc.u.ments wrapped around them and secured with rubber bands. Just one had an aged and curling label attached to it, though a large #9 had been painted in red on the end of the case.
Rose shoved aside the rest and opened #9. They weren"t metal-rimmed as she had expected. So many gla.s.ses that had survived from the era marked on the outside of the box-the 1970s and 80s-were like that. Styles had always varied through the ages, but some were more readily recognizable than others. The ancient Trig Lane and Swan Stairs with frames of bone, wood, metal and leather.
Roddy taught her all about the historical significance along with the minute details. He"d told her how spectacles evolved with cla.s.s needs. The invention of the printing press begat books and newspapers and nudged the entrepreneurial elements as more people jumped on the bus, and the use of spectacles grew so common that baskets of them would be available at merchants, and people would simply rummage through them until they found what suited them best.
In the latter part of the Twentieth Century, gla.s.ses shifted from signaling the brainy people to recognizing the trendy. Though the well-known image of John Lennon from the peeling posters did depict him wearing gla.s.ses, it was Roddy who had made Rose truly understand that Lennon"s "granny" style of wire frames had began its own revolution. Simply put, Lennon made it cool to wear gla.s.ses.
Though he didn"t rant while talking about spectacles, he could go on and on. It was his first love, his pa.s.sion.
Standing with the case in her hand and wearing the round-lens gla.s.ses that had been inside, Rose was able to make out the name on the faded label on exhibit #9: John Lennon.
She wasn"t sure whether the tingles she felt all over her body were more fear or awe, but tingle she did. Unlike the pleasure goggles, which flashed "For the protection of all," what zipped through Rose"s mind were the words from the ragged Lennon-Ono posters: "Think Different."
Think different. Think different.
Think... Nancy Fleishman.
John Lennon"s old gla.s.ses were hardly perfect for Rose. His vision was obviously much worse than hers, but when she adjusted them a bit, the words on Roddy"s official paper became very clear: Nancy Fleishman would be replacing Rose. Not because of Rose"s failing eyesight or the accident or anything else.
"Due to the horrible accidental death of Rose Gregory, I am in need of another a.s.sistant. It was quite a moment of good fortune when I discovered Dr. David Fleishman"s great-great-granddaughter had also been working in this field. I have arranged for her to begin as soon as she can make arrangements.
"The committee should also be advised that the archived spectacles are now ready to be auctioned to highest bidders."
Rose collapsed in a heap in the soft chair near the window in shock, the paper"s words so hot in her hand that she dropped it to the floor.
She was dead, and Roddy hadn"t even gotten her last name right. But she wasn"t dead...
During her down time, she"d tried to wrestle with what her life meant. She"d walked the boulevards, noting the neatly trimmed lawns and thoughtfully planted trees. Yes, there was a pattern to the streets. And an eerie emptiness she hadn"t had time or opportunity to notice before. Where were the children playing unabashedly in the yards? And bicycling gaggles of boys, fishing poles perched under scabbed arms with faithful tongue-dangling mutts running beside? And where were the young women with painted faces, strolling the boulevard as they shopped, sharing their banter about burgeoning careers and hopeful suitors? And the babbling and dowdy old men sc.r.a.ping their canes against the dry concrete sidewalks... where had they all disappeared to?
There were people on the streets and in the parks, mostly men and women in various uniforms, each keeping to himself or herself, making notes on handheld units or engaged in some bagism ritual, which didn"t always involve a second party in the bag.
The small light from her desk was the sole illumination when the lock finally clicked. Roddy"s entrance into the room was his usual bold advance until he saw Rose wasn"t at her desk. The hand behind his back clutched a box-cutter.
"It"s MacGregor, Roddy. Rose MacGregor." When Roddy turned to face her, his amazing blue eyes opened almost as wide as his mouth. "What the..."