The Regulators Read online

  Don’t hurt me, she tried to say, but no words came out, not even a whisper of words. She tried to switch over to some internal circuit, visualizing the little red telephone, only with SETH stamped into the plastic of the handset now. It scared her to try and reach Seth directly, but she had never been in a jam like this. If it decided it wanted her dead . . .

  She saw the phone in her mind, saw herself speaking into it, and what she had to say was painfully simple: Don’t let it hurt me, Seth. You had power over it at the start, I know you did. Maybe not much, but a little. If you have any left—any power, any influence—please don’t let it hurt me, please don’t let it kill me. I’m miserable, but not miserable enough to want to die. Not yet.

  She looked for a flicker of humanity in the floating thing’s eyes, the slightest sign of Seth, and saw nothing.

  Suddenly her left hand shot up and then slapped down, whacking her left cheek with a sound like a breaking stick of kindling. Heat flooded her skin; it was as if someone had turned a sunlamp on that side of her face. Her left eye began to water.

  Now her right hand rose up in front of her eyes, like a Hindu swami’s snake rising out of its basket. It hung in front of her for a moment, and then slowly folded itself into a fist.

  No, she tried to say, please no, please, Seth, don’t let it, but nothing came out this time, either, and the fist plummeted down, knuckles very white in the dim room, and then her nose seemed to explode upward in clouds of white dots like butterflies. They danced frantically in front of her eyes even as blood, warm and loose, began to run down over her lips and chin. She staggered backward.

  “This woman is an affront to justice in the twenty-third century!” Colonel Henry said in his stern voice—a voice she found more hateful and self-righteous each time an episode of the fucking cartoon came on. “She must be shown the error of her ways.”

  Hoss: “That’s right, Colonel! We got to show this bitch who’s top hand!”

  “Root-root-root-root!”

  Cassie Styles: “I agree with Rooty! And a little sweetening up is just the way to start!”

  She was walking again—being walked, rather. The living room flowed past her eyes like scenery running backward past the windows of a train. Her cheek throbbed. Her nose throbbed. She could taste blood on her teeth. Now she pictured a MotoKops-style phone, the kind where you could actually see the person you were talking to, pictured talking face-to-face with Seth on this phone. Please, Seth, it’s your Aunt Audrey, do you recognize me even though my hair’s a different color now? Tak made me dye it so it would look like Cassie’s, and when I go out I have to wear a blue headband like Cassie does, but it’s still me, still Aunt Audrey, the one who took you in, the one who’s been watching out for you, trying to, anyway, and now you have to watch out for me. Don’t let it hurt me too badly, Seth, please don’t let it.

  The lights were off in the kitchen and it was a bowl of gloomy, swarming shadows. As she was propelled across the yellow linoleum (cheery when it was clean, but now dingy and jaundiced-looking), a thought occurred to her, one that was terrible with logic: Why should Seth help her? Even if he was receiving her message and even if he still could help, why should he? To escape Tak meant to abandon Seth to his fate, and that was just what she had been trying to do. If the boy was still there, he must know that as well as Tak.

  A sob, as faint and distant as an invalid’s breath, escaped her as the fingers of her bloodstained right hand felt for the light-switch by the stove, found it, and turned it.

  “Sweeten her up, Paw!” Little Joe Cartwright yelped. “Sweeten her up, by Jasper!” The voice suddenly slid up, becoming the high-pitched laughter of Rooty the Robot. Audrey found herself wishing for insanity. It would be better than this, wouldn’t it? It would have to be.

  Instead she watched, a helpless passenger inside her own body, as Tak turned her, walked her over to the spice rack, and used her hand to open the cabinet above it. The other hand yanked out a yellow Tupperware container that hit the floor and sprayed macaroni across the linoleum in every direction. The flour went next, landing beside her foot and puffing up to coat her legs. The hand darted into the hole it had created and seized the plastic honey bear. The other hand grabbed the top, unscrewed it, tossed it aside. A moment later the bear was hanging upside down over her open, waiting mouth.

  The hand wrapped around the bear’s chubby stomach began to squeeze rhythmically, much as she had once squeezed the rubber bulb of the horn that had been mounted on her childhood bicycle. Blood from her ruptured nose slid down her throat. Then honey filled her mouth, thick and gagging-sweet.

  “Swallow it!” Tak shouted, now in no one’s voice but its own. “Swallow it, you bitch!”

  She swallowed. One mouthful, then two, then three. On the third one her throat seemed to clench shut. She tried to breathe and couldn’t. Her windpipe was blocked by a nightmare of sweet glue. She fell to her knees and began crawling across the kitchen floor, her dark-red hair hanging in her face, barking out great thick wads of blood-laced honey. It was up her nose as well, packing it and dripping from her nostrils.

  For another few moments she still couldn’t seem to breathe, and the white specks dancing in front of her eyes turned black. I’m going to drown, she thought. Drown in Sue Bee honey.

  Then her windpipe opened up again, a little, anyway, enough, and she was gasping air into her lungs, pulling it down her slick, coated throat, weeping with terror and pain.

  Tak dropped onto Seth Garin’s scabby knees in front of her and began screaming into her face. “Don’t you ever try to get away from me! Don’t you ever! Don’t you ever! Do you understand? Nod your head, you stupid cow, show me you understand!”

  Its hands—the ones she couldn’t see, the ones that were inside her head—seized her and all at once her head was swooping up and down, her forehead smacking the floor on each downstroke, and Tak was laughing. Laughing. She thought it would keep on pounding her head against the floor until she passed out and just sprawled here in the mess she had made.

  Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. The hands were gone. The feel of its mind was gone, as well. She looked up cautiously, swiping at her nose with the side of her hand, still hitching for breath and letting it out in gasps that were half-retches. Her forehead throbbed. She could feel it swelling already.

  The boy was looking at her. And she thought it was the boy. She wasn’t completely sure, but—

  “Seth?”

  For a moment he only crouched there, not nodding, not shaking his head. Then he reached out with one dirty hand and wiped honey off her chin with fingers she could hardly feel.

  “Seth, where did it go? Where’s Tak?”

  He struggled. She could see him struggling. With his fear, perhaps, but she wasn’t sure he felt fear. Even if he did, it was more likely his own defective communications equipment he was working against right now. He made a gurgling noise, a sound like air in the bathroom pipes, and she thought that was probably all he’d be able to get out. Then, just as she was about to try for her feet, two choked words came from him.

  “Gone. Building.”

  She looked at him, still breathing through a film of honey but not noticing it for the moment. She felt her heart begin to beat a little faster at the word gone. She should know better, especially after what had just happened, but—

  “Is he in a building, honey? Gone to a building? Is that what you’re saying? What building?”

  “Building,” Seth repeated. He struggled, his head shaking from side to side. Finally: “Making.”

  Building, yes. But the verb, not the noun. Tak was building. Tak was making. What was he making . . . besides trouble?

  “He,” Seth said. “He. He. He—!”

  The boy struck down on his own thigh with a frustration she had never seen in him before. She picked up the fist he had hit himself with and soothed it back into a hand.

  “No, Seth.” Her diaphragm pulled in again, trying to retch—the honey
was a heavy ball in her stomach—but she controlled it. “Don’t, don’t. Just relax. Tell me if you can. If you can’t, it’s okay.” A lie, but if she wound him up any tighter than he was already, he would never be able to get it out. Worse, he might go away. Go away and leave the warm boy-vacancy that Tak inhabited so easily.

  “He—!” Seth reached for her, touched her ears. Then he put the backs of his hands behind his own ears and pushed them forward. She saw that they were also dirty from his long hours in the sandbox—filthy—and her eyes stung with tears. But he was looking at her intently, and she nodded. Yes, she understood. When Seth really tried, he was quite good—as good as he had to be, anyway.

  He listens to you, the boy was saying. Tak listens to you with my ears. And of course he did. It did. Tak the Magnificent, creature of a thousand voices, most of which came equipped with Western drawls, and one set of ears.

  Tak had dropped down in front of her, but it was Seth that got up, just a skinny little boy in grimy underpants. He started for the door, then turned back. Audrey herself was still on her knees, trying to decide if she could reach out for the counter from where she was or if she should crawl a little closer first.

  She cringed when she saw him coming back, thinking that Tak had returned, thinking she saw the hard shine of its intelligence in Seth’s eyes. When he got closer, she saw that she had made a natural enough mistake. Seth was crying. She had never seen him cry before, not even when he came to her with scraped knees or a banged head. Until now she hadn’t been entirely sure that he could cry.

  He put his arms around her neck and dropped his forehead against hers. It hurt, but she didn’t draw away. For a moment she had a blurred but very emphatic image of the red telephone, only grown to enormous size. Then it was gone, and she heard Seth’s voice in her head. She’d thought on several occasions that she was hearing him, that he was trying to contact her telepathically. The sensation came most commonly as she was drifting off to sleep or just as she was waking up. It was always distant, like a voice calling through blankets of fog. Now, however, it was shockingly close. It was the voice of a child who sounded bright and not in the least defective.

  I don’t blame you for trying to run, the voice said. Audrey had a sense of hurry and furtiveness. It was like listening to a kid whisper some vital piece of classroom gossip to his seatmate while the teacher’s back is briefly turned. Get to the others, the ones across the street. You have to wait, but it won’t be long. Because he’s—

  No words, but another blurred image that filled her head completely, temporarily driving out all thought. It was Seth. He was dressed in jester’s motley and a cap of bells. He was juggling. Not balls; dolls. Little china ones. Hummel figures. But until he dropped one and it shattered and she saw the broken face of Mary Jackson lying beside one of the jester’s red-and-white curlytoed caliph’s slippers, she did not realize that the dolls were her neighbors. She supposed she was responsible for at least some of that image—she had seen Kirstie Carver’s Hummel figures (a tiresome hobby if ever there was one, in Audrey’s opinion) a thousand times—but she understood that whatever she might have added didn’t in the least change what Seth was trying to convey. Whatever craziness Tak was up to—his building, his making—it was keeping him very busy.

  Not too busy to see me when I broke for the door a few minutes ago, she thought. Not too busy to stop me. Not too busy to punish me, either. Maybe next time it’ll be salt going down my throat instead of honey.

  Or drain-cleaner.

  I’ll tell you when, the child’s voice returned. Listen for me, Aunt Audrey. After the Power Wagons come again. Listen for me. It’s important that you get away. Because—

  This time many images flickered past. Some came and went too fast for her to identify, but she got a few: an empty Chef Boyardee can lying in the trash, an old broken toilet lying on its side in the dump, a car up on blocks, no wheels, no glass. Things that were broken. Things that were used up.

  The last thing she saw before he broke contact was the studio portrait of herself on the table in the front hall. The eyes of the portrait were gone, gouged out.

  Seth released her and stood back, watching as she grasped the edge of the counter and struggled to her feet. Her belly, heavy and thick with the honey Tak had made her swallow, felt like a counterweight. Seth now looked as he usually did—distant and disconnected, with all the emotional gradient of a rock. Yet there were those clean streaks below his eyes. Yes, there were those.

  “Ah-oh,” he said in his toneless voice—soundings she and Herb had speculated might mean Audrey, hello—and then walked out of the kitchen. Back to the den, where the climactic shootout was still going on. And when it was done? Why, rewind to the FBI warning and start all over again, most likely.

  But he talked to me, she thought. Out loud and inside my head. On his version of the PlaySkool phone. Only his version is so big.

  She took the broom from its place in the pantry alcove and began to sweep up spilled flour and macaroni. In the den, Rory Calhoun yelled, “You ain’t goin nowhere, you sowbelly Yankee!”

  “It doesn’t have to be this way, Jeb,” Audrey murmured, sweeping.

  “It doesn’t have to be this way, Jeb,” Ty Hardin—Deputy Laine in the movie—said, and then bad old Colonel Murdock shot him. His final act of villainy; in another thirty seconds he would be shot dead himself.

  Audrey’s diaphragm knotted again. Hard. She went to the sink, trailing the broom in one hand, and bent over. She gagged, but nothing came up. A moment later, the clench subsided. She turned on the cold-water tap, leaned over, drank directly from the faucet, then gingerly splashed a couple of handfuls on her throbbing forehead. It felt good. Wonderful.

  She turned off the tap, went back to the pantry, and got the dustpan. Tak was building, Seth had said. Tak was making. But what? And as she dropped awkwardly to her knees by her pile of sweepings, the broom in one hand and the dustpan in the other, a more urgent question occurred to her: If she did get away, what would it do to her nephew? What would it do to Seth?

  2

  Belinda Josephson held the kitchen door for her husband, then straightened up and looked around. The overhead light wasn’t on, but the room was still a little brighter than it had been. The storm was slackening, and she supposed that in another hour or two it would be hot and bright again.

  She looked at the wall-clock over the kitchen table, and she felt a mild burst of unreality. 4:03? Was it possible so little time had gone by? She took a closer look and saw that the second-hand wasn’t moving. She reached for the light-switch beside the door as Johnny crawled into the kitchen on his hands and knees and then stood up.

  “Don’t bother,” Jim Reed said. He was sitting on the floor between the fridge and the stove with Ralphie Carver on his lap. Ralphie’s thumb was in his mouth. His eyes were glazed and apathetic. Belinda had never liked him very much, didn’t know anyone on the street who did (except for his mother and his dad, she supposed), but still her heart went out to him.

  “Don’t bother with what?” Johnny asked.

  “The light-switch. Power’s off.”

  She believed him but snapped the switch a couple of times anyway. Nothing.

  There were a lot of people in this room—she made it eleven, counting herself—but the numb silence which had settled over them made it seem like less. Ellie Carver was still giving an occasional watery gasp, but her face was against her mother’s breast, and Belinda thought she might actually be asleep. David Reed had his arm around Susi Geller. Sitting on the girl’s other side, also with an arm around her (lucky girl, all that comfort, Belinda thought), was her mother. Cammie Reed, the twins’ mother, was sitting against a door with a sign on it reading YE OLDE PANTRIE. Belinda didn’t think Cammie was quite as out of it as some of the others; her eyes had a cool, thoughtful look.

  “You said you heard screaming,” Johnny said to Susi. “I don’t hear any screaming.”

  “It’s over,” the girl said
dully. “I think maybe it was Mrs. Soderson.”

  “Sure it was,” Jim said. He shifted Ralphie on his lap, wincing a little as he did. “I recognized it. We’ve been listening to her scream at Gary for most of our lives. Haven’t we, Dave?”

  Dave Reed nodded. “I’d’ve murdered her by now. Honest.”

  “Ah, but you don’t imbibe, my boy,” Johnny said in his best W. C. Fields voice. He took the kitchen phone out of its cradle, listened, bopped the 0 button a couple of times, then hung it up again.

  “Debbie’s dead, isn’t she?” Susi asked Belinda.

  “Sh, baby, don’t,” Kim Geller said, sounding alarmed.

  Susi took no notice. “She didn’t go over next door at all. Did she? Don’t lie about it, either.”

  Belinda thought about doing just that, but it didn’t seem the right way to go on, somehow. In her experience, even well-intentioned lies usually made things worse. More crazy. Belinda thought things were crazy enough on Poplar Street already.

  “Yes, honey,” she said, marvelling at how southern she always sounded—to herself, anyway—when she had to give someone bad news. Perhaps it was part of the black experience that no one had yet gotten around to teaching in a college course. What made it particularly interesting in her case was that she had never been south of the Mason-Dixon line in her whole life. “Yes, honey, I’m afraid she is.”

  Susi put her hands over her face and began to sob. Dave Reed pulled her to him and Susi put her face against his shoulder. When Kim tried to pull her back, Susi stiffened her body and resisted.

  Her mother gave David Reed a dirty look which the boy missed entirely. She turned her angry face to Belinda instead. “Why did you tell her that?”

  “Girl’s lying right out there on the stoop, and with all that red hair, she is kinda hard to miss.”

  “Hushnow,” Brad told her. He took her by the wrist and drew her over to the sink. “Don’t you upset her.”

  Oh dear, too late, Belinda thought, but prudently said nothing.