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A Doll's Odyssey
Part Four
XXI. Another day, another dollar
XXI. Another day, another dollar
Tuesday, August 24, 1999, Columbus, Ohio
Drummond leaned against the front of the building--the tenth they'd been in that morning--and did the exercise he used to stretch his achilles' tendon before a run. His calf muscles were burning, right behind the shinbone, from the constant walking and climbing stairs.
Xe Doll sat on a low stoop nearby, her long legs stretched out in front of her, and rubbed her forehead with one of her big, rawboned hands.
"I tell you what, Xe. I am so glad that I don't do this for a living. I could learn to cordially hate legwork."
"It should give you a new respect for the poor suckers who have to do it all the time."
"You just said a mouthful, my friend."
She looked up at him, squinting into the sun, which backlit him and made him into a blurred silhouette of himself. She laughed. "I heard that," she said in emphatic agreement.
It was odd. For a pair of people who had thought they hated each other, who all they had in common was a soul-deep love of a tiny redheaded doll, they were finding that they kind of liked each other. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles... they were getting along with each other.
"So where next?" Drummond asked.
Xe pulled a much-folded piece of lined canary yellow legal paper out of her pocket and consulted the columnar scribbles that covered both sides. "Cavanaugh Road," she reported, pointing. "That-a-way."
"Walk or ride?"
"It's a couple of miles. We ride."
"Thank the gods!" he exclaimed and staggered off to find their motor pool car.
It had started out as busy work. Something to keep Drummond's mind off the whereabouts and state of mind of his inamorata. But neither of them was capable of simply going through the motions. They both were only able to work as though the job were the most important one on the planet. They could only give it 100%--everything they had. And before they knew it, despite all the bitching, they had gotten into what they were doing and were exceeding Terry Hallow Britten's expectations. The Center's Director had given them new lists twice, and it was only eleven in the morning. They were burning up the target list and generating a flurry of negative responses for whatever and whomever.
They still weren't sure what they were supposed to be accomplishing. They were carrying around a couple of pictures and knocking on a lot of office doors belonging to real estate appraisers asking, "Have you seen either of these two women in the last week or so?" Drummond supposed that it was some sort of a process of elimination, that all of the negative information they were gathering would narrow a search or send it in another direction.
They themselves would probably never see the end result of the search. But the work was hard and admitted to a certain level of absorption. That had been Terry's purpose... to keep Drummond (and Xe as well, to tell the truth) occupied, to prevent him from spinning his wheels and going nuts worrying about Dolly. In that respect, the assignment was working.
The hunt covered a lot of ground and there were long periods in between the areas where such offices seemed to be clustered when it was just the two of them in a motor pool Ford with a broken radio and nothing to do but drive and talk.
At first, Xe had resisted his conversational gambits. But then boredom broke down her resistance and she answered a question of his with a flip, sarcastic comment.
He let it slide.
Then she countered one of his patented political raps with a closely-reasoned argument that was entirely persuasive and articulately spoken--albeit wrong. And thus they gradually warmed to each other, leaned on each other figuratively as the unaccustomed exercise wore them down.
For hours, they danced around the central subject that was foremost in both of their minds: Dolly. Ever since the night last February when he had gone with Dolly to the Alum Creek Road apartment and helped her pick up her clothes and possessions, Xe had seen him as the guy who stole her girlfriend. He in turn, mindful of the searing heartbreak that had propelled Dolly into his arms, and bearing as he did a deep, abiding love of the little doll, hated Xe for the pain she had caused his inamorata.
But somewhere that morning, they each came to realize that there was no fault in the situation; it just was what it was. And they began to see one another in a different light.
"I have to go back to the Center about noon. You want me to drop you anywhere?"
"Nah. Nothing to do. I'll just tag along with you."
"You sure? I'm going to see Rennie. Could be a little... um... upsetting."
That set Xe back. "What's this? The Prince of Darkness taking care for the junior Doll's feelings? Better watch it, bud. People might get the mistaken idea that you cared."
"Yeah, well... whatever," Drummond mumbled, giving an embarrassed little cough.
"Or maybe I'll grab lunch in the cafeteria," she said in that sudden, veering way of hers. They both laughed. When they got back to the Center, they made arrangements to meet on the seventh floor of the Admin. Building and went their separate ways.
#
After lunch, when she stepped off the elevator and into the early-afternoon hum of activity in the Office of the Director, Xe was somewhat surprised to find herself beckoned into Terry's office by the Director.
"What's up?" she asked as she stepped through the door.
"I was going to ask you the same thing? Ever since he got here, Drummond's been tossing that damned Superball around his office. I keep thinking he's gonna hit a window with it and break some glass."
"Yeah, so?"
"Well, I was wondering if you had some clue as to what he's so moody about."
"Well, duh!"
"You know what I mean! Are you aware of something that could have aggravated his--um--condition?"
"Not anything specific. But he said he was going to see Rennie."
"Oh." Terry thought about that. "Maybe he's gotten some bad news."
"That would seem to be the case," Xe replied.
Terry sighed. "Well. I can't really do anything about that. Keep me posted and let me know if anything goes seriously haywire."
"Yes, ma'am," Xe said, sketching a mocking salute before marching off up the raceway that ran around the outside of the Maze and served as an access to the outer ring of offices that the peons in the OOD called The Posh. She was headed for the left-hand office in a mirrored pair at the South end of the Posh, the one occupied by Mitchell Cary Drummond.
As she pushed the door open, a hard rubber ball flew past her nose and bounced off the post between two windows, the book case, and the outside wall of the office before Drummond plucked it out of the air. He turned in his chair, his wrist cocked for another throw when he saw Xe standing dubiously in the doorway.
"Ah! Xe!" he said. "Come in. Have a seat."
She closed the door and sidled over to the couch where she took a seat. She kept her feet under her, ready to dive for cover if the Superball came too close. As soon as she was seated, he threw the ball again.
The Superball, made of a rubber that returned something like 80% of the energy imparted to it by a collision with a solid object, (where most rubber balls return 2-5%), flew around the room at head height.
Drummond had calculated angles with the facility of a pool shark and had devised a four-cushion shot that ended back in his hand. He did this a number of times, mesmerizing the dark doll. She was so entranced by following the ball around that she almost missed it when he failed to catch it on its return to him.
When the ball bounced off the east wall of the office and hit the floor and then the side of Drummond's desk and he still hadn't caught it, she realized that he had his head down on the desk, cradled in his arms. His shoulders were shaking and odd vocalizations filtered out from under there.
"Hey, man. Are you OK?" Suddenly concerned, Xe stood up and shook his shoulder.
He sat up suddenly, laughing bitterly. "What a fucking irony, Xe. I spent all those sleepless nights when we were in the TAT, agonizing over the possibility that she could be hurt or killed on a mission, knowing I could never stop her--you can't cage that bird, not if you want her to live. And here it is, the one thing that hurts her the most is the one person she ought to be able to trust. Me. The guy who's in love with her."
"That's not true! If I thought so, I wouldn't be here. Cally wouldn't be trying to turn her back to you. And Val and Ma and Terry and... We know that--at the end of the day--you're good for her."
"Thanks, Xe," he smiled at her grimly. "I don't deserve that, but it feels good anyway."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"Oh, that's right. You didn't go with me to see Rennie."
Xe straightened, tugging on her clothing and fell into a So? pose, hipshot, arms akimbo, one eyebrow reaching for the sky.
"Trust me, it's probably for the best."
"Tell me about it."
He looked at her quizzically, matching her eyebrow for eyebrow. Then he shrugged. "OK. But remember, you asked for it."
#
What was it with Dolly and torture devices? Was humanity at large just a bunch of sick fucks who got their jollies by hurting little girls? Was he that out of step with everybody else that he just didn't get it?
Rennie claimed that it was all necessary: the spidery device that would hold her immobile in the path of a Genesis storm; the manacles, all clean and bright-shiny-new made of stainless steel, (a half-inch thick), and padded with sheepskin like the collar of an expensive coat; one for each limb, ankles held just so, wrists thus. It was plain to see that the thing would hold her tiny form spread-eagled, helpless, vulnerable to any sick...
No, man, he told himself. Don't fall into that trap. He's going to help her. Cure her. Save her life.
Then why, he asked in reply, does the apparatus look more like a torture device or some... kinky sex toy than a medical machine?
Rennie explained it all. Even showed him a 3D model on a computer screen, which only made it more graphic and hard for him to stomach. It was easy for him to translate the phong-shaded rendering into a crisply limned life portrait of Dolly. The narrow spine support. The fact that her arms would be pulled back cruelly, forcing her to arch her back. That she would be held down at all.
He was never sure whence came her fear of constraints. Maybe it was from the twist ties in the box her action figure had been shipped in, in whose grip she spent three months on a Toys-R-Us shelf before Semi East's secretary had come along and bought her at a 50% markdown. The terror that had gripped her the first time he suggested tying some silk scarves to the bedposts and left her shivering in his arms still had power to slice his heart into quivering ribbons. The long and painful effort she had made to overcome her fear in order to cater to his kink still warmed him.
There was one more arm that Rennie had not explained to Drummond at first. Whereas the others were articulated but possessed locking screws at the joints and move stiffly between postures, this one looked to be powered, and moved with fluid grace when it was nudged. Drummond asked several times what it was for and Rennie cleverly diverted him. Finally, though, he called the thaumaturge on it. As he realized what the old wizard was saying, his hearing sort of cut out, the normal sounds of the lab replaced by a pink-noise roaring in his ears, through which he heard only every fourth or fifth word. But he was nevertheless able to get the gist of what Rennie was saying.
It was a robot arm. It was designed to carry medical instruments and perform operations with them under computer control.
"That's right. A needle. About this long. He said that the site of the injection was important, because the serum had to be distributed rapidly throughout the body."
"Well, you know," Xe said, "They say that surgeons sometimes get off on cutting into human bodies, but that it's good for society to tolerate their little warps. Maybe this is something of the sort."
"You didn't see that thing. I can't believe there isn't a better way."
"But he could justify everything about it?"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. As much of her body has to be exposed to the radiation as is possible. The storm for this DNA infusion is more powerful than her original Genesis and her time in the chamber needs to be kept to a minimum. They could hit her one side at a time, but there are side effects from the genetic serum in a double hit like that, and the longer she spends in the chamber, the more possibility there is of cell damage and they need to keep her exposure to the absolute minimum.
"But, dammit Xe! What would you think if some guy told you they were gonna strip your girlfriend naked, clamp her into something that looks like a cross between a love swing in a Marilyn Chambers porno flick and a piece of Dr. Frankenstein's lab equipment, stick some piece of apparatus in her... down there..." Drummond blanched and shuddered.
"Oh, and by the way, we have this big horkin' cardiac needle and we're gonna stab her in the heart with it."
He looked up at the raven-haired beauty and found an expression of sympathy on her face. "I'm not sure I can do this to her, Xe."
"Sure you can," she said almost automatically, without thinking. "Consider the alternative."
"You're right," he sighed. "The alternative is unthinkable."
But neither one of them believed it.
Next: XXII. Later that day, and a short dollar | Previous: XX. Meanwhile, back at the Center