Levels: The Host Page 12

  “Yes, poison. No known antidote. None at all.” They swallowed. There was a bitter burning sensation in Watly’s throat as the liquid went down. “It shouldn’t take full effect until after I’ve left you, Watly, but when the time comes, it’ll come fast.” The body gave a shudder as the liquid hit Watly’s stomach. There was a brief sense of nausea. “It’s a shame you’ll not get fade-out pay, Watly. You’ll have earned it.”

  Watly would surely have fainted had it been possible. He was dead. I’m a raping dead man, he thought. It’s all over but the dying.

  His donor began to laugh. The laughter started small but increased rapidly. Soon the whole body was shaking with it. Wracked with it. Doubled over. It was a strange sensation. Here was Watly, absolutely terrified, while his body acted overcome with humor. The laughter wound down and broke after a few moments, and the donor—wiping tears—spoke again.

  “I got you there, didn’t I, Watly Caiper? I had you going for a moment. We had quite a scare, you and I. In truth it’s just a harmless liquid, Watly; no effect at all. Not poison. No, no. A small practical joke. Mea culpa, Watly. Mea maxima culpa. Just showing you who’s boss. Just getting your attention. Getting acquainted.”

  The donor threw the empty flask and its case in with the first one containing the wafers. Those two cases and Watly’s old clothing were all that was now left in the large silver box. The donor closed the lid and shoved the box down the garbage chute. It would no doubt slide to the building’s melting vat. No evidence, Watly thought. No evidence of the cuff-removing equipment—nor of my old clothing. No assignment slip. No evidence of anything. All gone. Watly found himself strangely mourning the stupid pocket-jacket. It was a trivial thing—but he loved that jacket. It was the nicest damn article of clothing he owned. Now it was gone. He felt he’d lost a friend.

  “Well, I hope I haven’t traumatized you too much, Watly. It was all in fun. Time for us to hit the road, I think. Time to push off.” The donor straightened and smoothed the workervest and brushed Watly’s hair downward. In the hosting room there was no evidence anyone had been there. The donor glanced around. All was in order. Tidy. White.

  As they exited the building through the cuff-return door, the donor continued a soft running commentary. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it, Watly? A magical night. A night when any number of things might happen. Even down here on the sewer level you can tell it. Even here among the vermin there is magic.”

  There was a pause as they continued walking. The donor was favoring the left leg slightly. “Ah, Watly, I see we have a soreness here. We have a bit of a bruise on the leg, do we?” The donor stopped walking and slammed a fist directly into the sore area of Watly’s thigh. Hard. Watly’s peripheral vision blurred for a moment. The pain was incredible.

  “Hurts there, doesn’t it? I guarantee you, Watly Caiper, that bothered you more than it bothered me. You’re not dealing with a baby here.” Again the donor punched full force into the center of the bruise.

  Rape, that hurts! What are you? How can you do that? How can you stand that? Watly’s body trembled and his eyes watered. This person was insane. Watly was being controlled by an insane person. For a moment he thought he was losing grip himself. For a moment Watly thought he was drifting away from reality. His mind wanted solace. His mind wanted to think broadly—not narrowly. His mind wanted to float off somewhere. Somewhere safe and warm. Thinking widely. At least... Watly thought, at least let me close my eyes—please just for a while....

  The me is not the body.

  The me is not the body.

  The me is neither hand nor face nor sex.

  The me is Watly Caiper, I.

  (A sense of self.)

  The body is an it.

  The body is a that.

  It could belong to another.

  For the me is a movable thing.

  The me is a movable thing.

  “Mea culpa, Watly Caiper. You’re being a good sport about all this. It was just another demonstration, Watly. To show which of us is the stronger. By now I think it should be obvious.”

  The donor had started walking again and was heading up Lexington Avenue, ignoring the bums who approached. The walk was smooth and self-assured. This person, Watly thought, is more comfortable in my body than I am. Most of the tenters were inside with the lights on by now. Watly could see all these warm glows through the tent fabric on the left and right as they passed. He felt envy. These people didn’t have much, but they were sheltered, relatively warm, probably decently fed and decently clothed, and—most important of all—they were themselves. They were who they were. They had no parasitic beasts jumping about in their brains. Watly would have given everything he had to trade places with any one of them.

  The donor turned on Sixty-third and headed east. Watly could guess their destination. It was obvious. They were headed for the nearest tube to Second. There was one on Third Avenue between Sixty-third and Sixty-fourth streets.

  The tube was lit up brightly and the donor approached it confidently, walking in the precise center of the street. A cruiser passed by without even slowing. The donor did not falter. They reached the tube. Watly watched his own hands as they flipped away the thin metal tube seal and pulled the hatch wide open. He saw his feet step in and felt the cool air inside. The hatch was closed and resealed behind. There was suddenly no outside sound. There was no echo—just a dead mechanical hum. After a brief pause a pleasant but emotionless female voice spoke.

  “Face forward, please,” the artificial voice said.

  Watly’s donor did as told.

  The tube interior was shiny black and Watly’s face and shoulders were surrounded by a blue-toned circular light. The donor was looking directly into a surveillance lens in the middle of the light. Watly felt naked. He felt so naked he thought for a moment that maybe the lens could see deep into his body. Maybe it could see clear through the high forehead, into the skull, to Watly Caiper himself. Maybe it could see past the donor all the way to Watly—who was, at the moment, well buried. If only it were true. If only Watly could wave a little mental hand and show himself. I’m here! Don’t listen to this bolehole!

  The voice spoke again.

  “Place your Second Level travel pass and your identicard in the proper slots before you, please.”

  The donor brought out Watly’s own identicard. This was slipped between a pair of metal lips marked ident. Out of one of the previously unopened red cases, the donor produced a card Watly had never seen before. It had Watly’s name and image on it, but it was unfamiliar. The donor placed it in a receptor slot marked second level pass.

  “Please state your name and your business on Manhattan’s Second Level.”

  The donor cleared Watly’s throat and proceeded to do a somewhat transparent imitation of a First Level accent. “My name is Watly Caiper and I’ve been handed the great honor of being hired to work on Second for the night, on a trial basis.”

  “What is the work, Mr. Caiper?” the disembodied voice asked.

  “The cleaning of a toilet, ma’am.”

  “What particular toilet is to be cleaned?”

  The donor fumbled with one of the red cases until it opened abruptly. Inside was nothing. The donor pretended to read from the nothing, shielding the lens’s view with a cupped hand.

  “At forty-seven East Seventy-second. On the...” The donor squinted, “south side of the street. Second floor. Dirty loo.”

  “Do you have a temporary working permit?”

  “That I do, yes.” From the first red case the donor produced yet another card with Watly’s face imprinted on it. This one had a ridge-coded section. The donor slipped it into a central unmarked slot. There was a brief humming.

  “Is there an explanation,” the female voice asked, “as to why said toilet cannot clean itself?”

  The donor took a deep breath. “That I don’t kn
ow, ma’am. Some kind of breakdown, I suppose.” The donor brushed a hand clumsily through Watly’s hair. The gesture seemed uncharacteristic of both the donor and Watly.

  There was another short period of humming and then all three cards popped outward. The donor removed them and carefully placed them in the one red case. The emotionless voice returned.

  “Access permitted, Watly Caiper. Standard warning, standard caution, and standard admonition.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” said the donor, still in character.

  “You will be allotted one unmanned copper for escort and surveillance. Have a pleasant evening.”

  The voice clicked off permanently and the tube began to rise. The donor exhaled slowly.

  Watly was going to Second Level.

  CHAPTER 13

  It was hard for Watly to see much. Most of what he observed was from the edges of his vision. The donor kept their head down and their feet moving. Watly could only get a sense of things—but the sense he got was extraordinary. Fuckable to the extreme.

  The first thing that hit him was the air. The air was different—not just fresher, but richer. It was fuller somehow. Cleaner even than he remembered Brooklyn air—but then that seemed so long ago. This air smelled like someone had scrubbed it, dried it, and fluffed it before allowing it to enter any nose. Then Watly noticed the unmanned copper. It was nothing like the coppers on First Level or in Brooklyn. Those coppers were all tarnished and old. They always seemed held together with wire and tape and were invariably dragging some part or other along the ground. This Second Level copper was beautiful. It was so well kept and polished it appeared to be some jewel—some ornate pendant for a giant. Watly had never realized that, under the soot, coppers really were copper-colored. This one hovered two feet off the ground and stayed a polite three or four yards away. When the donor moved, it followed behind perfectly, like a faithful pet. Its lenses and sensors were always facing its charge. So were its gun turrets.

  As the donor walked along Watly was overcome with Second Level. He could see so very little, but he could tell he was in another world. Everything was vertical. Vertical to the extreme. Everything was open and clean. There were trees on the sidewalk. Greenness. Watly’s heart felt suddenly full. He couldn’t help it. It was like some wonderland. There were no daylites—just a few streetlights every now and then. It was darker than First Level. Even in this darkness (or perhaps because of it) Watly could sense open space above. There was no ceiling to reflect the light back down. Something going up could go up forever. Light, air, sound. Up there was nothing but sky. It had been a long time since he’d seen the sky. Seemed like years and years since Brooklyn. Watly wanted to stop for a moment—just a short moment—so he could look around. And look upward. The donor continued walking briskly, head bent forward, focusing only on the creamy white sidewalk.

  Watly caught visual snatches of buildings to the left and right. Everything he saw was spotless, well kept, and beautiful. There were no tenters, there was no dirt, there was no dripping. Occasionally a person would pass by on foot but the donor never looked up. Watly could see only shoes. Expensive shoes. Perhaps this was protocol: Never look at the face of the wearer of expensive shoes. Watly didn’t know. A sedan passed. With his peripheral vision Watly could see it was a private car. One person owned that car. Incredible.

  It was sublimely quiet. Even at this hour First Level was always full of noises—people shouting, buses lumbering past, the hollow echoes following any sound. But here there was serenity. True serenity. Aside from the soft buzz of the copper and the click of the donor’s footsteps, there was virtual silence.

  Everywhere was space. Space up and space out. Watly felt as though the world had suddenly opened up. The sky felt broader than it ever had back home. It was as if he’d just been let out of a box he hadn’t even realized he had been in. He couldn’t help feeling good. He couldn’t help it. If only the donor would look upward as they walked. Watly desperately wanted to see. He wanted to see everything there was to see. Second Level was intoxicating. I want to stay here, Watly thought. Forget everything else—this is what I want. I want the beauty and the solace. I want the peace and the space. Nothing on the CV ever prepared me for this. It’s incredible. Shit—there are trees. Healthy trees! And the buildings go up forever!

  “Enjoying our little trip so far, Watly Caiper?” It was the whispered voice again from Watly’s own mouth. “A few more blocks and we’ll be there. Then the fun begins.”

  Watly felt himself snap back from his Second Level reverie. He remembered he was not in the best of circumstances. This was not some tourist trip. “I’d speak louder, Watly,” the donor said, “but I fear our electronic friend has ears as well as eyes.”

  The donor turned down a different street and then turned once again. Watly had totally lost his sense of direction. He had no idea where they were and nothing he saw was familiar. All he could assume was that they were heading to the address mentioned in the tube. If not, Watly supposed, the copper would have given them trouble. The street they were on now was different from the broad avenue. It seemed more residential, more private. Every few steps the donor would sidestep an ornately decorated flying buttress. No two were alike, each pattern and design unique. Watly wondered if these buttresses had any practical function or were just decorative, fashionable. Either way, they were impressive. Either way the street was a fuck and a half.

  The donor stopped in front of a particularly large building, eyes still downward.

  “Here we are, Watly. Home at last.” There was humor in the cold whispered voice. Watly did not like the sound of it.

  The unmanned copper stayed waiting on the sidewalk as the donor mounted the steps to the front door. Watly was amazed to see that the front door was wood. The entire door. It was stained a dark color and polished to a shiny finish. He was impressed. The donor touched it and it opened. It was unlocked. Before entering, the donor gave a jolly wave to the copper. “I won’t be long,” the oily voice said, still with a tinge of irony.

  Just inside the door was a tiny wall keyboard. The donor punched in a series of numbers with one hand and then looked up for the first time since arriving on Second Level.

  There was a small alcove, a short walk down the foyer, and then... wood. Dark brown boards and intricately carved panels gleamed with polish from every direction. Even the floor was wood. And the ceiling, segmented in rectangular patterns of thick wooden beams over crisscrossed light wood. They were now in a huge sitting room. There was a love seat, a full couch, a table, and two chairs—all in real wicker. And a bent-wood rocker. The walls were decorated with portraits of important-looking characters in dark suits. Serious-faced businesswomen and -men. Politicians. It was definitely a rich person’s home. There were heavy, purple floor-to-ceiling curtains covering what probably were enormous windows. At the rear was a huge curving wooden staircase with wooden banisters carved to look like a bird’s wings. Everywhere there was space and more space. Room to run. Room to dance and twirl endlessly. There was no sound at all in the building. Not even creaking from all the wood. The donor stood still for a moment, taking in the room. Or perhaps showing the room to Watly.

  “Not a bad little place, Watly. Don’t you think?” The affected accent was gone and the voice was loud again. Oily loud. Oozing with oily winter. Badness. The donor crossed the room and climbed the wide staircase.

  “I did a little research, Watly Caiper, and would you believe what the first five floors of this building are? What the ‘sewer level’ of this very building is? A crematorium, Watly! Isn’t that incredible? As we speak, bodies are being melted down below us. The fire of Hades. It’s enough to make one believe in hell and heaven, huh?” Watly felt his stomach constrict in a brief spasm of the donor’s laughter. “Don’t worry, Watly. No one can hear us. This is a private home. The only recording lenses here are on the office levels.”

  At the top of
the stairs was a broad carpeted hallway. Every few feet there was another wood table with another antique on it. On one was a vase—maybe even from the outerworld, Europe or somewhere. On another table was an old electronic typewriter, then a small bronze sculpture, then a carrying case of some kind. It was like a museum.

  The donor walked down the hall quickly to the last door on the left. It too was solid wood. There was a brass knocker in its center shaped like an open hand. The donor lifted it and knocked once before entering.

  “Here we are, my darling! Honey, we’re home!”

  It was the largest bed Watly had ever seen. It must have been twelve feet square and the canopy rose a good fifteen feet above it. Everything was draped, lacy and white. The bed was the only furniture in the room. It was up against a clean white wall and across from a single window that had its thick shades drawn tightly.

  Lying spread-eagled in the exact center of the bed was a naked form. A woman.

  She was stunning. Breathtaking. She was one of the most physically beautiful women Watly had ever seen in his life. Her head was sunk deep into an enormous pile of pillows to the point where it was almost buried, but Watly could make out long, light brown hair. Her face was angelic, yet strong. She had exquisitely light skin that looked pure and unblemished. Almost too pale. Maybe even sickly pale, like that blond man’s skin had been....

  Her body was taut and firm-looking. It was an active body. An athletic body. There was no excess anything. Even her feet were striking, delicate and smooth. Tiny blue veins running across them vulnerably. As for her breasts (the donor’s eyes scanned them slowly), they were perfect—full and firm as if she’d just grown them minutes before. As if they’d just swollen out over her ribs ripely. Gravity didn’t seem to have affected her. Even as she lay on her back the breasts pointed up strongly. Achingly beautiful.