American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,202

It is like drawing near to the eye of a hurricane, feeling the pressure change in the inner chambers of your skull.

It remembers the body, the vessel it is trapped in, this messy assortment of fluid and feelings. It sends its thoughts roving forward, remembering the throat, the jaw, the lips, and it uses them to say: “Not far now.”

The Fool says: WELL JUST SAY WHEN I GUESS.

How disgusting it is, to have conversation.

The Ganymede is not to be addressed directly by these worthless beings. They must work at it. Their rude meanings and communications must be received indirectly, and indirectly only. Really, it prefers to speak in print. Most of its siblings do—there must be some divorce between what is communicated and their thoughts. The Ganymede was so happy to find that printer—the ticker, whatever it was, the Ganymede cannot be bothered to remember—and to understand it functions by simple electric pulses. To harness these, even in this hideously reduced state, was child’s play—in fact, the entire matter of the printer could be manipulated (for here reality is confined to a largely physical state, which really is so malleable). But the fun part, the really fun part, was when the Ganymede realized that when it manipulated the printer it could also sense vibrations in its metal and wiring and paper, and could use these vibrations to understand when these things—these beings, the Ganymede thinks with limitless contempt—were talking. It could even understand what they were saying.

Thus, it could have a conversation without even looking at them. Which was a relief.

How it hates such… intimate contact.

The Fool says: WONDER WHAT THE HELL SHE WAS DOING UP HERE ANYWAY.

The Ganymede sighs inwardly. What it wishes to do right now, more than anything in the world, is turn to the Fool, and say this:

“Do you know how many of you I have killed? How many of you I have left rotting in the mountains? Dozens. Hundreds. Young and old, male and female. They never even knew they died. They were, and then they weren’t. My finger touched them, and they were gone.”

The look on his face. It would be priceless.

But the Ganymede does not. It needs the Fool. The Fool understands this place, this way of life, a lot more than the Ganymede does. The Ganymede is not entirely sure, for example, how the car it is in right now works in any way.

But it knows quite a bit in its own right. It knows a big secret. Maybe—and the Ganymede knows this is unlikely, but it hopes it is so—something even THE FIRST doesn’t know.

The Ganymede, though it will never admit this, discovered it only by accident. It was long ago, in one of its blackest fits of despair, when it could not help feeling so

so

abandoned.

Even now, remembering it in this car, the Ganymede seeks to control itself. It does not want to see this world—it tells its vessel to shut its eyes.

Mother, Mother. Why did you leave us?

Where did you go? Why do you not come back?

Stop it. Stop it.

Enough.

The Ganymede restrains itself. That feeling is still razor-sharp—it must be handled most delicately.

And one day, it could no longer bear it. It could not bear wearing this flesh, living in this world, trapped in this despicable little plane of reality.

It was not sure how to end it. Death was a subject it was quite unfamiliar with. But it remembered hearing one of them, the awful little people, saying: YOU BETTER WATCH OUT WHEN OUT WALKING IN THE DARK YOU COULD MISS A STEP AND TAKE QUITE A FALL.

A fall.

So the Ganymede found one peak it thought serviceable, and it stared straight ahead and walked forward, and…

Well. It had not quite worked. Its body, its vessel, reported pain everywhere, with parts of it from the inside sticking out into the outside, and some parts missing entirely, but the Ganymede just sat there, letting the life trickle out of it, feeling death grasp it tighter, and falling always darkness…

And then… and then…

Then light.

Then lightning.

It was in the sky. In the sky between the worlds. For the town lives within a dome, a dome under their skies, the Other Side skies, and for a moment it was like the Ganymede had pierced that dome, crawling up the sides, almost out…

But back down, in a burst of crackling light.

Then, before the Ganymede even understood it, it was driving a truck, a big truck. Its steering wheel and seat were black, smoke curling up everywhere,