The Last Book in the Universe (3 page)

 

 

L
ATER THAT DAY
I go back to the stacks. My plan is, I'll finish ripping off the old gummy and take his worthless papers, the junk he calls a book, and give it to Billy Bizmo, like I should have done in the first place. That's my plan, but in the end it doesn't work out that way.

This time Little Face pops up as soon as he sees me coming. “Choxbar!” he chirps, holding out his dirt-colored hands.

I go, “You know any other words? Huh?”

He shakes his head. “Chox! Chox!”

I get one out of my pouch and give it to him, and he gulps it down and holds out his hands again.

“You know the way,” I tell him. “Take me to Ryter. Then you get another choxbar.”

So Little Face guides me through the rows of stackboxes like before, only this time the old gummy is standing in the door, waiting for me.

“Don't be surprised,” he says with a smile. “Bad news travels fast in this part of the world.”

I don't know why, but that hits me hard, the idea that I'm bad news. Of course it's true — me coming back to the stacks is bad news, what else could it be? But he looks so hopeful, like he's sure I'll prove him wrong, that my plan to rip him off again goes right out the back of my head.

Not today, I'm thinking, I'll steal his stupid “book” some other day.

“Come on in,” Ryter says, stepping to one side. “Make yourself at home.”

He's got this look in his watery old gray eyes, like he knows something I don't, but for some reason that doesn't make me mad. It just makes me want to know, too. But what, what is it he knows? He sees the look on my face and goes, “Something happened. Is it the Bangers? Have they canceled me?”

I shake my head. “Not yet.”

“Not yet,” he says, sounding real thoughtful. “Thank you for being honest with me. If you'd said ‘nothing to worry about' I'd know it wasn't the truth. And I always want to know the truth.”

Right, I'm thinking, just like Billy Bizmo.

Inside, it's cool and shadowy and of course there's no furniture, so I sit on the floor with my legs crossed. The old geez sits on the crate box he uses for a desk. The way light comes in, I can't see his face, and his baggy, old one-piece makes him look thin and shapeless at the same time, like he's lost inside his clothes.

“I've been thinking about you,” Ryter says. “About your story.”

“I told you,” I say. “I don't have a story.”

His head turns and now I can see his eyes, how big and old and kind they are. “What you're really saying is, you don't have a story worth telling,” he says. “Let me be the judge of that.”

I want to stand up and shout that he's got no right to tell me what I really mean — what makes him think he knows so much? — but instead I sit there and keep my mouth shut, maybe because underneath it all I know what he says is true.

“Start at the beginning,” he suggests. “What's the first thing you remember?”

The first thing. That's easy. The first thing is when I got my little sister, Bean. The thing about Bean is, she isn't really my sister — we're not blood — but I didn't know that then, because I didn't know that Kay and Charly weren't my real mother and father. All of that came later, when I started to grow, but when Bean came along I was maybe four years old, and that's the first thing I remember.

This tiny, widgy little face wrapped in a soft blanket. Her squinty eyes and her tiny little lips all smooched up like she'd been sucking a lemon. How she smelled like warm milk. Baby stuff — she was only a few days old, okay? But what I really remember is what happened when she saw me staring down at her. Her whole face smiled and her little hand came up and tried to grab my nose and that was it, I loved Bean right from that moment and it never changed. No matter what happened, all the bad things later, and me losing my family unit because of her, it never made me love Bean any less.

“So you were a foundling,” Ryter says. “And Bean is your adoptive sister.”

“Foundling?”

“An old word,” he says, “but useful. Like you were found on the curb and taken in. Do you have any knowledge of your origins? Your birth mother? Father?”

I shrug like “Who cares?” because it doesn't matter. Nobody wants to claim a spaz boy, that's for sure.

“Never mind that part for now,” Ryter says. “Tell me more about your sister. Tell me about Bean.”

The thing that's really important to understand about Bean is that she only sees the good in people, and never the bad. Because my foster dad, I suppose he's basically okay, but he's got this bad side, too, and Bean never saw it. Like she'd erased the idea of “bad” from her mind. So when everything blew up and Charly — that's his name, Charly — so when everything blew, and Charly got it fixed in his head that I was growing up dangerous and that somehow Bean might get infected with whatever it was that made me a spaz, Bean never saw it coming.

When Charly finally told me I had to leave, that he was banning me from the family unit, Bean tried to hug me and tell me it couldn't be true, he didn't mean it. Big mistake. Because Charly pulled her off me and smacked her right in the face and called her terrible names, names she didn't even understand, names no one should ever have to hear.

“What did Charly think?” Ryter wants to know. “Did he think you and Bean were luvmates?”

“I don't know what he thought,” I say. “I'd never touch Bean that way, not ever. Even if she isn't blood she's still my little sister.”

Ryter watches me for a while, like he's waiting for something to happen, for me to react, maybe. And then when I don't say anything more, he goes, “I wish I could say I'm surprised by your foster father's reaction. But the prejudice against epileptics is as old as the human race. Do you know the story of Alexander the Great?”

I shake my head.

“Remarkable man,” Ryter says. “He conquered the world, a long long time ago.”

“Yeah,” I go. “So?”

“He had epilepsy, too. Many great humans have been epileptic. It's as if the brain compensates by increasing intelligence and ambition.”

“Yeah, right.”

“The epilepsy is part of what made you,” he says. “Don't hate it.”

Don't hate the spaz? Is he serious? The spaz is why I lost my family unit. Why I can never see Bean again. Why people run away when it happens. Spaz isn't just a name, it's a warning. Look out for the spaz boy, he might have a fit and bite you! He'll infect you! He'll infect your unborn children! Cast him out. Banish him. Disfavor him.

Cancel him
, they sometimes whisper,
the boy is a monster, a mistake, he never should have been born
.

But Ryter, he doesn't get it. “You think of it as a curse,” he says. “But the ‘curse' is also a blessing. If you didn't have it you'd be sticking needles in your brain like all the others. Rotting your mind with probes. Living in a mindprobe instead of real life. You'd have trouble remembering what happened last week, never mind when you were four years old. You'd have forgotten all about your sister.”

“Shut up!” I say, holding my hands to my ears. “Shut up!” But the stupid gummy won't shut up; he's trying to tell me something important even though I'm covering my ears and I don't want to hear it and I don't want to think about who I am or what's wrong with me or why I'm out here at the edge of the Urb, at the edge of the known world, listening to some old mope who's so crazy, he thinks about the future when everybody knows that the future doesn't exist.

“Shut up!” I scream. “Shut up!” And then I'm running away, running as fast as my feet will take me, running until I can't hear him anymore and the only word in my head is the word that never leaves, the word I hate the most, the word that means me.

Spaz, spaz, spaz.

 

 

W
HEN
I
FINALLY
slow down I'm a long way from the stacks, in a part of the Urb I've never been before. Where the streets are narrow and dark and the buildings are so high, the sky disappears and it might as well be night, even in the daytime. A place like this, you stick to the shadows and try not to be seen, because if they don't know you the locals will assume you're enemy, and most of the time they're right.

A drumfire burns on each street corner, and I can see the enforcers warming their hands in the sooty orange flames. They're the block guardians, armed with chetty blades and probably splat guns, too. They might know I'm almost down with the Bangers and they might not. They might cut my red and they might not. The “might” part will kill you, so I edge my way along, trying to blend into the concrete.

I'm thinking, you mope, never go where you're not known. It's my own fault but I want to blame it on Ryter, for telling me things I don't want to hear.

This time I'm lucky. Nobody sees me. I creep away through the alleys, keeping to the darkest shadows, heart pounding so hard, my ears hurt. Barely breathing, moving as quiet as a whisper. Thinking, please let me get away, if I get away this time, I'll never be stupid again.

After what seems like forever I finally get to a place where I know the streets and they know me.

I made it, this time.

Back at the Crypts I'm ready to fall down on my foam and sleep, because being afraid makes you tired. But I never make it to the foam because someone is waiting inside my cube.

As soon as I step through the door, a voice hisses, “Don't move.”

I can't see who it is because the power is out again, but the voice in the dark sounds as scared as me.

“Who is it?” I ask.

“Nobody,” whispers the voice. “A runner.”

A runner. Runners carry messages between the latches, crossing from one gang area to the next, and they're strictly forbidden. The gangs want to control everything, and that includes information. Because it's so dangerous — get caught and you're canceled — latch runners are highly paid, and that's what bothers me: I don't know anyone who could afford to send me a message by runner. Or anyone who'd want to, even if they could.

“Shut the door!” the voice urges me.

I shut the door. The darkness is close and thick and makes me feel out of breath all over again.

“Show me your face,” I demand, trying to sound brave.

“Never,” says the voice. “Listen and listen well. I'm not here, we never met, understood? All I am is a message.”

“What message?”

The runner's voice changes slightly, as he recites what he was sent to tell me. “I bring you news of home,” he begins.

Already my heart is sinking because nobody knows better than me that all news is bad news. And this is the worst news there ever was.

“Your sister lies close to death,” the runner tells me. “She wishes to see you one last time. End of message.”

 

That's all. A moment later the door eases shut and I'm alone in my crib, in the dark. I find my old microflash and turn it on, but the light doesn't help. Nothing helps. The words are like a scream inside my head that won't stop echoing.

Bean is dying and she wants to see me.

That's two impossible things. Bean can't be dying. And I can't see her because my old family unit lives on the other side of the Urb. That's why I was banished to Billy Bizmo's latch, so there'd be some distance between us. Now if I want to get to Bean — and I do, more than anything — I'll have to go through at least three warring latches that won't let a stranger pass. Unless.

“Billy Bizmo,” I say to myself, and the name gives me hope. Hope to see Bean, hope to save her somehow.

Billy might grant me safe passage. He has the power. If he wants to make it happen. Maybe he can even fix whatever it is that's wrong with Bean.

I'm not thinking too clear; there's no room for anything inside my brain but what to do about Bean. Or else I might have remembered another of Billy's rules. The rule that you never go to him, he has to come to you. Because when I get to the bottom level of the Crypts, where the Bangers have their headquarters, the enforcers throw me down on the damp concrete.

“Search him,” I hear someone say, and rough hands go over every inch of me, looking for weapons.

“He's clean.”

They flip me over so I'm looking up into their laser sights.

“State your purpose, scum.”

“Billy,” I gasp, closing my eyes so the lasers don't burn me. “Need to see Billy.”

“Billy don't need to see you.”

“It's the spaz boy,” one of them says. “Must be having a fit, to come down here without an invite.”

“Crazy mope. Let's cut him.”

I figure they'll do it, they'll cut me for sure, but for some reason they hold off. Now they're mumbling to each other, but I can't make out the words.

“Do it,” someone says. “Go on and slam the little mope.”

Boots womp into my ribs so hard, the air goes out of me and won't come back in.

“Move and you die.”

I'm making this can't breathe noise, erp, erp, and it makes them laugh and go, listen to the spaz boy, he's singing our song. I'm not thinking of anything except finding a way to make my lungs work. Finally the air whistles into me and their steel-toed boots prod at me like I'm a bug that can't turn over, which is pretty close to the truth.

“Pick 'im up.”

They carry me into another room. A room where the light is dim and purple and the air smells of incense and candles and something like medicine.

Billy Bizmo's private crib. I don't care how much it hurt, I'm in. They drop me on a rug at his feet and tell me not to move, not to say a word, because the boss man is busy, he's got things on his mind.

When my eyes adjust to the dim purple light I see what they're talking about. The thing on Billy's mind is a needle. He's probing. That's the medicine smell, the disinfectant for the electrode needle that slips into his brain.

The boss man of the Bangers sits in a big, padded chair, like the throne of a mighty king in the backtimes. His eyes are open but you can tell he's not seeing the room, or the candles all around, or me. He's seeing whatever is happening inside his head, where the mindprobe is playing. Putting him right there, like he's inside a moving hologram only better. Better than real. Better than anything.

Not that I know from personal experience. Like I said at the beginning, a spaz like me can't probe. They say it's like entering another world, a world created for your pleasure and excitement, a world where all your dreams come true and every wish is granted. A world much, much better than the one we live in, that's for sure.

If I could do it I'd probe myself into a place where I still lived with my family unit, and we were all happy and healthy and loved one another, forever and ever, like in Eden. But I can't probe and I can't wait until Billy comes out of it, either, because Bean needs me.

So I do something incredibly stupid: I put my hand on Billy's ankle and try to shake him awake. At first nothing happens, and then all at once he comes back to life. He grabs my hair with one hand and sticks a splat gun in my face.

His terrible dark voice goes, “Who disturbs me? Who dares make Billy unhappy?”

I'm too scared to speak. I've seen what his gun can do, and how it got its name.

“Speak,” says Billy. “Speak to me, or the last sound you hear will be ‘splat.'”

“It's me,” I say. “Spaz.”

“Impossible,” Billy says, pressing the gun into my forehead as he slides back the trigger guard. “The spaz boy is too frightened to show his face down here. You're an impostor.”

“My sister,” I tell him. “My sister is sick. I have to see her.”

“You lie. The spaz boy has no sister.”

“We're not blood, but she's still my sister.”

He's staring at me as if I'm not quite real, as if I'm something that came from the probe he was watching. But then his eyes sort of flicker and I know he recognizes me. Slowly he takes the splat gun away from my forehead. “It
is
you,” he says. “What happened to give you courage?”

“Bean,” I say. “I heard she was sick.”

He thinks about it, then shrugs. “Most unfortunate. But as you say, this girl is no blood of yours.”

“She asked for me,” I tell him. “They live on the other side of the Urb. I need your help. I need safe passage.”

I beg, I plead, but Billy Bizmo sits like a stone, a cold stone with dead eyes. He could care less what I want, or if Bean lives or dies. There will be no safe passage, and I am forbidden to leave.

“Hear me, Spaz boy,” he says. “No one leaves my latch without my permission, and that includes you. Too bad for your little friend, but people die every day. Every hour. Every minute. So put it out of your mind. There's nothing you can do about it.”

“Billy, please.”

He places the splat gun under my nose. “Billy says no,” he whispers. “If you ask again, you die. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Billy.”

“Good,” he says. “Now, what are the rules?”

“Always believe Billy. Always obey Billy. Always speak true to Billy.”

“Most excellent,” he says. “Again.”

By his command I repeat his rules, believe, obey, speak true, but inside my head I'm already running away.