Home Again, Home Again | Page 6

the long, nice name that no one ever used to describe the
bat-house.
"I thought, like, maybe I could be, you know, a spaceship pilot or
something."
"Then you must stu-dy math-e-mat-ics and phy-sics. If you like, Chet, I
can re-quest ad-vanced in-struct-tion-al mat-e-rials for you."
"Sure, that'd be great. Thanks, Robotron."
"You are wel-come, Chet. I am glad to help. My own par-ent was in a
Cen-ter on my world, you know. I un-der-stand how you feel. There is
still time re-main-ing in your ses-sion. What else would you like to
dis-cuss?"
"My mother doesn't talk anymore. Nothing. Why is that?"
"Your mo-ther is. . . ." The Amazing Robotron fumbled for a word,
buried somewhere deep in the hypnotic English lexicon baked into its
brain. "Your mo-ther has a prob-lem, and she needs your aff-ec-tion
now more than e-ver. What-ev-er rea-son she has for her si-lence, it is
not you. Your mo-ther and fa-ther love you, and dream of the day when
you leave here and make your own way through the gal-ax-y."
Of course his parents loved him, he supposed, in an abstract kind of
way. His mother, who hadn't worn anything but a bathrobe in months,
whose face he couldn't picture behind his eyes but whose bathrobe he
could visualize in its every rip and stain and fray. His father, who

seemed to have forgotten how to groom himself, who spent his loud
days in one of the bat-house's workshops, drinking beer with his
buddies while they played with the arc welders. His parents loved him,
he knew that.
"OK, right, thanks. I've gotta blow, 'K?"
"All-right. I will see you on Thurs-day, then?"
But Chet was already out the door, digging Debbie Carr's purse from
under the planter, then running, doubled over the bulge it made in his
shirt, hunting for a private space in the anthill.
#
The entire north face of the bat-house was eyeless, a blind, windowless
expanse of foam that seemed to curve as it approached infinity.
Some said it was an architectural error, others said it was part of the
bat-house's heating scheme. Up in nosebleed country, on the 120th
level, it was almost empty: sparsely populated by the very battiest bats,
though as more and more humans were found batty, they pushed
inexorably upwards.
Chet rode the lift to the 125th floor and walked casually to the end of
the hallway. At this height, the hallways were bare foam, without the
long-wear carpet and fake plants that adorned the low-altitude
territories. He walked as calmly as he could to the very end of the
northern hall, then hunkered down in the corner and spilled the purse.
Shit, but Debbie Carr was going girlie. The pile was all tampons and
makeup and, ugh, a spare bra. A spare bra! I chuckled, and kept sorting.
There were three pennies, enough to buy six chocolate bars in the
black-market tuck-shop on the 75th floor. A clever little pair of folding
scissors, their blades razor-sharp. I was using them to slit the lining of
the purse when the door to 12525 opened, and the guy who thought he
was Nicola Tesla emerged.

My palms slicked with guilty sweat, and the pile of Debbie's crap, set
against the featureless foam corridor, seemed to scream its presence. I
spun around, working my body into the corner, and held the little
scissors like a dagger in my fist.
The guy who thought he was Nicola Tesla was clearly batty. He was
wearing boxer-shorts and a tailcoat and had a halo of wild, greasy hair
and a long, tangled beard, but even if he'd been wearing a suit and tie
and had a trip to the barber's, I'd have known he was batty the minute I
laid eyes on him. He didn't walk, he shambled, like he'd spent a long,
long time on meds. His eyes, set in deep black pits of sleeplessness,
were ferociously crazy.
He turned to stare at me.
"Hello, sonny. Do you like to swim?"
I stood in my corner, mute, trapped.
"I have an ocean in my apt. Maybe you'd like to try it? I used to love to
swim in the ocean when I was a boy."
My feet moved without my willing them. An ocean in his apt? My feet
wanted to know about this.
I entered his apt, and even my feet were too surprised to go on.
He had the biggest apt I'd ever seen. It spanned three quarters of the
length of the bat-house, and was five storeys high. The spots where he'd
dissolved the foam walls away with solvent were rough and uneven,
and rings of foam encircled each of the missing storeys above. I
couldn't imagine getting that much solvent: it was more tightly
controlled than plutonium,