House Immortal Page 8

  “Stupid,” Left Ned said. “I say run and live any day. Why are they a House target? There’s nothing out there except sand and grit.”

  “Geothermal, maybe?” I scooted my chair back and walked over to study the screens. “Wasn’t there something about the coal shipments being diverted from Big Vegas?”

  “Couple months back?” Right Ned said.

  “I think so. Check the reports, will you?”

  Neds got busy running through hot data—information we’d flagged as important—House movements, rumors of developments or advancements, failures in supply lines.

  Sometimes we could make sense of it, like when House Yellow, Technology, built a manufacturing facility right next to the gold-mining operation. They’d won ten years of the mine’s proceeds from some kind of in-House settlement with House Orange. Welton Yellow had built the facility to test, improve, and maintain the clever new technologies he developed to dig gold out of the dirt, technology that doubled the mine’s production. A technology Welton Yellow refused to share with any of House Orange’s other mining sites.

  Sometimes we just flagged things that might come in handy—weather changes, crop failure or excess, drone movement, and the like.

  “I don’t like him,” Right Ned said as he scrolled through the last six months or so of data.

  “Abraham?”

  “I understand you had to patch him up.”

  I waited for his question. For the reason he’d come down here.

  “Just.” He looked up from my laptop, where he’d sat to shuffle through information. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I wiped the screens and pulled up secondary satellite and ground views. “You know how I am with hurt things.”

  “He’s not a thing, Matilda,” Right Ned said. “He’s a galvanized tied to a House. Eyes and ears and mouth straight to the head of his House. Whatever he knows, they know.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Feed him to Lizard?”

  “Now you’re thinking,” Left Ned said.

  “Look.” I turned and leaned my hip against the curved bank of keyboards beneath the screens. “I know he’s trouble. I know I’m in deep here with my promise to go with him. But there was a drone locked onto him. They already know our house is here and our farm. And while I can claim House Brown, I’m not so sure I have rights. Human rights.”

  Right Ned looked away from the screen. “You’re human, Matilda. As much as I am.”

  “No, I’m not. Have you ever read through the treatise that ended the galvanized Uprising?”

  “The great betrayal?” Left Ned said.

  “Yes. When the galvanized left House Brown and let other Houses claim them. They negotiated peace between the houses and for human rights.”

  “Haven’t read the treatise, but I know what’s in it,” Left Ned said. “They bargained for House Brown to have no voice in the world, no resources. Left us alone to fend for ourselves.”

  “They bargained for humans—all humans, whether of normal configuration or mutated, compromised, or engineered—to have rights. Longlifes and shortlifes, every shape, sort, and size,” I said.

  “The right to food, shelter, work, and dignity. The right to earn credit and pay off debt. A way to leave other Houses and become House Brown, if they desire. A way out of indentured servitude to the other Houses.”

  “And?” Right Ned said. He wasn’t as loud about his dislike of Abraham, but it was clear he didn’t care for him either.

  “In exchange, the galvanized gave up the right to be classified as human. They are owned by the Houses. And if I’m like them . . . if I’m galvanized . . .”

  “You’re not like them,” Left Ned said.

  But Right Ned gave me a level look. “Didn’t they do anything to preserve their rights?”

  “Let’s just say humans got the better end of the deal.”

  Right Ned closed his eyes for a moment, anger or maybe just disappointment creasing his forehead. Then he opened his eyes.

  “You can still run, Tilly. We can hold him off and you can go.”

  I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being terrified of going into the city with Abraham.

  “Quinten hasn’t been home for three years,” I said softly. “Three. He’s never been gone more than a year at a time. I know you don’t know him, but he’s not like that. He’d be home if he could be. And since he isn’t, I’m assuming he’s hurt or trapped or mixed up in something he can’t get out of. So no matter if it isn’t safe or smart or the thing I should do, I’m going to find out what Abraham knows about my brother.”

  “And your mother?” Right Ned asked.

  “Yes. And who these ‘enemies’ of my father are. You are going to stay here and look after things—Grandma, House Brown, the beasts.”

  Their eyebrows notched up, and they both gave me the same blank look.

  “No,” Right Ned said. “We’re not. We are coming with you.”

  “Why in the world would you do that?”

  “Because,” Left Ned said.

  Right Ned ticked one eyebrow in agreement.

  “That’s not even a reason,” I said. “Let’s just track down who’s trying to wipe out the Fesslers. We can argue this out later.”

  I turned back to the screens, and so did they.

  An hour later, the only thing I’d gotten out of the data was a headache. I stood away from Quinten’s chair and stretched. Neds didn’t look up from the laptop.

  “You done?” Right Ned asked.

  “Need to check on Grandma. Oh, and I’ll feed the beasts tonight.” I started toward the stairs.

  “I do believe it’s your turn to cook,” Right Ned said.

  Damn. He was right. “Let’s switch. I’ll cook tomorrow.”

  “Why?”

  “Did you find anything yet that will help the Fesslers?”

  He leaned back in the chair so Right Ned could glance over at me. “No.”

  “Neither did I. But there’s an untapped database upstairs scrubbing my kitchen floor. He said he’d answer anything I asked.”

  “You’re going to ask him who’s out to crush our little desert community?”

  “In a roundabout way, yes.”

  “He’s not on our side, Tilly.”

  “I don’t need him to be on our side. I just need him to talk.” I climbed the stairs, pulled the door open, and almost yelped.

  Abraham was right there, leaning on the wall across from the door, arms folded over his chest.

  “Evening,” he said, that quick gaze of his soaking in every detail of the shadows behind me.

  “Hey.” I stepped out and latched the door shut as quick as I could. “Are you done with the cleanup?”

  “For a while now.”

  “Well, then. I’ll see to getting you those sheets.”

  “What’s in the basement?”

  “Storage. Dust. You know.” I strode down the hall and waved my hand over my shoulder. “Basement things.”

  “A locked door can’t keep me out.”

  “What are you going to do—break it down?”

  “I’m assuming you’d shoot me if I did.”

  “You are an intelligent man, Mr. House Gray.”

  “Abraham.”

  “Let’s go see about those sheets.”

  He followed me through the living room and into the opposite hallway, past Neds’ room to his room at the end.

  The door was open.

  Everything in the room was cleaned, dusted, and rearranged.

  “So I see you changed the sheets. And the room,” I said.

  “I got bored.”

  “You prefer the bed on the opposite wall?”

  “I prefer the bookshelf in the lower left corner of the ro
om, and the ceiling fan not to be hanging over my head while I sleep.”

  “OCD?”

  “Feng shui.”

  “Is it contagious?”

  “Hardly anyone gets it.”

  “All right.” I glanced out the window. I’d lost a little time down in the basement; the evening light was just starting to fall.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked.

  “Not a problem. Night’s coming on soon. Since my farmhand is—”

  “In the basement burying bodies?”

  “—busy, I wondered if you’d give me a hand with the beasts.”

  “You keep farm animals?”

  “Something like that,” I said. “You don’t mind getting a little dirty with me, do you?”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up.

  Heat flashed across my cheeks again. Why did I keep saying things like that?

  “Looking forward to it,” he murmured. “It’s been too long since I got dirty.”

  It was suddenly too hot in the room. No, it was suddenly too hot in my skin.

  “I need to check on Grandma,” I said. “I’ll meet you outside.”

  I turned and scuttled out of there as fast as I could. Took me no time to walk down to Grandma’s room, knock softly on her door, and let myself in. She was sitting in her rocking chair by the window, humming to herself and petting one of the little sheep in her lap.

  I took a moment to breathe away my blush. “Everything all right, Grandma?”

  “Is it time for us to go now?” she asked.

  “No, we’re not going anywhere. Well, I’m going out to feed the beasts. Do you need me to bring you something?”

  “I’m just fine,” she said. “You go on with that man.”

  “Abraham?”

  “That’s the one. House Gray. Good man, always such a good man.”

  “Always? Do you know him, Grandma? Do you know Abraham?”

  She had tipped her head and was staring out the window and humming again, as if I didn’t exist.

  Her lucid moments were getting fewer and shorter. I knew she wouldn’t live forever, but things like this chiseled away at my heart. “Okay,” I said with the brightest tone I could muster. “I’ll see you soon. Neds are downstairs if you need him.”

  My room was right next door, and I ducked in, plucked up my heavier coat, and shrugged it on as I made my way down the hall.

  Abraham was waiting in the living room.

  “You have a strange sense of direction, Mr. House Gray,” I said. “The out-of-doors is out that door.”

  “Abraham,” he said absently. “After you.” He opened the door to the front porch, waiting for me.

  I walked past him. I didn’t wait to see if he was following as I headed over to the shed and my old Chevy truck.

  “Didn’t know anyone still used these things,” Abraham said.

  “A motor vehicle?” I swung into the driver’s seat. “You didn’t get here out here on foot, did you?”

  He settled into the passenger’s seat. “My car’s parked just off your property. I meant pickup trucks. They haven’t been on the assembly line for a century.”

  “We make do with what we have.” I turned the key and eight cylinders coughed to life, growling happily once it got the rust out.

  The sound of it put a smile on his face, even though he shook his head in the way people do when they’re remembering fond things.

  “Are you really over three hundred years old?” I asked.

  “I’m galvanized.”

  “Is that a yes?” I released the clutch and eased the truck down the rutted dirt road.

  “I was born in 1880.”

  That made him three hundred and thirty years old. He didn’t look a day over thirty. “Wow.”

  “What year were you born?” he asked.

  “Twenty-one eighty-four.”

  He laughed. I glanced away from the road to see what that looked like on him. It looked good. He laughed with his whole body, head tipped back, eyes curved tight, mouth open in a big smile, as if nothing in him hurt.

  If he weren’t laughing about my age, I might even join in.

  “You’re not twenty-six,” he chuckled.

  I slapped his arm. “Yes. I am.”

  He jerked and all the laughter was gone. “That . . . hurt.”

  “You bet it did.”

  “It shouldn’t.”

  “Why? Because I’m a girl?”

  “No, because I’m galvanized. And so are you. We don’t feel pain. We don’t feel physical sensation.”

  “Speak for yourself. I feel.”

  “Do you?”

  “Of course I do. And obviously you do too.”

  “I feel you,” he said quietly.

  “Me?’

  “You. Only you.”

  There was heat behind his words, but it wasn’t anger. It was the kind of heat that made me want to reach over and kiss him to see what that would be like. To see if that would be enough to end this fire he had set off in me.

  Steady now, I told myself. The only thing I was going to use him for was information. All the rest of the needs and feelings he stirred up inside me weren’t important.

  Which would be fine, if I believed it.

  8

  The town was abandoned, erased from the maps. They tore the tower down and hushed and hid the records. Only twelve people had survived the experiment when the great bell rang out. They hushed and hid them too.—1911

  —from the journal of L.U.C.

  I took the corner along the fence. Lizard would be quickest to check on since we’d just fed it this morning. Then we’d go to Pony, the leapers, then the chickens by the barn.

  “How do you walk around if you can’t feel?” I killed the engine and hopped out into the grass. Yes, I should be asking him a dozen more important things, but I just couldn’t seem to let this go.

  “A man can get used to all manners of things given enough time.” He got out of the truck, shut the door, and walked around. “I have an awareness of my body. Distant, muffled. In extreme circumstances I can feel pain.”

  “Getting your guts cut open isn’t extreme enough for you?”

  “No. Is that mountain breathing?”

  Lizard was napping in the middle of the field, its belly swollen with crocboar.

  “Sleeping. I understand that galvanized are a collection of folk who went comatose and survived some kind of disaster a while ago.”

  “Nineteen ten.”

  “All right, a long while ago.” I opened the box where the fence controller was housed. “What I don’t understand is how that made you immortal.”

  “No one understands it. It can’t be duplicated, and the records of the disaster are sketchy at best. There was an experiment, the Wings of Mercury, that seems to be the crux of the event.”

  “Never heard of it,” I said.

  “The name of the project is all that survived. Well, and us.”

  “So, you’re saying if you had a heart attack, or if someone cut off your head . . .”

  “My awareness, my memories, remain trapped in my brain.”

  “And if someone shot you in the brain? Blew all your gray matter to bits?”

  “Sufficiently damaged, my brain would fail. If my body survived, a new brain could be transplanted into my body, though there are complications with galvanized metabolism that would burn out a nongalvanized brain within a few years. It isn’t theory. They have been . . . thorough in their tests over the years.”

  “Who?”

  “Scientists, doctors, torturers.” He shrugged.

  “Torturers?”

  “It’s been a long life, Ms. Case.”

  “Matilda,” I corrected.

  He smiled.

 
Dammit. He’d done that on purpose.

  I checked the wires, battery, and ground to the fence. All gold.

  “What does it eat?” he asked.

  He was staring off at Lizard, his right arm snug against his gut, even though I supposed he couldn’t feel the pain from that wound. Must have been habit and instinct to keep pressure on it.

  “Feral critters. We get mutant beasts out here. Something in the soil, I think.”

  “Ever had that tested?”

  “The soil?” I closed up the controller box and started back to the truck. “Why would I? As long as I can grow food and drink the water, I don’t care what’s in it.”

  “Also, testing would draw attention to your farm.”

  “A girl likes her privacy.”

  “I checked the records.”

  “So?” I got back in the truck. He followed.

  “This place isn’t registered House Green. You’re House Brown, aren’t you?”

  I didn’t want to answer that. I’d rather he assume I was House Green, and therefore had legal voice and House influence behind me.

  I started the engine and gave it some gas. The big engine roared. “Hold on. Road gets a little bumpy here,” I said over the noise.

  He held on as I took the road hot, rattling over holes and ditches.

  When I pulled up alongside the field where Pony was pastured, I had made up my mind. If he had really checked the records, he already knew only Grandma was registered House Green.

  “Look.” I turned off the engine. “There are things I’d rather not discuss with you, and I suppose there are things you’d rather not discuss with me. But I need information to help some people I know.”

  “House Brown people?”

  “Friends.”

  “All right,” he said. “Friends. What do you need to know?”

  “Which House is moving heavy equipment into the middle of the Nevada desert.”

  “That’s . . . specific.”

  I got out of the truck and walked around to the back. “Not far from Red Butte.”

  “What kind of equipment?”

  “Looks like digging. Drilling.”

  “Looks like?”

  I pulled two pitchforks out of the back of the truck. “No marks on the trucks. No colors.” I tossed him a pitchfork, and he caught it like he’d been working a farm for years.