Head Full of Mountains Read Online Free Page B

side. When Crospinal looked back up, father was staring directly at him. Dark eyes watched him, brimming with fear of the impending nothingness and resignation of its inevitability.
    “You’re awake.” Crospinal’s heart thudded, a barrage of his own hopes and pain and guilt—
    But there was blood inside father’s mouth, dripping down, and father’s gaze turned darker, lost focus, like dim lights dimming more. His head, looking tiny atop the padded collar around the neckpiece of his uniform, lolled. Tubes shifted. He had said nothing. Crospinal thought of his girlfriend yet again, of her misaligned gaze. Had falling in love with her been the betrayal that caused this demise? It seemed important to remember details of his relationship but details eluded him. A transfer of allegiance, away from father, making Crospinal the agent of this change? He ground his teeth together as a black clot slid and hung from father’s boney chin, the throat working, trying to swallow—
    “Sometimes . . . I look around,” father whispered. “I don’t know who lives here, in this house.”
    “What?” Crospinal leaned forward to hear better. “What house? What’s a house?”
    “The furniture.” Father’s chest shuddered; tubes rustled; the clot broke free and fell to his chest, where it slid farther. The material of his uniform went to work, reclaiming it. “Furniture is upside down. But then I stare for a bit longer—because I can’t move from this spot—and I see the same thing. I
live
here. This is
my house
.” Showing red-flecked teeth and trying, unsuccessfully, to lick those dry lips. “No furniture is upside down, is it? Is it, boy?”
    “Dad, there’s a helmet, in the dispenser at thin tree. I saw it coming in. A blue one, with a clear visor. Perfect. You know? Should I get it? I could put it on.”
    “This is a nice place . . .”
    “Dad? Would you like me to get a fresh helmet? And put it on?”
    “I lost my way . . .” So quiet, almost a breath. “For the longest time I couldn’t conceive. There was a man, next door, when I was a child. But I’ve reached endtime now.”
    “This isn’t endtime.” Though Crospinal did not believe his own words. What was he supposed to say? He did not understand. At times, father had known so much about the world, yet at others, like now, seemed to know absolutely nothing. Hard to imagine him as a younger man, in the state he had often described as newborn, in an adult body, with instincts to run, find a gate, raise a family. Haunted by his broken memories, he would call the pen forth, to rise into place around him. No haptics existed from before Crospinal was born, or, if they did, they had been kept away. He relied on instructions, ramblings, and asides. Struggling to understand everything these days, he wondered how father’s brief speech and signs of life could be cause for joy, for celebration, because Crospinal felt no emotion akin to joy, nor did he think, as his girlfriend turned away from him, and father was leaving him alone forever, that he would ever have the capacity.
    “Son,” said father suddenly, but when Crospinal looked into the black eyes once more he saw no passing flicker of days past, no lessons, no guidance, no love, just the impending victory of darkness.
    The world juddered. Maybe it was chuckling at them. Crospinal stood. His joints popped loudly in the silence and brought, at last, a flood of tears.
    Father had begun to snore.

    One of the first actions young Crospie had been asked to attempt, in that year, was to turn a brass dial in the wheelroom, directly behind the pen. The wheelroom was a chamber of hard, grey walls and polymethyl floor. This task had never been tried before—for obvious reasons. Touching the thumb pad of the contraption that occupied the centre of the wheelroom went all right: the blue panels activated, the way they should have, under the Dacron layer of his mitt, and the icon—an arrow—appeared. Yet the