Daughter of Regals (22 page)

DEMONSTRATES
FEAR DOES NOT EXIST

WHERE
CONTROL ORDER

Abruptly,
the green letters flashed off the display, and he terminal began to readout a
line of red.

DATA
CANCEL REPEAT CANCEL

MATERIAL
CLASSIFICATION RESTRICTED

NOT
AVAILABLE WITHOUT APPROVAL

DIRECTOR
NATIONAL LIBRARY FILE

APPROVAL
CODE BEFORE REACTIVATING

REFERENCE
PROGRAM

Norman
frowned around his horn. He was not sure what had happened. Perhaps
he had accidentally stumbled upon information that was always restricted and
had automatically triggered the Reference Computer’s cancellation program. Or
perhaps the Director had just now succeeded in breaking his personal
information code and had found out what he was doing if the interruption had
been automatic, he was still safe. But if the Director had been monitoring him
personally, he did not have much time. He needed to know.

He left
his desk and went to the Director’s office. The Director looked very much like
Doctor Brett.
Norman
believed
that he could break the Director with one kick of his hard foot. He knew what
to do. He said, “Director.”

“Yes,
Norman
”“ the Director said. His voice was
warm and wise, like Doctor Brett’s.
Norman
did not trust him. “Are you OK? Do you want to go home?”

“I am
OK,”
Norman
said. “I want to
take out, some books.”

“‘Take
out some books’?” the Director said. “What do you mean?”

“I want
to withdraw some books. I want to take them home with me.”

“Very
well,” the Director said. “Take them with you. Take the rest of the day off.
You need some rest.”

“Thank
you,”
Norman
said. He was being
careful. Now he had what he wanted. He knew that the Director had been watching
him, knew that the Director had deliberately broken his personal information
code. He knew that the Director had transmitted his information to the
General
Hospital
and had been told that he,
Norman
, was dangerous. No one was allowed to take books out of the
National Library. It was forbidden to withdraw books. Always. Even the Director
could not override that rule, unless he had been given emergency programming.

Norman
was no longer safe. But he did not hurry. He did not want the
General
Hospital
to think that he was afraid. The men in white coats would chase him
more quickly if they thought he was afraid of them. He walked calmly, as if he
were perfectly safe, perfectly sane, to the stacks where the books were kept
after they had been sorted and fed into the Reference Computer.

He did
not try to be thorough or complete. His time was short. He took only the books
he could carry, only the books he was sure he wanted. He took
The Mask, the
Unicorn, and the Messiah;
the
Index to Fairy Tales, Myths. and Legends;
Barbarous Knowledge;
the
Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology; The Masks
of God;
and
The Book of Imaginary Beings.
He would need these books
when his transformation was complete. They would tell him what to do.

He did
not try to find any others. He left the National Library, hugging the books to
his broad chest like treasure.

The careful part of him
expected to have trouble with his mobile; but he did not. It took him home
exactly as it always did.

When he
entered his house, he found that Sally had not been brought back. Enwell had
not come home. He did not think that he would ever see them again. He was
alone.

He took
off his clothes because he knew that unicorns did not wear clothes. Then he sat
down in the living room and started to read his books.

They
did not make sense to him. He knew most of the words, but he could not seem to
understand what they were saying. At first he was disappointed in himself He
was afraid that he might not make a very good unicorn. But then he realized the
truth. The books did not make sense to him because he was not ready for them.
His transformation was not complete yet. When it was, he would be able to
understand the books. He bobbed his horn joyfully. Then, because he was
careful, he spent the rest of the day memorizing as much as he could of the
first book,
The Book of Imaginary Beings.
Ho wanted to protect himself
in case his books were lost or damaged.

He was
still memorizing after dark, and he was not tired. His horn filled him with
strength. But then he began to hear a humming noise in the air. It was soft and
soothing, and he could not tell how long it had been going on. It was coming
from his biomitter. It found a place deep inside him that obeyed it. He lay
down on the couch and went to sleep.

But it
was not the kind of sleep he was used to. It was not calm and safe. Something
in him resisted it, resisted the reassuring hum. His dreams were wild. His
emotions were strong, and one of them was uneasiness. His uneasiness was so
strong that it must have been fear. It made him open his eyes.

All the
lights were on in the living room, and there were four men in white coats
around him. Each of them carried a hypogun. All the hypoguns were pointed at
him.

“Don’t be
afraid,” one of the men said. “We won’t hurt you. You’re going to be all right.
Everything is going to be OK.”

Norman
did not believe him. He saw that the men were gripping their
hypoguns tightly. He saw that the men were afraid. They were afraid of him.

He
flipped off the couch and jumped. His legs were immensely strong. His jump
carried him over the heads of the men. As he passed, he kicked one of the men.
Blood appeared on the man’s forehead and spattered his coat, and he fell down
and did not move.

The
nearest man fired his hypogun. But
Norman
blocked the penetrating spray with the hard flat heel of his palm.
His fingers curled into a hoof, and he hit the man in the chest. The man fell
down.

The
other two men were trying to run away. They were afraid of him. They were
running toward the door.
Norman
jumped after them and poked the nearest one with his horn. The man
seemed to fly away from the horn. He crashed into the other man, and they both
crashed against the door and fell down and did not move again. One of them had
blood all over his back.

Norman
’s biomitter was blaring red:
You are ill. You are ill.

The man
Norman
had punched was still
alive, gasping for breath. His face was white with death, but he was able to
tap a message into his biomitter.
Norman
could read his fingers: he was saying,
Seal the house. Keep him
trapped. Bring nerve gas.

Norman
went to the man. “Why?” he said. “Why are you trying to kill me?”

The man
looked at
Norman
. He was too
close to dying to be afraid anymore. “You’re dangerous,” he said. He was
panting, and blood came out of his mouth. “You’re deadly.”

“Why?”
Norman
said. “What’s happening to
me?”

“Transmutation,”
the man said. “Atavism. Psychic throwback. You’re becoming something. Something
that never existed.”

“‘Never
existed’?”
Norman
said.

“You
must’ve been buried,” the man said. “In the subconscious. All this time. You
never existed. People made you up. A long time ago. They believed in you. Because
they needed to. Because they were afraid.”

More
blood came out of his mouth. “How could it happen?” he said. His voice was very
weak. “We put fear to sleep. There is no more fear. No more violence. How could
it Then he stopped breathing. But his eyes stayed open, staring at the things
he did not understand.

Norman
felt a deep sorrow. He did not like killing. A unicorn was not a
killing beast. But he had had no choice: he had been cornered.

His
biomitter was shouting,
You are ill.

He did
not intend to be cornered again. He raised his wrist and touched his biomitter
with the tip of his horn. Pieces of metal were torn away, and bright blood ran
down his arm.

After
that, he did not delay. He took a slipcover from the couch and used it as a
sack to carry his books. Then he went to the door and tried to leave his house.

The
door did not open. It was locked with heavy steel bolts that he had never seen
before. They must have been  built into the house. Apparently, the men in white
coats, or the medicomputers, were prepared for everything.

They
were not prepared for a unicorn. He attacked the door with his horn. His horn
was as hard as steel, as hard as magnacite. It was as hard as tung-diamonds.
The door burst open, and he went out into the night.

Then he
saw more ambulances coming down the road.  Ambulances were converging on his
house from both directions. He did not know where to run. So he galloped across
the street and burst in the door of the house opposite his. The house belonged
to his friend, Barto. He went to his friend for help.

But
when Barto and his wife and his two daughters saw
Norman
, their faces filled with fear. The daughters began to wail like
sirens. Barto and his wife fell to the floor and folded up into balls.

Norman
broke down the back door and ran out into the service lane between
the rows of houses.

He
travelled the lane for miles. After the sorrow at his friend’s fear came a
great joy at his strength and swiftness. He was stronger than the men in white
coats, faster than ambulances. And he had nothing else to be wary of. The
medicomputers could not chase him themselves. With his biomitter gone, they
could not even tell where he was. And they had no weapons with which to fight
him except men in white coats and ambulances. He was free and strong and
exhilarated for the first time in his life.

When
daylight came, he climbed up onto the roofs of the houses. He felt safe there,
and when he was ready to rest he slept there alone, facing the sky.

He
spent days like that—travelling the city, reading his books and committing them
to memory—waiting for his transformation to be complete. When he needed food,
he raided grocery stores to get it, though the terror of the people he met
filled him with sorrow. And gradually his food-need changed. Then he did not go
to the grocery stores anymore. He pranced in the parks at night and cropped the
grass and the flowers and ran nickering among the trees.

And his
transformation continued. His mane and tail grew thick and exuberant. His face
lengthened, and his teeth became stronger. His feet became hooves, and the
horny part of his hands grew. White hair the colour of moonlight spread across
his body and limb, formed flaring tufts at the backs of his ankles and wrists.
His horn grew long and clean and perfectly pointed.

His
joints changed also and began to flex in new ways. For a time, this gave him
some pain; but soon it became natural to him. He was turning into a unicorn. He
was becoming beautiful. At times, there did not seem to be enough room in his
heart for the joy the change gave him.

Yet he
did not leave the city. He did not leave the people who were afraid of him,
though their fear gave him pangs of a loneliness he had never felt before. He
was waiting for something. There was something in him that was not complete.

At
first, he believed that he was simply waiting for the end of his
transformation. But gradually he came to understand that his waiting was a kind
of search. He was alone—and unicorns were not meant to be alone, not like this.
He was searching the city to see if he could find other people like him, people
who were changing.

And at
last one night he came in sight of the huge high structure of the
General
Hospital
. He had been brought there by his search. If there were other
people like him, they might have been captured by the men in white coats. They
might be prisoners in the Emergency Division of the Hospital. They might be
lying helpless while the medicomputers studied them, plotting their
destruction.

His
nostrils flared angrily at the thought. He stamped his foreleg. He knew what he
had to do. He put his sack of books in a place of safety. Then he lowered his
head and charged down the road to attack the
General
Hospital
.

He
broke down the front doors with his horn and pounded into the corridors. People
fled from him in terror. Men and women grabbed hypoguns and tried to fire at him;
but he flicked them with the power of his horn, and they fell down. He rampaged
on in search of the Emergency Division.