The Lost Memories of Meriwether Klark Read online

  I swallowed.

  Lord Klark smoothed a hand over my hair and my dark bangs fell into my eyes. He smiled at me, a false, snake-like smile. His voice was surprisingly gentle as he studied my mother. “This is the last time I will ask you. Where is the prototype for the hyperdrive?”

  Her voice came out tremulous. “We took it to the Oregon Territories. We left it with Elijah Whitney to study. I’ve told you what you wanted. Now release Meriwether.”

  She stepped forward, but he shoved her back and she stumbled into the dirt. Her hoopskirt came flying up as she fell onto her backside, flashing her petticoats and bloomers for all to see. She rolled over to right herself. I squirmed and tried to run to her, but I made no progress in freeing myself.

  Before she could rise, Lord Klark kicked her in the stomach. I squeezed my eyes closed. She cried out and fell back. A cloud of dust rose up and she coughed. I pummeled the man’s legs with my fists, but I was forced to stop when he shook me.

  “Clementine, is that the truth?” he asked. “Did you really leave my hyperdrive with that engineer?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Now give Meriwether back.” She opened her arms to take me. “Please.”

  He hefted me up into his arms and turned away. “I think not. I came here for what is mine. I didn’t find my prototype, but instead I’ve found something else that belongs to me. Good day to you.”

  I reached out toward my mother. Lord Klark’s men closed in on her. My last memory of her was the stricken expression on her face before they blocked her from my view.

  Chapter Two

  The first space explorers set out thousands of years ago from Earth for reasons unknown. What we do know is that the advanced technology our ancestors possessed was shared across Africa, Asia and the Americas. How the understanding of the stars and the ability to travel to space was lost is as much a mystery as the origins of this technology.—The Guidebook of Colonization and Interplanetary Relationships, Fourth Edition, 1859

  The vibration of a spaceship hummed under my feet. It was faint, almost imperceptible compared to the clunks of Mama’s ship.

  Lord Klark crouched beside me in front of the mirror so that he was my height. “What do you see when you look at yourself in the mirror, Meriwether?”

  I shrugged. My gaze shifted from my brown eyes to the gold waistcoat and brocade jacket that matched his own. Lord Klark’s face was pale compared to mine. His prominent nose and deep-set eyes were so different from my own flat features. Past us in the mirror, the gilt of the giant canopy bed and wardrobe in the corner caught my eye. The room was enormous and lavish, nothing like the cramped spaceship or the little buildings I’d visited planetside with my mother. I swallowed hard, thinking about Mama.

  He jostled me. “Is this a face that you’re proud of?” His lip curled back into an ugly sneer. I would have liked to ask him the same question about his own face, but he went on. “I ask you again, what do you see when you look at yourself?”

  I rubbed a hand over my head, hating the prickle of my short haircut. “My hair?” I tried hard not to look at my cleft lip.

  “Look at the color of your skin. It’s the color of dirt.”

  “No, it ithn’t. Dirt ith red,” I said. I blushed at my lisp.

  He laughed, a genial laugh that melted the sternness from his expression. “Oh, Meriwether, my boy, you’re quite right. Dirt is red where you’ve been living. But on other planets it isn’t so pretty.” He poked at my round cheek. “Do you see how brown you are? This will not do. No child of mine can look this way in public.”

  “Why not?” I still didn’t believe he was my father. My papa had a beard and was nice to me. He could fit a large monocle over his own eye and attach it to his face because of the magnets under his skin. He would flip the lenses back and forth, making his eye big and small to amuse me. This man was formidable and severe, even when he smiled. I was afraid to say the wrong thing and displease him.

  Mama had displeased him.

  Lord Klark was talking, but I was having a hard time listening. “It’s too complicated for a mere child to understand. There are rules to put lesser men in their place. If someone sees your skin color, they will think less of you. You don’t want that, do you, my boy? You deserve to be treated with all the rank and privilege my title allows. I will not have anyone call you a half-breed or insinuate things about our blood-line. I will not permit people to see such a homely face and think my lineage was the cause. Do you understand? Surely some of it must have been from the maternal line.” He sighed. “If you had been born of any other woman, I don’t think I could even tolerate to look at you even now.”

  I nodded and pretended I understood, so that I wouldn’t anger him. My chest tightened with anxiety at the idea.

  “How your mother could stand to look at you like this is beyond me.” He sounded sad and tired. “She had a liberal heart. It truly was her undoing.”

  The image of the men closing in on my mother came back to me unbidden. “Where is Mama? You told me I would be with Mama again.”

  “I told you that you would meet your new mother, but you must understand, I can’t have you meet her looking dirty.” He held onto my chin and turned my head this way and that as he examined me.

  “It’th not dirt. That’th the color of my… .” I was afraid to say “skin” for fear he would laugh at my lisp again.

  “Haven’t you been listening?” He groaned in exasperation. “Probably not, I suppose. Now, I expect you to be a good boy for the doctor. If he tells me you are, I will reward you with ice cream for dinner. You’ve never had ice cream, have you? If he tells me you are bad for him… .” He reached for the gold-tipped cane. He used it to push himself up to his feet.

  I cringed, not wanting to be beaten again. “I’ll be good,” I said quickly.

  “Yes, of course you will. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”

  I was a good boy, even when the doctor gave me a shot. And I didn’t like shots, so that was really saying something. I tried to understand what the doctor said to Lord Klark about the surgery and cellular modifications, but I couldn’t follow any of it. I didn’t understand talk about breeding for desirable traits or reprogramming undesirable ones. They talked about recessive/dominant characteristics and how inferior properties like skin color might appear unexpectedly. They looked at pictures on their holoscreens while I did my best not to fidget. Lord Klark didn’t like fidgeting.

  Slowly, the world around me faded and their voices melted away.

  When I woke, pain was the only sensation I knew. My skin prickled with fire and the bones inside my body felt like they were breaking. I tried to open my eyes, but something held them closed. I tried to move, but I was weak and my limbs were heavy. I drifted in and out of consciousness, coming and going with the ebb and flow of pain. The voices of the nurses came and went.

  After what felt like an eternity of this cycle, I finally woke for a long enough time that I felt thirsty and wished to ask for water. I tried to speak, but I found I had no voice. Everything I did made lightning lance through my face. After what seemed like hours of pain, I managed to make a noise. My throat was as dry as a desert and I coughed, just like I used to during the dust storms. I tried to remember where I had seen dust storms, but my brain was foggy and everything was unclear.

  Out of the blackness, I heard a woman’s voice. “Sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I can check on his bandages later.”

  I croaked out, “Mama?”

  A man’s deep voice answered me. “Don’t talk, son. It will only make the pain worse.”

  “Papa?” I asked. Even as I said it, I knew it couldn’t be him. Papa’s accent didn’t sound like this and his voice was softer.

  “Yes, your papa is right here,” the man answered.

  “Where?” I asked.

  My head felt as though it was spinning. My face hurt, and a wave of nausea chilled me. I thought I would be sick, but I didn’t vomit, and the feeling continued ro
iling in my belly. A hand took mine. He was gentle, but even so, pain flared up in my fingers. It felt like he grated shards of rock against my skin. The pain subsided and I drifted off again.

  Voices that were unfamiliar talked in my dreams about “laudanum,” and “Mendel and Huxley,” and “enhancements that would accelerate the growth of the mind,” and other things I didn’t understand.

  “Why ever do you need this much cell splicing on a child?” asked a voice. “As it is, he’ll be able to learn nine languages and be a savant. Consider stopping here as we still don’t know if these alterations will have other unintended effects.”

  The words stretched out and distorted. Time passed unevenly. My father’s voice punctuated the silences and drifted into my awareness. I listened to him read me fairytales and talk to me in an almost soothing tone. With time, the agony in my skin lessened, and he was able to pat my fingers or arm without causing me pain. His voice became familiar and welcome. He gifted me with stories and snuck me sips of sarsaparilla when the doctor wasn’t around.

  The day the bandages came off, the bright white world burned my eyes. I flung an arm over my face to keep the pain away. My head throbbed anew.

  “Please, can we not dim the lights for him?” Father asked.

  I say Father, because he wasn’t my papa, but I had to call him something.

  When I could at last blink my eyes open and tolerate the burn of air against my eyes, everything was blurred. I could only make out the shape of the doctor at the foot of my bed, not his face or any details of his figure.

  Father sat beside me, standing out with the brilliant gold of his frockcoat. “What beautiful eyes you have. What beautiful green eyes. Ahem.” He said the word green like it was something rotten. He rose and turned to a blurred shape. “I thought you said he would have blue eyes like his mother.”

  The icicles in his voice made me shiver.

  “That was our intention, but so much about cell anlage splicing is still unknown,” the man said. “Please, Lord Klark, understand, not all modifications can be done in one go.” His voice drew away and they continued to talk.

  A door slammed and shouting started up outside the room. Some of the blurred shapes in the room had disappeared. What I could see then were ghostly white movements against the white walls. Footsteps tapped along the floor.

  “Father?” I asked.

  “He’s stepped out, love,” a woman answered. Her accent was thick and cockney, like someone my parents had known, only I couldn’t remember his face. Was it someone by the name of Price?

  The more I listened, the more I realized it was Father shouting outside the room. I touched a bandaged hand to my cheek. It didn’t feel right. My skin felt rubbery and numb. When I poked my fingers to my nose, pain blossomed there.

  “Master Meriwether, I advise you not to do that,” said the woman. She gently took my hand and placed it at my side. She wore all white and I guessed she was either a nurse or a ghost.

  “Why does my face hurt?” I asked.

  “Don’t you remember?” the ghost nurse asked. “Your father had your face reconstructed.”

  “Hush, you say too much, Maggie,” said another woman in an English accent.

  I jumped in surprise, not having realized there were two women present. I tried to make out the other blurred white shape in the brightness of the room.

  “Let Lord Klark tell him, if he chooses,” the other ghost nurse said.

  Over the following weeks I recuperated in the hospital bed. Slowly the pain receded. My vision returned. Father continued to read stories to me and bring me little treats. When he held my hand in his, my fingers were noticeably lighter, though not as fair as his.

  “What a handsome boy you are! Who knew there was an adorable face under that skin?”

  I bit my lip. If he meant it, I wasn’t sure why he still looked upon my aspect with disgust in his eyes.

  “You have been a very good boy. So brave and strong,” he said. “I’ve decided it’s time to reward you.”

  I’d forgotten all about this promise to bring me a treat. He set a bowl of ice cream on my tray.

  “Golly!” I said.

  I dug in with gusto, this being my first meal that wasn’t broth. The burnt filbert flavor exploded on my tongue. Never had I tried anything like it. After I made it past the first mouthful, the cold registered, making the roof of my mouth ache. It really was like eating creamy ice.

  Father sat back and watched me. He smiled and ruffled my hair. He didn’t look at me with as much disgust as before.

  The doctor came in, a syringe in his hand. His wrinkled face turned to me. The ice cream in my stomach curdled when I heard the words, “It’s time for your second treatment.”

  “What do you mean?” I looked to my father. “I thought I was done.”

  “Oh, no, my boy,” Father chuckled. “It will take more modifications than that to cure you of your defects.”

  Chapter Three

  With Mendel, Nestler and Huxley’s recent achievements in biology, and Babbage and Fulton in mechanics and steampower, it is of the utmost importance that we go forth into this new age with the caution. It is our Christian duty to use these sciences for good and not allow ourselves to succumb to the devil’s temptations. The Catholic Church has banned manipulation and modifications of the invisible factors within human beings, including bionic implants and hybridizations, as has the Church of England and lesser churches.

  —address to the public from John Henry Newman, 1861

  Pain was everything. It consumed me so deeply I could think of nothing else. I didn’t know who I was or even know that I was human. I became a wild animal, mewling out cries that sounded like a wounded creature and lashing out when the nurses tried to inject me with more painkillers. Sometimes when the medicines were freshest I floated above it all and remembered why I was there. I saw Mama’s and Papa’s faces. They had never insisted something was wrong with me. They had loved me the way I was, despite my ugly lip and dirty skin.

  I was given nine treatments in all. First to cure my muddy skin and eyes, then to treat my lisp. They remedied my other inferior facial features and hair; next they made my eyes see better, my mind smarter, and so on. The cure for my inferior cells lasted a year and a half. During that time I only knew pain. I forgot more of myself each time. I couldn’t remember my true parents’ faces. At least, not while I was awake.

  “When will I see Mama?” I asked Father as I came out of one of the foggy dreams induced by the pain medications.

  “By the time you’ve received your last treatments we will be home. Then I will present you to her,” he said.

  Though he smiled at me kindly, there was something about his face that wasn’t quite right. His features weren’t what I imagined my father should look like. I wanted to say so, but I shivered at what he might do if I did. It was a silly fear. He had never given me cause to fear him that I could recall. Though sometimes in dreams I saw him do impossibly cruel deeds.

  I slipped out of consciousness, awaking to the sound of his voice reading The Three Little Pigs. “‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow this house down.’”

  “Father, where are we?” I asked.

  “Why, in the hospital wing, of course. Do you remember why we’re here?”

  I tried to remember, but my brain was foggy. “Was there an accident?” I bit my lip, thinking that wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t recall anything that seemed more logical.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  I stared at the sideburns on his face, thinking they didn’t look the way I remembered on Papa’s face. He should have had a trimmed beard and mustache. His whiskers should have had a touch of gray to them.

  “Father, what made you shave your beard?” I asked.

  He laughed. “Such questions you ask, my boy! I’ve never fancied beards.”

  “But I remember… .” I tried to think back, but I felt tired and yawned. “I remember you with a beard. Maybe
it was a dream.”

  “Yes, that’s right. In your dreams I sported a beard.” He rang the bell and the nurse came bustling in.

  She curtsied. “Is there something I can do for you, Lord Klark?”

  “My boy is in need of a treat after all his trials. How about some ice cream?” He winked at me. “Shall we try royal pistachio this time?”

  “Oh boy!” I said.

  When I next woke, he sported a trim beard. It didn’t resemble what I remembered. “What about the mustache?” I asked. “You need that to match it.”

  He chuckled as though this were a game. “I just can’t make you happy, can I?” He tickled me. I laughed and tried to squirm away. I didn’t hurt anymore. Maybe I was done being fixed.

  He pushed forward a bowl of ice cream. It was strawberry. I didn’t feel like ice cream just then, but I ate it anyway.

  After the final treatment, he held up a hand mirror. In it I saw someone else’s little boy. My skin was pale and my hair a light brown.

  “Recognize that handsome young man?” he asked.

  I shook my head. This made the throbbing behind my eyes flare up anew. They were vividly green with small specks of brown and amber in the iris.

  “You look like her now. So much less like me.” He stroked his beard. He sported a mustache as well now. It still didn’t look right on him.

  I wanted to ask him how I had ever looked like him. He had disliked my skin color, hadn’t he? Or had it been something else he’d disliked? It was hard to remember why I had undergone the treatments in the first place. Hadn’t he said I’d been in an accident? It didn’t make sense when I thought back.

  Father must have noticed my brow crinkled in confusion. “Whatever is the matter, Meriwether?”

  “I can’t remember what Mama looked like. I can’t remember … why can’t I remember what I looked like? Why did I have the treatments?”

  “Don’t fret over such unimportant matters. It is an effect of the surgeries and medications. Sometimes they affect the memory. But no matter. I have seen to it that you have been given the best mind money can buy.”