The Cipher by Kathe Koja Page A

morning. Once in a while she would still be there when I left for work, lying prone and passive but nothing peaceful in those eyes, behind lids that shivered as if she dreamed an endless dream. The tape was always playing unless I shut it off. I was getting very good at ignoring the images onscreen, unless my gaze was caught at that critical point where the figure turned. Then I must watch it, whether I would or no, and in the end feel as I always did, hurt in some spot where I could not see to measure the depth and severity of the wound.
    After work, the first few days of snow behind us and already I was sick of it, dirty piles at curbside and people driving as if they had never seen the fucking stuff before, the heat in my flat no real heat at all but a kind of half-assed damp warmth that warped my magazine prints and left the floors dry and cold: coming home, newspaper, half-eaten lunch in grease-spotted brown bag, see domestic me. What's for dinner, honey, Funhole souffle?
    Nakota, in front of the TV as always, but no glance at my entrance, no acknowledgment that anyone else was in the room; just a slow, slow turn, rising to her feet like deep-sea ballet, moving the few steps to the television as if it were miles she traveled, and there kneeling before it to press, gingerly and gentle, her cheek against the glass.
    I almost expected—what? a sizzle of flesh? a blinding burst of light? her to get sucked right into the TV? Of course nothing happened, nothing visible I should say because that's the tricky part, isn't it, that's where the rub comes in. The worst wounds are internal, I should have known that from my own experience, but I'm the type of guy who doesn't learn.
    She sat like that for a while; I let her; I saw no reason not to. I stopped staring, put my things away, although it didn't seem right to start cooking dinner or anything; how does one behave at an ecstasy?
    Finally, after I had read the paper, nervous twitch of newsprint every time I thought she moved, finally I went and shut off the tape, shut off the TV, helped her stand—she seemed to need it—and back to the couchbed. She sat down, docile enough, and I stood looking down at her, wondering what to do now. Suddenly she opened her eyes very wide, bugged them at me in a way that would have been comical any other time, and said through a big threatening grin, "That's right, pamper the madwoman, you fucking idiot."
    "Yes, your craziness," and to my wary smile she laughed, a normal sound or as normal as she ever got, lit up a cigarette and asked me if there was any mineral water or anything to drink.
    "I'm not going to work tonight," she said. "Tom asked me to but I told him no."
    So the evening, bed, no sex, her skinny body cool to the touch and dropping into sleep like iron into sand. I sat up to read awhile but could not wholly concentrate, the words jumbling into other words, sentences into diatribes and paragraphs into convoluted polemics on the pressure of instinct, and then the words changed again into symbols I could not read and I knew I was asleep and dreaming, and I was not disturbed even though the words changed again to writhe on the page as if they were pinned there and me some spiteful collector who would have them no matter what. They spelled out challenges, feeble defiance, and I laughed and slammed the book shut, over and over, enjoying my rhythmic cruelty to such a monstrous degree that I finally woke, scared, sat up to wipe at my eyes. And saw Nakota was gone.
    The door was open.
    It took me two seconds to grab on jeans, catching my pubes in the zipper and it hurt and I barely felt it, galloping like the cavalry down the stairs saying "Shit, oh shit" like magic words and even from the landing I could see: she hadn't even bothered to -shut the storage-room door, hadn't bothered with the ten-watt light. I turned it on, I wanted to be able to see. Whatever it was.
    And a sight, oh, was it.
    On her knees, oblivious and naked, braced arms on