Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 (3 page)

Jimmy said, "How can you be sure he's make-believe?"

When the others returned to the passive lake, Jimmy stayed behind, reading, He had to bring the book close to his face, his sunglasses muddying the view of what was already a challenge, small print on paper going brown with age.

The novel opened with a scene Jimmy assumed had no connection to the tale to come, something to establish the abilities of the great man.

For such a giant, his movements were astonishingly swift. In a

series of actions that appeared as a blur to everyone, including his

stunned associates, the Big Man swept two of the gun-toting

assailants over the bridge and, before the third man could react,

relieved the gape-mouth mobster of his weapon. One blink later, the

remaining man was being held aloft by a single steel-strong arm.

"Can your associates swim?" a thunderous voice asked.

"I—I dunno!"

"Mikey and I'll go fetch them, Boss," said Sparks, and the two

jumped into the waiting roadster.

"A full explanation would go a long way toward restoring you

safely to your feet," said the copper-skinned giant, his voice rolling

into the man with such force it made the thug stop squirming.

Jimmy looked at the cover again. The Big Man would survive the dreadful toll of years imposed on him by his enemies; he would not yield; he would grow stronger from the knowledge brought about by suffering.

The black-clad BrightLine guard who led Jimmy to the cell stood a head's-height above him. Stone-faced, not meeting his eyes, hands firmly on his weapon. Quarles, his nametag read. It set Jimmy sideways to have a fellow black man not give him a solid look, but he didn't force matters, waiting to read the man better.

The metal door's window was a square smaller than a face. Quarles turned his cap askew and bent to peer inside. Jimmy studied the cap's BrightLine insignia: what he took to be a curving brown Earth below a pale blue sky, the horizon line thick and white. "There he sits," said Quarles. Still shouldering his duffel, Jimmy moved to look in, glimpsing a pale yellow room and the side of a man's head before Quarles redirected him, saying, "The better view is in here." He led Jimmy several steps to the right and put his hand on a door lever.

The room lit up as they stepped inside. To the left, a featureless wall—gray-black like the others—fuzzily reflected the overhead lights. A row of cabinets were affixed to the opposite wall, and a long, narrow table occupied the middle of the room; two wheeled chairs on the table's right side faced computer screens. A third chair stood orphaned near the blank wall.

"Here's what you want," Quarles said, and he toggled up what looked to be a light switch on a multi-colored panel by the entrance. The blank wall seemed to become transparent, and Jimmy found himself facing his journey's purpose: an elderly man, saddle-colored, bald, barefoot, seated cross-legged on the floor of a well-lit room. He appeared to be considering the point on the floor where his own room ended and Jimmy's began.

Jimmy approached the wall. "Charged panel becomes transparent?"

"Never heard of that. It's a video screen. The room's full of cameras." Quarles tugged open a drawer in the table. "There's a manual around somewhere." He rummaged briefly. "It's a nice piece of technology."

Jimmy nodded, but didn't take his eyes from the old man in the next room. "Is he meditating?"

"I have no idea." Quarles waited a beat, then said, "Military intelligence was here before."

"Yes."

"Before I got here. Cook told me."

"The cook?"

"It's the man's name."

"Oh."

"Cook said they drugged him. This gentleman didn't say shit. You must have heard all this already."

"I've seen his file and I just now talked with General Weston. It's good to hear another perspective. Not everything ends up in the file. People see different things. Or they see things different."

The guard visibly settled into his recounting. "What I've seen is, he's like this
all. The. Time.
We let him out to exercise in the yard, you'd think he'd walk around, but he doesn't so much as pace. Just stands. You'll see. Meals he takes in there. You see he's got a toilet, and in the morning, we take him to the prisoners' bathroom to shave and shower and what have you. The logistics aren't ideal. This place wasn't designed to be a prison, but that's how they've used it."

The prisoner's head came up slightly and his shoulders notched back. Gradually, his chest rose.

"He just sits?"

"He stands. Lies down, too. Usually on the bed, but I've seen him on the floor. Sometimes he sits in that chair. Chair's bolted to the floor. I'll tell you, this man is a master at exerting minimal effort." His hand made a plane and moved along it. "Absolute zero."

"You've never heard his voice."

"You know Bo Peep? Dude is No Peep." Unsure whether to laugh at this, Jimmy briefly showed some teeth. "Only thing I've known him to react to is the dogs. Kind of shies away when they're around," he said, shifting his body from the waist up, "so we intentionally have them in the hall most times he goes through." He winked. "Little intimidation. Not let him think he knows what to expect. And we always put one in the yard with him." He took a step toward the screen. "He did used to whistle. Or something."

"A tune you recognized?"

"Not a song. Just this high-pitched note, like whirring, almost an insect sound. Cicadas," he concluded with more assurance.

"Did you report this?"

Quarles's lower lip drew up as he considered. "It was only a few times. Cook and I thought it was unconscious. Like humming."

The man in the other room blinked and, vegetatively, inhaled, a slender stalk locating the sun. The prisoner's obvious proximity made him seem a part of their little group, and, without thinking, Jimmy watched for any signs that the man was listening.

"Let me ask you," Quarles said. "This guy's been here four years. Somebody still thinks he has actionable intel? Or is he now just a guy who's never getting out of prison?"

"As I understand it, no one knows
what
he might know."

"Nobody here's been told what he did in the first place."

"I'm afraid I can't add anything." Jimmy jerked up one shoulder.

They both watched the old man do nothing. Quarles asked, "How'd you get into this particular line of work?"

"Uh. I'm interested in how people think." He knew it sounded false. As a child on a stepstool, he had looked in the bathroom mirror and wondered if the face past the glass was the same one he wore. He recognized, even at five or so, that his face was not who he was, but something he carried. He sought himself in his own eyes, leaning close, the brown fabric around the pupil pulling back so he could look deeper, trying to locate the self by looking outward from the self and into those other eyes. One day, years later, having nearly forgotten the time he spent in front of the mirror as a child, he saw his face and the unrevealing eyes and understood he needed another approach. He had shut his eyes. He needed to throw his attention inward, to what was unseen.

"I thought I might be a psychiatrist. But... I was recruited by Intelligence. It seemed like I could help out. Do some good." How they had selected him was never explained. The most likely thread to tug was a set of experiments run by a doctoral student; in this way, he had inadvertently revealed a talent that only someone in search of such talents would recognize. "How about you? Former military?"

Quarles presented each component distinctly, as if reviewing a list of bullet points. "Former cop. Detroit. Got myself on the Special Response Team there. Buddy hooked me up with BrightLine. Did some security in Iraq." He pronounced it
eye-rack.
"That got heavy."

"I bet."

"So what's your play?"

"I'll be staying in this room. Can I get a cot in here?"

"No problem."

"That will allow me to more fully scrutinize the prisoner." Jimmy didn't like the formality in his voice. He recognized it as the tone he adopted when he couldn't speak freely.

"That's it? Watching him?"

"That's how I work."

"From this room?"

"That's right."

"Ooo-kay," Quarles said, eyes taking in the room as a way of taking in this information. "All right. Next thing is, I'm supposed to show you your quarters. But you're staying here."

"Yes."

"You've got your own john in the other room. You ought to take advantage of that. Keep your clothes there anyway." He pointed at the duffel; Jimmy had never set it down.

"I'm not kicking anyone out, am I?"

"We've got plenty of space." Quarles held open the door. "It's the former XO's quarters."

In the corridor, he saw that it was time for lunch. A guard accompanied by a dog studied the small window into Methuselah's cell while another guard held a tray and waited. The tray looked to have several MRE packs and, lying on its side, a water bottle. The first guard, a white man with a terrifically large jaw, brought his face close to the glass and stared till he was satisfied; Quarles and Jimmy watched, and the dog, too, sought the face of the guard. "All right," said the man.

"That's Covey," Quarles said.

"What's that?" asked the white man, shooting them a look.

"Just pointing you out to the lieutenant," Quarles said. "Cook's got the food." Covey blinked at them, peered once more into the window, then slid back a lower panel. Cook pushed the tray inside.

The dog appeared to have spotted a fly. Its ears twitched back and its head moved to follow the path of something unseen. Covey said, "Hey," and the dog tugged against its leash and aimed a harsh bark at the wall. Covey jerked the leash and the dog sat. Then the dog stood again, ears erect. Covey checked in the window before sliding shut the lower panel. "He's coming for it," he said, and the dog looked up at Covey as though the sentence had been meant for it. Then the entire group moved away without exchanging any greeting, and Quarles led Jimmy back in the direction of the commander's office.

"What was the dog barking at?"

"You know dogs. Sometimes they bark at nothing. Or, you know, ghosts."

Jimmy couldn't read whether he was joking.

"Ghosts? You think this place is haunted?"

"Haven't you heard? Everywhere's haunted."

Jimmy tilted his head quizzically. "You believe in ghosts?"

They came to a turn, and Quarles paused, his thumb rubbing his weapon. "It isn't a question of what I believe. What matters," he said, lowering his voice as if in confidence, then letting one eyebrow twitch up, "is what the dog believes."

Following Max's lead, they took the cars into the city and parked in a nearly vacant supermarket lot. Bekka spotted the back of Max's neck over his collar.

"Whoa. You missed on the sunblock."

He gingerly patted. "Oh, yeah. Already raw."

Megan tugged the collar down for a look. "We'll put aloe on it at home."

They walked a few blocks to a vegetarian restaurant half below ground. The lights seemed dim to Jimmy, who struggled to read the menu and ordered a meal he spotted on a neighboring table. Max and Megan spent much of the time explaining a complicated television show—a spy story of sorts—to the two of them. Jimmy managed to lob some questions, but his food tasted wrong, the cheesy meal too sweet. He remembered a meal of similar sweetness from one evening in Iraq, a treat that accompanied a visiting general; his first non-MRE in a long time, he had studied everyone else's reaction as he picked at the food, suspecting an insurgent had poisoned them.

Jimmy's eyes resisted focusing, so he asked Bekka to drive the next leg.

At the Cornell campus, Max and Megan gave a meandering tour, ending in dusky half-light at the quad, where they sat on a statue's accommodating base and watched the students cross the lawn. At one point, Max saw someone he knew, a slender brown figure Jimmy could barely make out, and hurried across the grass to her. They hugged.

"She's getting married next week," he said on his return, shaking his head, marveling.

All of these people in their bubbles of safety pressed Jimmy further inward. He imagined holes opening in the walkways and people yanked down; he felt no anxiety, but rather a helpless concession to the dangerous reality underlying every solid thing. Perhaps some of these people thought about the two wars, desperate prisoners, families waiting for letters, the maimed in hospitals. The evening was too pleasant for his comfort.

The day had gone dark by the time they separated stacked plastic chairs and set them scraping on the cement balcony at Max and Megan's apartment. A rough-voiced dog, blocks away, intermittently remarked on something it found agitating. Jimmy didn't quite appreciate the tension across his chest until Max said, "Man, that dog." Sickness gathered in Jimmy's mouth, and all the passages that take in air—nose, throat, the chambers of the lungs—clenched.

In the bathroom, he ran water but didn't touch it, forearms on the sink's lip, his hands shaking as if palsied. Then he retreated to the one bedroom; the owners had insisted Jimmy and Bekka sleep there, a kindness that troubled him by its being too kind. He sat on the bed's sunken edge and studied the cover of
The Methuselah Ray.
Words and the impressions of words bubbled up, but he only said, "Goddammit."

Bekka stood in the doorway. "What's that?"

He held it up. "The book I bought."

"No. What you said."

"Oh. I was thinking about something."

She asked if he was coming back or turning in, and he managed only noncommittal phrases; her hand lingering on the doorframe conveyed her disappointment. He resolved to return to the balcony after only a minute, after two paragraphs, but it took him ten pages to set it down, and when he did, he heard the balcony door slide closed as the group reentered the apartment. The bedroom door had been left ajar, and it had, through whatever means, eased half open. The TV came on. The insistent words buffeted him as he closed his eyes, shutting out the sound. He pictured Bekka and her friends arrayed about the living room. He sensed fragments of each person, edges, nothing more, nothing more than what he would catch by looking at them if he passed through the room.