Craving (45 page)

“But the more I read them, the more my mind seemed to trace back through definitions. I began to
understand
the meanings intuitively. Before too long, I
felt
them more than read them, and I saw how different they were from my reality. You’re young,” he said to me, “and your generation has seen such an influx of foreign culture that you can’t possibly understand. To you, all this mind-without-mind stuff makes perfect sense . . .”

“No,” I interrupted with a smile, “I think it’s just been repeated so often that we
think
it makes sense, but really”—I thought of Jinx’s tirade on interior decorating—“we have not the slightest idea.”

“It outraged me at first, being told that there was no such thing as evil, nor any such thing as good, that both were the same, just choices we made because of the desires we have. More than once, I threw the damn things across my room.” He chuckled. “But I always went back, wanting to make sense of them, wanting to see what everyone before me had seen, what every person for so many centuries had found of value.

“When I realized it finally, I was sitting on my mat, staring into the night. It just hit me.” He leaned back and his hands slid from mine. I missed the warmth instantly. “There were only choices, only thoughts. The walls we draw between opposites were illusory, only significant to us. The universe does not distinguish between the sack of atoms that is my body and that red dwarf star. It cannot tell me from another human. The values, the meanings we place on other people are false. So what, then, separates me from the Nazis, the Kamikazis, the Italians? What made me different?”

I shook my head, unable to speak. My throat was clamped shut preventing me from puncturing the invigorating bubble surrounding us with words that were too precise.

“Nothing,” he said quietly, his bloodshot eyes glittering, “not a damn thing. There was no difference except the choices I made. Which then begged the question, that if I had been in their shoes, would I have made the same choices? I would like to say no, but I couldn’t be sure. That eagerness and drive I had to help my country may still have been there if that country had been Germany.

“But then I knew that was not true. If all our decisions are based on that first, initial assumption, that axiom, I had come to believe life was a sacred thing that must not be disturbed. That was the core of my character, and all of my later decisions proceeded from that. I killed soldiers who killed innocent people and that was a truth I could live with.”

“But it wasn’t the only truth?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.

He shook his head, smile already in place. “It was just enough to get me by, but the longer I studied, the more I realized how shallow that reassurance was. I sank into depression, wondering if that was all there was. I didn’t want to
function
in the world, I wanted to rise above it, get out of it, make something of it. To just fall in line with axioms, what a way to live.”

I sat back, frowning, knowing that was exactly what I had felt while sitting in my kitchen, the dead phone in my limp hand.

“Everything means something.”

“I knew it all had to be important, until it happened.”

“What?”

“
It.
I was sitting there and it washed over me. I sat for a week, staring off into space,
feeling
the answer in my very bones.”

“Right liberation.”

He nodded and folded his hands in his lap. “Its effects lasted for a few weeks. I was euphoric, everything made such marvelous sense. But the more sense it made, the more I wanted to share it. I knew there had to be a way to explain it to other people of divergent and opposed cultures. I knew that if we could do that, there would never be another war.”

I shook my head sadly. “And that was your first mistake.”

His chin dipped. “I became obsessed with understanding cultures, seeing the tiny doorways I might be able to open into their minds. I was fanatical about it, and completely forgot the lesson. The Sangha encouraged me, and now I know why.”

I sat up straighter. Was he about to denounce his leaders? “They were cultivating your talent.”

“As long as I was of use to them, they allowed me to believe I was on the right path. When I began to notice my vision improving, they told me it was just the natural effects of being healthy. When I became certain I was seeing through things, around things, inside things, they said I was one with all things. But when I began to dream of things far away, experience the world from my bed at the monastery, I knew that they were mistaken.” He propped his elbows upon the table and buried his face in his hands. His fingers massaged his hairline, and his breathing quickened. “I can see whatever I want, but since I wanted to see it all, discover the root of human evil, all I see is . . .”

“The darkest of things.” I put a hand on his shoulder and had a sudden realization. My visions were eerily like his gift, if they were had by a Time Lord. I was seeing the worst of things too, but
before
they happened.  Arthur had never said anything about premonitions, only remote-viewing.  Could it be possible that I had something like William’s gift?  If so, was I doomed to the same fate?

“I tried to cut out my own eyes, just like they did.” I knew he was talking about the zombies in the cellar, slowly dismantling their own bodies. “But I saw it even then. When the eyes grew back, I nearly went mad, and it was then that they told me I couldn’t die.” He began to chuckle, but there was no happiness in it, only crazed sadness. “I went to them to escape those things, but they just keep happening. Now, because they did not stop it, I can’t
stop
seeing them!”

My hand fell and, dejected, I sat back again. “Which is why you are the head of security.” And how, in my vision, he had been so timely with his attempted rescue.

He nodded, though he was still hiding in his hands from my judgments.

“William, how do you cope with it?” I thought of Ursula’s thirst and found myself retreating from him into my chair, wondering if he would pounce upon me.

He reached into his pocket and tossed a bottle onto the table. “I go through six a day now and it’s not enough. I can’t go on like this much longer.” His voice broke, and he fell silent.

The prescription was for an antipsychotic at a dosage my outdated pharmaceutical knowledge told me would fell a rhino.

“Oh, Will.” I sighed.

He was looking for a cure, urging me to be kind, to free him. For the first time, it broke my heart that I had nothing to offer.

“Help me,” he said almost too quietly to be heard. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

My limbs flooded with adrenalin, a sensation I now felt with a detached interest that allowed me to ignore it with no consequences. In my current state, that chemical indication of life or death lost much of its impact.

If not for the vision, I would not be speaking to William. If not for the vision, I would not have asked him about my friends and discovered his tactical importance. If not for my vision, I would never have heard those words, “whatever you want.”

Evidently, it wasn’t just the content of the vision, it was the timing. Could it be that some part of me was herding me toward an outcome it already saw coming?

“If you do not go, there is no proof she will do anything, but if you do, you will certainly do something you’ll regret.”

Arthur had understood the mechanics of my ability all along. The thought of him made me smile. When at last I learned what Arthur’s gift had been, I would torment him without mercy.

“Please help me,” William whispered again. I could hear the tremendous effort it took him, even years after the fact, to admit that he still could not numb himself to the horrors only humans could accomplish.

I reached out gently and pried his face from his fingers and cradled it lovingly. What would he think of me, I wondered, if I told him there was no end to this that was not a crushed skull?

“William, listen carefully to me,” I insisted, uncertain I could even claim to be such an expert. His eyes sharpened, however, and he looked convinced. “Why are you still alive? Why not end it? I know you know how. Why do you and Karl struggle on, why do those creatures in the cells waste away so laboriously? What’s the point?”

“We don’t want to die.”

“You don’t want it all to be for nothing,” I corrected, “but if the purpose of the struggle is to struggle, then we are as free as dust.”

The look on his face turned from desperation to attentive stillness.

“The decision to see was your own. You asked for the responsibility, not fully understanding what might happen, but should that naiveté free you from the obligation? What drives you mad is that you have chosen a fate you do not want.”

“You’re saying that I should want it?” He tugged on my loose hands, and I clenched.

“I am saying the
dharma
is all you have. You did not ask to be born, but at some point you made peace with the idea of living. Make peace with this idea and accept your obligation. Be better than you are now.”

“What is the
dharma
? I don’t even know anymore.”

“To uphold the truth of the universe.”

“Which is?”

I could not help it, I could think of no better explanation. “The
dharma
is that very question. We know the answer, it’s the question and that fact that we still ask it that drives us.”

For a moment only, he stared into space, and then his face slackened into a smile. “You remind me of him.”

“Whom?”

“Brother Ananda. When he looks at me, he always holds up his finger. I don’t know why, but it’s like he’s never going to answer the question that he sees, and that that’s the point.”

“I’m afraid he just thinks it’s amusing.”

Chuckling, William ran his hand over his forehead. “You’re telling me to embrace the things I see and act on them?”

“I’m telling you not to shy away from something. You have tried that. Try something else. The visions will never go away, because the part of you that asked for them will never allow it. What seems like pointless knowledge being piled onto your shoulders, means something. You just have to figure out what you are trying to tell yourself.”

“That isn’t something that the Arhat are willing to hear. They were told that their suffering would end, but they were just made to suffer more acutely because they see so much more deeply into the human heart.”

“Well”—I shrugged—“I’m afraid I don’t have the answers they’re looking for. I am glad you are at least willing and able to listen.”

“True. They’re all losing it,” he revealed. “Ursula was the last straw. The other Sangha cells don’t even correspond with us anymore, but they’re just as bad, if not worse. They look down their noses on the addictions we’ve cultivated, but they have their own perversions.” He tugged on the earpiece almost angrily. “Karl is slipping too. Every day he gets more impatient and paranoid.”

“With good reason, it seems. You should put that back in, or he’ll think you’ve turned too.”

“He already knows I have. When he sent me away last, he used his gift. He made it so I could not disobey when he told me to watch you.”

“Why?”

He looked surprised. “You scare him. He can’t control you and he knows you possess Ursula’s gifts, and possibly Eva’s, whatever that was, not to mention your own. You somehow
learn
the talents of others. We’ve never seen that before. You’re a loose cannon.”

“That’s about to blow some shit up.”

“What do you mean?”

I huffed and set my jaw. “Can they see us?”

William’s brows shot up. “There’s a camera system on each floor.”

“Are the camera feeds dumped onto an online server?” I asked expertly. Since when had Jinx’s voice taken over my thoughts? I found myself asking. I knew the answer though, it was the moment he became the one thing in my life that made me laugh. As it was, I could not help but see him furiously trying to hack the police station cameras.

William nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

“Close your eyes.”

His smile reflected my own. He knew that though Karl had compelled him to tattle, he couldn’t confess what he hadn’t witnessed.

I sat back in the chair. My breathing slowed. The ground eroded beneath me, and when I was there, floating above, I went to work.

The visions, I realized, took no time at all. It was possible that a great number of consecutive decisions could be made and followed to their conclusions without even a single moment passing by. I could split up, overlap progressions, and in the end, it would be as if I had walked every possible path. I wasn’t just one Spirit Ninja, I was an army.

It felt like staring at a 3-D image, or drawing with my left hand and right hand at the same time. It felt like playing two-handed Tetris. It was a Zen fugue and in it, there was no time for thinking. Knowledge came to me and I accepted it passively: the layout of the building, the positions of the security personnel, the locations of the cameras and their perspectives. With each time I was captured, I learned more. With each avenue closed, door slammed, and conversation overheard, I became more dangerous to them, and eventually, all the visions terminated with the exception of three.

In one, I had snuck down the corridor, in the opposite direction from the way I had come. I passed door after door, avoided the cameras I had seen as they panned from side to side. I snuck past pacing suits, overheard conversations, and slipped down a flight of stairs. They put me in the lobby, right beside the elevator to the horror-filled cellar. I could have turned and walked outside, but I already knew there was a group of minions on the other side, taking an addiction break.

I stared at the elevator and found my reflection, gilded by the brass doors, to be almost serene. I knew the look on my face and without hesitation, pushed the down button.

The doors closed around me, but even before they opened, the undead prisoners had assembled like a grim army. I walked slowly, looking each death mask in the metaphorical eye. Their faces tracked me to the center of the hallway, and when I spoke, their ears pricked.