Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 Read online

  "The BrightLine people train them here. They've got their own yard for it. That deal was done before I arrived. There used to be MPs with dogs. One day—so the story goes—he was being taken to the yard when the dogs were in the corridor and the dogs spooked him. Shook him up." She paused, waving a finger as she thought of what she might have left out. "Ah. Covey is head of the security people, and for the time being, he reports directly to me." She raised and lowered her head, overemphasizing her visual evaluation of Jimmy. "I assume you're some kind of last-ditch effort."

  "That's how I think of it, too, ma'am."

  "Let me tell you how this is going to work. No materials of any kind are allowed in there, except what goes in with his meals, and we get that back. We keep every possible tool or weapon away from him; about the only reliable intel is that he's an expert in everything—if you believe some of the anecdotes, the guy can make a black hole in a lab or turn a piece of lint into a concussion grenade. If I could send you in there naked, I would. You'll have two guards with you until he's secured. Then we'll keep an eye on you from next door."

  "There's a separate viewing room, is that right?"

  "That's right."

  "Well, I won't be in the room with him for this... procedure. I'll be in the next room. I won't interact with him."

  Jimmy watched her turn this over—squinting with one eye, then sitting on the corner of her desk. "Aw, nuts," she said. "Spooky stuff?"

  "Ah..."

  "You gonna tell me what I'm thinking, Lieutenant?"

  "No, ma'am. It's not like that. I won't read his mind." As convincingly as possible, he said, "I'm going to realign his will."

  He could tell she thought of asking what that phrase might mean, but elected to move on. "And you've had success with this approach?"

  "I can't really discuss—" he began, but Weston waved away his words and moved toward the door.

  "Unless you've been sent to rescue him, I'll just leave you to do your thing."

  Jimmy hefted his duffel from the floor. "I did want to ask: The birth year... that can't be right. Not with the fight he put up."

  "Over a hundred?" He waited for her to shrug, but instead she said, "With no birth certificate, it's obviously an estimate. He's definitely old". She opened the door for Jimmy. "We've been calling him Methusaleh."

  4. The Cunning Man

  Jimmy pushed his sunglasses closer to his eyes and frowned at the palm-tree print on his trunks—pickings had been slim at Target the day before the trip—while Bekka and her friends, Max and Megan, graduate mathematics students at Cornell, continued to reminisce about Wesleyan. When Jimmy picked up his book, Bekka noticed.

  We might work a little harder to include Jimmy in our conversation," she said.

  "I'm fine," he said. "I'll go back in the water in a bit." Three small children rushed past, heels flinging up sand; Bekka sat forward to brush off the towel.

  "Ithaca seems like a nice little city," she said. "Was it founded by Greeks?"

  "Actually, a lot of towns around here have classical names, the ones without Iroquois names, that is," Max said, and Jimmy watched him tuck in his lips and shut his eyes, preparing to elaborate. He had left his T-shirt off after swimming, and Jimmy figured that he would, in a few hours, be red and in pain. "Roman and Greek cities and personalities. Here's an interesting thing: Seneca was both a Roman senator and an Iroquois nation. There's even a Homer. And an Ovid."

  Megan said, "Who's Ovid again?" The meager breeze from off the water swirled across the beach and kept tossing her corn silk hair into her face. "Blah," she said, pulling hair from her mouth.

  "Latin poet. He wrote the Metamorphoses, a collection of stories about changes, changes of form, people changing into trees or changing into other creatures. Did I tell you? Lipkiss, my classics prof, e-mailed me a poem called 'Ithaka' the other day."

  "She was in love with you," Megan said.

  "That poem. You mean 'Ulysses'?" Bekka asked.

  "No, not the 'To strive, to find...' Not that. What's that, Tennyson?"

  "Tennyson," agreed Bekka. "I had to memorize that for a recitation in high school." She made a fist and brought her arm across her chest, regal and sonorous. "'To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield!'"

  "Not that. No, the poem is called 'Ithaka.' There's something with 'Hope the voyage is long...' The poet's Cavafy."

  "Our voyage to Ithaca wasn't terribly long," Bekka said. "Not of epic length, right?" She put her fist against Jimmy's shoulder and shoved, and he turned that into a face-first topple into the blanket. She giggled, tickling him till he sat and grabbed her lively hands.

  Max got up on one knee as if to rise, then reseated himself and cleared his throat. "Bekka says you were in the military."

  Jimmy grinned. "She speaks the truth," he said, echoing Bekka's stentorian tone, winking at her.

  "Did you... were you..."

  Megan's face suggested caution. "Max..."

  "I'm just... I'm not..."

  "You want to know if I was stationed in Afghanistan or Iraq." Jimmy swung his sunglasses up to rest atop his head. Both men squinted against the brilliance. "I was in Iraq."

  "Well." Max gave something like a short nod that might just have been him gauging his tone before he spoke. "Thank you for your service."

  Jimmy gave the only adequate answer. "You're welcome." That he had spent time in Iraq was all he had told Bekka, all he could tell her. The other man's face expressed understanding of this stranger on the beach, but Jimmy knew Max didn't know a thing. Looking at the stretch of sand beyond Max, pitted where people had stepped, he thought of the desert floor surrounding the Texas prison, though the texture wasn't the same and the color wasn't the same. Sand came in infinite varieties.

  Max asked Jimmy, "Have you read The Odyssey? Or The Iliad?"

  "Odyssey. In high school." He felt a twinge of sorrow for that lost self.

  "I was going to say that when you tie it to The Iliad, it's this story about what happens in war and what it's like to be a returning soldier."

  "Mm-hm." Jimmy did not want to have this conversation, but he recalled now flattening the book open on his desk. His thumb involuntarily moved, and he recalled the book in his hand. "What was," he began, and thought harder. "There are those phrases like 'wine-dark sea' and 'dawn's something.'"

  "Rosy-fingered dawn. That's the Fitzgerald version."

  "Didn't Odysseus have some phrase connected with him?"

  "It varies," Max said, in his element, not really talking to Jimmy, expounding. "The man of woe. Skilled in ways of contending. Wily. The cunning man. The man of twists and turns. That's Fagles, one of the latest translations. Odysseus is the smartest guy in any Mediterranean room. He can see his way out of any situation, probably because he's been through so much, had so many adventures. His only failing, if it's a failing, is it takes him forever to get back to Ithaka after the war. They're not just a strategy. The twists and turns are his life story."

  "He has to get back... to his wife?"

  "Penelope. Remember, there are all these 'suitors'? The suitors make the mistake of thinking that just because he's old now, or older, he's helpless. He can't possibly fight this crowd of younger men. But everything he's gone through has made him stronger. You can't beat Odysseus." He squinted into this idea, then opened his eyes at Jimmy. "Does that strike you as ridiculous? I mean, personally. You've been in a war, or conflict. And I'm talking about the journeys of this make-believe fighter. Wouldn't a real person be... traumatized by these things?"

  Aware of Bekka sitting stiff beside him, Jimmy pushed his pale soles into the sand, digging with them, making a track. He found himself wondering how far down the sand extended. When did it become dirt, stone, whatever lay deeper? What were the layers? Mantle, crust...

  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 muddyi
ng 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.

  5. Looking Glass

  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.