Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 Page 8

  In the security center, he found Jimmy sitting dazed and unresponsive before blank video screens, the two other BrightLine personnel unconscious on the floor. The man triggered the alarm, but the escape was complete.

  For half an hour, all they could get out of Jimmy was the same sentence, again and again: "He's too good." Tears drained down his cheeks as Weston watched him become aware of his surroundings—not like someone waking up but like someone learning to see. Still, he only said, "He's too good."

  Weston put a hand on Jimmy's shoulder. "Too clever by half," she said. "Still a dozen steps ahead of us."

  But that wasn't what Jimmy meant.

  Someone guessed at what triggered the reaction in the dogs, but a scan of a wide range of frequencies detected by the outdoor microphones found not only ultrasonic whistles, seeming to have several origination points, but also subaural rumblings around the base, the movements and perhaps communications of whatever had worked from below to set the prisoner free. Had there not been a thunderstorm at the time, someone might have noticed the murmurings underfoot.

  Half a dozen armed men, suited against toxic emissions, entered the underground chamber. Three possible routes of egress revealed themselves. By the next day, the army had flown in equipment to provide images of what lay beneath, but those tunnels cut deep and out of range. What signal had the prisoner provided to his underground accomplices so they knew the very moment to enact his release? No evidence remained of the subterranean gasses that had caused the diverse psychological woes affecting the guards (in any case, the effects faded within days).

  Jimmy's part in the escape—of which he remembered nothing—was harder to parse, though cameras had recorded his every action, from his rising from his seat as Methusaleh left his cell, to his steady progress down the corridor and into the security center, to the two unaccountably quick and unerring blows that disabled the man and woman at their stations.

  Oblonski showed up. They had Jimmy tell his story while Oblonski stood impassively, arms crossed, eyes to the floor, more reflective than Jimmy had ever seen him. When Jimmy had finished, Oblonski waited a beat, said to Weston, "He's telling the truth," and left without a word to Jimmy.

  Quarles was in the hall outside Weston's office when she and Jimmy emerged. He asked, "Who was that, General?"

  Weston pincered her fingers around her forehead as if in pain. "Our lie detector," she said.

  They put him on extended leave and offered him counseling. Flight after flight of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq needed it more, he truly believed; he'd seen them. But the offer wasn't something to cavalierly refuse, and he knew himself well enough to see he had been broken before, and this had left him in ruins, all the walls pulled down. He spoke more than was his tendency in his counseling sessions, and he got to hear what he thought, and he got to hear the things he'd done. Not bad. Not bad. But he was haunted by the deeds of the man in the cell.

  He sat in silence, not calling it prayer or meditation, allowing whatever was deepest in him to surface. He listened to the voices at his center and the nothing surrounding every voice, but he couldn't tell which voice was telling the truth. How does a man interrogate himself?

  He recalled himself saying, "He's too good." That was the final key: Good. Righteous. Just. And seeing himself as a decent man, as a person devoted to justice, how could he help but work to free the innocent captive?

  16. Deeds of the Righteous

  The first birds settled at the edges of the wide pools of water left behind by the fire-fighters. From the bench by a gazebo, in the small green at the center of town, Jimmy could see the last house to have caught fire. Much of the front was gone, given over to a hole extending from the roof down into the first floor as if something the size of a whale had taken a tremendous bite; before dawn, the scene appeared flat and unreal. He wondered again whether another world lay under this one, fully functioning, in cavernous mazes under the earth. Now that he'd seen the car lift into the air and carry off the Old Man and his associates, it was possible to believe anything, hidden realms above the earth as well as beneath, or a secret world running alongside the one Jimmy knew—though Jimmy felt there ought to be limits to how far this fantasy played out. Otherwise, nothing was reliable.

  It was too early now, but when he had the chance, he would call Bekka. She, at least, was reliable.

  Thematic attacks. A repetition of destructive histories. Fire...

  Jimmy was tired, so it took him a minute. Earth, air, fire...

  He knew where to go next. Perhaps it had been too recent, but no violence by water had been more dramatic. Jimmy needed to go where people had been abandoned, where any remaining vision of an intact nation had fallen apart.

  He pulled off at a hillside rest stop not far from Montgomery, Alabama. At the parking lot's far end, by a picnic table, trees with enmeshed limbs cast ruffled shade; Jimmy tucked the car there, cracked open the window, tilted back his seat, and slept. The sounds of passing cars and people entered his dreams, but nothing woke him for hours.

  He didn't reach New Orleans till the sun had nearly set. The air smelled of water and reproach. He thought, "Haven't these people suffered enough?"

  The hotel was in a part of the city that hadn't been flooded, but the owner had fled Katrina well in advance of the storm. A wiry, circumspect man, he told Jimmy as he handed him a key, "I took off again when Rita come along. That one didn't touch nothin' but the Ninth Ward. But I don't take chances with my life."

  "That's a good policy," Jimmy said.

  "Mm-hm. Playin' it safe with my one life," he said. He came around the counter to point across the courtyard. "Over on the left there. Up above. You can park you' car right by those steps. You here to sightsee or you plan to give people some he'p?"

  Jimmy heard himself say,

  "I plan to help if I can."

  "They's plenty to do. Be plenty to do for years and years till it all washes 'way agin."

  "I imagine so," Jimmy said, and he went to move his car. The day before, stopping briefly in Atlanta, he'd gone online at an internet café and located this establishment. Then he'd placed an ad in the Times-Picayune, on the theory that the eyes and ears in service to the great man were multitudinous and ever-vigilant.

  "Methusaleh," read the ad, "let me help. Perilous Lieutenant." He named the hotel, and the ad gave an identifying contact number. One way or another, he would get in touch, though the ad felt like a prayer, like the incense of something sacrificed that you hoped would come to the attention of an impossibly distant being.

  The room smelled damp and felt damp. Jimmy shook out of his shirt and went into the bathroom. Washing up, he saw a tired figure in the mirror. He put on the light to see him more clearly and, a child again, he leaned toward his own face.

  Perhaps it was the phone itself, a relic, a jet black object that possessed real mass, that made the ringing on the other end seem to come from the past, when the surprise of a distant voice magically bound you to people.

  His mother answered.

  "Mom, it's Jimmy."

  "Let me get your father," she said, and her voice, though averted, became loud.

  "James!" she called. "It's your son!" Then, returning, "Are you still with that girl?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's that girl Rayna knew." Jimmy's cousin had hooked them up.

  "Bekka, yeah."

  "Everything still good?"

  "Yeah, yeah. Things are good. We're, uh, we're on a vacation together."

  "Mm," she said, and he knew what she thought of that, how it was too fast, but she wouldn't say a thing, just make sounds that told you she was processing the information, judging it, and if you knew her, you knew her judgment.

  He heard the rattle and hiss of his father picking up the other phone. "Hey hey!" his father called. "Jimmy!" It rendered Jimmy breathless.

  "Hey, Dad," he managed, at the moment not certain of himself but feeling loved and understood. "You and that girl—what's
it, Bekka?—still together?"

  "Yeah, I—"

  "We covered that," said his mother. "They're on vacation together."

  "Oh, I see, I see. Where are you?"

  "Ahm." A fly climbed the spotty red curtain. "Between destinations," he said.

  "Why is there something instead of nothing?" He had asked this of Bekka on their first date, walking her home from an old-fashioned burger joint.

  She had laughed and said, "You sure move fast. We're already on theoretical physics?" then laughed again at his stammering reaction. "Okay," she said, putting her hand on his upper arm, thrilling him, "I'll tell you what we say we know," and the rest of the way back to the steps of her apartment, she had given him the rundown on the slight edge matter had over antimatter at the creation of the universe, on the latest thinking about the multiverse, on theories she called crazy and ones she said were credible but that still sounded crazy to him, till Jimmy summed it up for her.

  "So you don't know."

  "I don't care what they say," she said. "Some things can't be questioned. And other things we can't ask."

  The phone rang twice, and when she answered, he felt there was a world beyond the madness of this situation.

  "Baby," she said, "are you all right?"

  "I'm fine. I'm... I'm where I need to be. I wish I could tell you more, but I've got to keep this close for now."

  "You're not in trouble."

  "I am not in trouble," he said, tempted to follow up with, "but I'm headed for trou ble." He did say, "I promise to stay in touch. If that's what you want. This must feel like I've abandoned you."

  "You have important things to take care of, is that right?"

  "Yes. Yes, that's right."

  "Well," she said, "I know you are a good man."

  Across the miles, he felt her voice as a physical force that not only reached him, it altered him, making him the man she deserved.

  He had been wrong about the true nature of the self. After showering, he had peered again into the foggy mirror. His nose touched the glass. The man over there was motionless, but in the world at his back, violence and terror ground down ordinary people as if their lives had no purpose but to be pressed under history's terrible weight. Good people could not allow that. There at his back, past that shower wall, past the building, people acted to lift the heel of violence.

  You couldn't locate or understand the self by looking inward. You could only make sense of a self by observing its actions in the world. A good human was not a steady noun but a sequence of unexpected verbs. No matter if one sat in contemplation or acted for all the world to see: one became a full self by doing.

  Dressed, he sat in the single chair by the bed. An air conditioner labored at his back. He could not stop looking at the door, and after a while, he realized he was trying to see through it to what lay beyond.

  Something was coming. A man who intended to bring great harm had come to this city. Another man who intended to stop him—or at least stop his plans—was here as well. In a few moments, Jimmy would leave this room, heading toward the levees, in search of a destructive device or in search of the man he'd called Methusaleh. Or...

  Or a knock would come. He would open the door. The Old Man would say, "We have to go. Follow me." Jimmy would step out into the fraught and waiting and damaged world. At last he would be free.

  * * *

  THE PRINCIPLES

  Robert Reed | 23168 words

  Bob Reed remarks, "For a lot of years, I've been working on a giant alternate-history novel. This is a part-time project, mostly. The story is wrapped around the spectacle of ordinary life, and while some details have been pulled from my past, the interesting stuff is mostly invented. My protagonist, Quentin Maurus, endures quite a lot. 'The Principles' is one of those adventures, teased free from the story's body and the action compressed, building what might be confused for a traditional story." The author's first novel in years comes out this spring. The Memory of Sky is a Great Ship story published by Prime Books. He is also flirting with self-publishing a collection called The Greatship, which strings together most of his tales in the Marrow universe.

  A word of warning: This story contains scenes that may be disturbing to some readers.

  Honest labor made for honorable men. Every woman understood that principle, and that's why when Quentin turned thirteen, a lawn-cutting business was born. His mother rounded up local war widows and elderly dykes, and his father showed him how to mix gasoline with the oil and how to curse at the old mower's quirks. Then with pleas for safety and a manly slap to the back, one generation sent the next into the honorable world of commerce.

  Madam Lorton walked her yard afterward, making certain her warhorns and roses were still standing.

  Madam Codmarm insisted on giving orange-and-fizz treats before inventing new ways to shortchange the child.

  Because Christian mothers often stole from their sons, Madam Bernstein made certain that Quentin had an extra blue bill to hide outside his wallet.

  Across the street from Madam Bernstein lived a young widow named Madam Dobs. Her husband died in Vietnam, making her an object of pity in the neighborhood. She wasn't one of the boy's clients, but one afternoon she stepped out on her porch, smiling when she promised to double his wages if her yard was cut today.

  Quentin readily agreed. But the Sussex-gold in her yard looked like hay, and the windfall soon became a torment of endless pushing and bag dumping. Drenched in sweat, Quentin paused to gasp, and looking up, found the lady watching him from behind her storm door, wearing nothing but a small shirt with no bra, and no pants, white legs ending inside slender panties that couldn't have been more red.

  He stopped in the middle of the half-cut yard.

  She asked, "What's wrong, Quentin?"

  The mower wasn't powerful enough, he explained. He was tired and it was dinnertime and maybe he could finish tomorrow.

  "Would you like something to drink, Quentin?"

  Very much. But that wasn't the subject of the moment.

  "Come here," she advised.

  He climbed one porch step and another, reaching a vantage point where he could see twisted black hairs pushing out from under the panties' elastic.

  He stayed where he was, and eventually she said, "Come back tomorrow then."

  And he rolled the exhausted mower home.

  Dad didn't show for dinner, which was happening more and more. The kitchen television was turned to the news. Some little battle had been fought on the Armistice Line, twenty Queensland soldiers dead but plenty of Mongols too. Then the phone sang out. "Hello, Madam Bernstein, how are you?" Mom began. The Jewish lady said she was well, thank you, and then she mentioned something about Madam Dobs. Mom pulled the phone cord as far as it would reach, leaving the kitchen, and after a couple of minutes she returned and hung up, thinking carefully before giving her son the most important sex lesson of his life.

  "Women are dangerous," she said. "And men are weak, impulsive animals. That's how women manipulate you, and sometimes in the most cruel ways. You don't want to fall for their traps. Do you understand me, Quentin?"

  Quentin wasn't sure what he understood. But feeling an obligation, he asked, "What about Madam Dob's grass?"

  "Her grass isn't your problem," his mother assured, answering his question as well as the one she heard.

  In 1839, the Reformed Church of the United purchased creekbottom ground from the local Otoe tribe. Warner College and the hamlet of Eureka were built on the prairie wilderness. But just two years later, the Otoe sold the adjacent country to what became the provincial capital, and a century later, Eureka was surrounded and legally incorporated.

  Yet the character of the old town refused to change. The campus would always be a collection of venerable brick buildings and Queensland elms. The local houses were built in the United-style, big and white with a fondness for square windows and oddly narrow doors. The original main street retained its scruffy charm as well as little shops, some
of them generations old. Even in the 1970s, the only glass-and-steel buildings stood apart from the rest of Eureka. There was a Safeguard grocery and an abortion clinic, a modern laundry and a large discount warehouse courageously billing itself as Treasure City. In his first week at college, Quentin Maurus visited Treasure City looking for aspirin and for socks. What he found instead was a long aisle dedicated to cut-rate paperback books. Organization was deliciously minimal in those wire racks. Mysteries and women stories shared pockets with celebrity biographies and histories of popular wars. Invisible hands often hid the futurist fictions, but they were waiting to be discovered, and four years later, Quentin was shouldering both a degree in biology as well as a considerable library of acid-licked novels, each decorated with moons and stars and sleek rockets that most likely would never survive launch.

  He was a graduate, but Eureka still felt like home. The college had libraries and two girls for every male student. The neighborhood was full of houses converted to cheap apartments. Madam Lane was a dyke landlady who didn't trust men, but Quentin offered to double the normal deposit, and that's why she led him up a long staircase dressed with green carpeting and dirty white paint. An exceptionally narrow door led inside an empty apartment wearing more green carpet. What convinced him to stay—besides the big, oddly shaped rooms and the minimal rent, the iron radiators and peeling wallpaper, and those huge, ill-fitted windows—was the built-in bookshelves that covered every available wall.

  "My handyman put them up," Madam Lane explained, fiddling with the steel rings on her arthritic fingers.