by Neovictorian
More than anything I’m looking for a reaction. I’ve really got her in a double bind; somebody she knows and trusts, deeply, someone in The Outfit, told her that I’m in it, too, that I’d understand. And then that was blown away in an instant. Either there’s been a huge mistake, or a she’s been told a huge lie. And either is devastating to the comfortable world view where things fit into place, where they make sense. How will she deal with something that doesn’t make any sense?
I wait and see.
She doesn’t react much, her face remains composed; she’s been expecting this question, and she’s prepared some kind of answer.
“I can’t tell you who, Cal. It’s a matter of honor. I already told you, it’s something that my father told me about, when I was 18.” She smiles faintly at the memory, turns serious again.
“He told me there was a thing, he called it ‘A loose network of the like-minded,’ a network of people dedicated to knowledge, to understanding and doing good. That’s all he told me at the time.”
She stops there, but her face shows she knows it won’t be completely satisfactory to me. I wait.
“After that someone else contacted me and gave me more information, a little, while I was at school. They said I’d be fully briefed after I graduated, then my dad died and I thought I might hear from someone, but there was nothing. Until yesterday. And that’s really all I can say, because I gave my word.”
“Good for you, then. Your word is real,” I say. “All right, then tell some things you didn’t make promises about. Your mother disappeared about 48 hours ago. Within 90-odd minutes Anders gets a mysterious text message. Where were you when you got told?”
“I was at company headquarters.” She grins slightly and raises an eyebrow. “I’m currently an assistant in marketing.”
“Currently. And where to next?”
“In about two months I’m scheduled to go to product development. Where I can use my real skills.”
“And those are…?” I give her a look, raise my chin, and it makes her laugh.
“I have an electrical engineering degree. What I’m going to do is help improve the stealth tech Summa’s producing for the next gen anti-ship missile.”
Her eyes move to the bulkhead over my right shoulder. She’s seeing something there.
“It’s going to be unstoppable. If the Chinese want a war in the South China Sea, we’ll take out every one of their ships in the first 12 hours.”
“Really? So you’re very patriotic, rah-rah USA and so on? Didn’t they correct that attitude at Harvard or Yale or whatever Ivy you went to? Didn’t they guilt all that pro-America talk out of you?” I say, the irony dripping.
“I went to MIT,” she states, a faint pride creeping into her voice. “And this is the greatest country, ever. Sure there are some problems right now, but—“
“But what?” I interrupt. “The ‘problems’ are a rot across most of the country, outside of Silicon Valley and a few other enclaves that are rich and healthy. The rest of Northern California, the people out on the farms, want to split off from you, and be left alone. Our Congress is shit, and you know it. Our military is the best thing we have to offer, sure. The only thing left with any honor.
“Let’s be serious Lisa, our government’s like the Soviet Union under Brezhnev—decaying. Everybody just wants to keep their job and retire, and screw everyone and everything that comes after.”
I pick up the copy of Heights and drop it on the desk. It’s over 700 pages and it thumps.
“You read this. In the Manifesto Duke says that it was a projection 40 years into the future, and the world is in an existential crisis. That was a little over 40 years ago. Oh, we’ve got the coolest toys now, all the apps, the games, the greatest porn ever produced, 24/7 infotainment to keep the marks anaesthetized. He saw a lot of that, too.”
I lean forward, boring in, lock eyes on her. Her whites expand, and I know she gets the message: This is a no-bullshitter.
“’Not Rome in 476, but Nagasaki 1945 times a thousand,’’’ I whisper. She strains forward to hear over the faint background noises of the plane.
“It didn’t quite get to that in 40 years, Lisa, but Duke was a very intelligent man. He said maybe 50…and you’re an extremely intelligent woman. Where will we be in 10 years if everything goes on just the same?”
I wait.
Her eyes are looking into mine, but they gradually unfocus, looking away, into time.
“It will be something like the book,” she says softly.
“And what’s the thing that can save us? What can fill the hole?” I breathe.
“The Hole?” Her eyes snap back in to focus on mine. She’s wondering where she went.
“What do you know about The Hole?”
She looks more nervous, more emotional, than I’ve yet seen her. There’s a tic in her face and I realize she’s biting the insides of her cheeks.
“It’s on page one of Duke’s Manifesto, Lisa. And I’m certain everyone who reads it there knows exactly what it is.”
She closes her eyes for a second, trying to relax.
“Cal, there’s s-something…” but still, she’s not present here yet. She knows it, and she opens her eyes wide, looks at the bulkhead behind me with concentration. I understand what she’s doing—recalling an anchor. She pulls herself back to now. I’m impressed.
Her face has the look of an executive who’s taken a big decision, and is at peace with it.
“I think the Church of ReHumanism is involved in my mother’s disappearance. I’m not even sure she’s been kidnapped, if that’s the right word. Maybe she wanted to disappear for a while. Maybe they’ve persuaded her she needs a vacation.”
Her eyes narrow. “My best guess, that I didn’t tell Dale or anyone else, is that they’re after our money. It costs around $10,000 a year to be a top-tier member. But wouldn’t they just love a ‘donation’ of a hundred million?”
“Or two,” I respond. I look over her shoulder at the drinks cabinet and wonder if it’s too soon for a second martini.
“I was keeping my theories to myself until we got on site Lisa, looked around the area and maybe talked to Mason and the crew. See what she’d said to them since the cruise started, what she’d been doing ashore. We may still want to do all that but I’m doubtful about how productive it’ll be.
“This never made sense as a kidnapping for ransom. From the first second that you told me about the location and I read the brief on the circumstances I severely doubted it. Voluntary disappearance is the obvious reason. But the thing is strange and murky as hell.
“The point is still to find out what happened and where she is, though. That’s why I’m here. And I won’t stop until we get that result.”
For an instant a look of…satisfaction flashes on her face. Strange. I file it for future reference.
But in the time we’ve spent together I’ve developed a new interest, apart from her mother. A new agenda. It’s time to cast a fly in the water, set the hook and meet the challenge. I feel a hint of sadistic pleasure at the image of her as a fish, well, a very sleek, fine mermaid indeed, being reeled in squirming and fighting and not being able to do a damn thing about it. And it’s not guilty pleasure.
“Make me another martini,” I order. She instantly, unconsciously activates, moves to get up from her chair then freezes for a second, wondering. She stares at me, challenging, and I stare back, harder. Once again I admire her willpower, but it’s a contest she won’t win; and after a few seconds she realizes that she doesn’t even want to.
Her features soften and she gives me a little smile of acknowledgement and a wink, turns toward the front of the plane. It’s only a half a dozen steps, but her hips sway even more than the last time she knew I was looking.
46. Tomorrow, Juneau, Alaska May 28 8:47 am
I’m still alive, but that’s all I know. It’s cold, not freezing, but the cold is seeping through the rocks into my back. The air on my face is a little warm
er. The back of my head is warmer still, and I reach up to touch it. I feel a wool cap under my head and neck, the wool cap I was wearing on the trail. I try and remember what I was doing on a trail.
“Remember Cal, I love this shit,” I say out loud, I’m not sure why, oh yeah, someone told me it’s what they say in the Teams, when things get truly shitty when shit can’t get much worse when you’re shot in the gut and hypothermic and there’s one fucking bullet left in your last mag, I love this shit! Jack, Jack’s the one who told me that and I see his big block of a face in front of me, laughing, hanging there in the dark, faint but real enough. What Would Jack Do? Why, he’d get his mind right and get his ass out of here.
I feel like the fog is lifting, I’m almost me, but not quite, what the hell was I doing, I was on a mountain trail, okay before that? Before that I was in a car with Lisa, yes Lisa, I remember her face now too, can see it in front of me, and then, in an instant, I’m overwhelmed by a rush of thoughts, feelings, impressions, sights, sounds, it’s all coming back, way too fast to even understand, my back arches and I go rigid, turn to stone, my whole life, every second being played, backwards, downloaded, it’s a grey blur and the sounds are just a whine, voices and sirens and babel, musical notes and commercials and kids on a playground, crying babies, it begins to slow but it’s so disconnected, now, just impressions, faces, Mommy’s face hanging in the air, not connected to anything, a feeling of warmth, mouth filled with something soft and wet, then it’s dark and I’m floating, happy, Oh God happy in a way that I can’t describe, I don’t have to do anything say anything please anyone take give produce pay push shove hit kill. But I feel a pull through the dark, then a push and I’m sliding down, down for a second the pressure on my head is unbearable then I see light, so bright there’s nothing else, close my eyes tight to keep it out, it hurts and then my whole body is cold and I cry, cry for what is lost.
And I’m back, back in the dark and I go from rigid to limp instantly, every muscle goes slack at the same time and I thump back down on the cold stones, but it feels good, because I’m alive, I’m Cal fucking Adler and I remember who I am, what I am. I don’t know where I am yet, but a surge of pure confidence goes through me like electricity. I’m going to find out, and get out of the black.
Because now I know now what happened to Eve Hart.
47. 3 years ago, Fairfax County, Virginia April 26 8:15 pm
I turns out Jack is a helluva cook as long as the menu consists of bacon and eggs, steak and eggs, salad without dressing, raw vegetables, fruit and nuts. It’s all we’ve eaten for the last day and a half.
He walks into the living room carrying a scoped rifle. The barrel is matte stainless steel, pointed quartering toward the ceiling. The bolt is open.
“This is more like what we may need,” he says. He left two hours ago to get “the right rifle” as he called it. The safe in the basement has half a dozen weapons, including a lightly used Colt 1911-A1 that probably rode in an officer’s holster in Korea; a .30 Carbine that looks considerably more used but in good working order and a selective fire M-16 still new in the box. There are 550-round military cases of ammo for all these, a few smaller boxes for the .357 and holsters, hard cases, mags and cleaning gear for everything. There’s also a big compound bow and 20 arrows, nasty things with what look like multiple razor blades at the tips. And a Bowie knife.
I pick it up from the end table and show it to Jack, point aimed at the ceiling. The blade is a massive 9-inch slab of steel.
“While you were gone I decided I want to keep this. What do I have to sign and how much compensation do you think USG is going to want?”
He smiles slightly, but looks seriously at me. “That’s my own personal property, Cal. It’s a little awkward carrying it around in the District undercover, though.”
“Sorry, I figured—“
“No, don’t be sorry,” he breaks in. “I think I want you to have it. The fact that you like it shows your good taste.”
He exhales, relaxing. “It’s yours, but on one condition, that you listen to the story of where it came from.”
“Sure.”
He sits down in an easy chair, the rifle propped across his knees.
“I was in Iraq twice, first a regular six month tour in 2004, then a special assignment in Ramadi in ‘06. You know about the Second Battle of Ramadi?”
“Well, the major points, anyway. Combined arms operation took back the city after the Washington Post published some leaks claiming the situation was hopeless.”
“Something like that, yeah,” he says. “But don’t get me started on the Post. Anyway, there were SEALs, Army and Marines operating together and it was urban warfare, real nasty. But I went in undercover, our guys in the area didn’t even get a heads up. I was there for one objective, one man.”
He nods. “I tracked him for a week, ambushed him coming into his own bedroom. He was a bomb making instructor, hell, he had a whole curriculum on how to blow up our guys and the Iraqi government troops.”
He stares into my eyes. “I put three suppressed subsonic rifle rounds into his chest and one in his head. Right up the nostrils. He had that knife on his belt. It’s a Randall, one of the best knives ever made. That one shipped in 1955 to a guy in Paducah, Kentucky and I have no idea how the hell it ended up on a fucking bomb maker in Iraq. But I took it back to its home, back where it belongs.”
He doesn’t say anything for a minute, just looks at me. “What do you know about knife fighting?”
“What I’ve read, diagrams in books. I actually pick up a knife every once in a while and at least practice the motions.”
“Better than 99% of everyone else,” he concedes. “Okay, there’s one universal rule of knife fights. You read some books. Do you know what it is?”
For a second I don’t know what he’s driving at, then I get a flash from a book I read, way back when I was 15 or 16—“The First Rule of Knife Fighting…”
“If you get into a knife fight, you will get cut,” I recite like a good student. He laughs at my intonation.
“Very good, grasshopper. Okay, a hypothetical: Suppose you’re out there in the big, bad world, one arm in a sling like now, trapped in an alley, walls on three sides, a guy pointing a gun at you, telling you in a second he’s gonna waste your ass. You believe him. And all you’ve got is that Bowie in your hand, right here, right now. What do you do, tough guy?”
I ponder this for a second, visualizing the scene. It’s dark, hot, and there’s nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to, no help no mercy no way out but through.
“I head fake right, hoping the gun will follow, move left, get low, low as I can, come up under the gun, get inside of his weapon. If I get shot, well that was going to happen anyway. Then I ram this blade right up his solar plexus at an angle, cut his heart and don’t stop until the guard is lifting his feet off the ground.”
He doesn’t blink.
“Not bad. I’ve got a sheath and an Arkansas stone in a drawer downstairs that goes with that piece. It’s all yours.”
He stands up and heads toward the back of the house.
“We’ve got to go down there anyway and start getting this rifle set up. It’s a custom Remington 700 in .300 Winchester Magnum. And the nice thing is, when you use it the other guy doesn’t get a chance to slice your nuts off.”
48. Today, Aboard N916F, Enroute to Juneau, Alaska May 27, 2:31 pm
While Lisa makes my drink I pick up the Manifesto. I haven’t decided yet when I’ll reveal anything more to her about what I know. For now, I’ll let her tell me about ReHume. Eventually, I’ll clue her in about The Outfit. Maybe tomorrow, next week, maybe in five minutes; it’s a matter of knowing when it’s right. Sometimes you don’t know in advance at all. But it will be soon. Lisa was born to be a part of Big Picture.
Page 4
“Will” is a word that’s sadly misunderstood and cruelly underused in the present day, but this is not accidental. The phrase “It will happen” i
s a sort of faint echo of “I will it to happen,” but neither has the impact it should, because so very few now believe they can truly mark and mold the world in and of themselves. From birth through their entire educational careers people are taught that “teamwork” is the key to everything, that collective action is the only way to “solve” the world’s “problems.” It’s never suggested that the unvarnished truth is that there are no such “solutions” and that the “problems” aren’t problems at all but inevitable circumstances based on the facts that begin with gravity, run through the Second Law of Thermodynamics and end with the reality that the mass and energy of the universe are limited, but the desires of the human imagination are essentially unlimited.
It suits our Masters well that the mass be convinced they can do nothing as individuals, that they are slaves not just to their governments but to their hunger and thirst and sex drive. And what is mere Will set against these? Most of these poor humans feel that they are about to die if they don’t get a good dinner every single night.
The Will mostly has been sapped and denigrated and even made evil, as “selfishness.” And what follows from this as night follows day is the physical, moral and mental diminishment we see in both our “entertainment” media and in real life.
Writers are among those who know in their very cells that individual Will is essential; without it, no book would ever be begun, much less completed and published. Writing is an act of Will and as I state above, anyone who would ReHumanize must find and hold the Will that is vital to the pursuit.
There are a number of known systems, methods and techniques for finding, maintaining and increasing this kind of Will, but they’re woefully underutilized today. Whether that is caused by the easy life given to us by modern technology, or those who profit from it this underutilization, I leave to your good judgement.
As for me—I think that so very many things people believe to be unintended consequences, aren’t.