The Shibboleth

by John Hornor Jacobs

  “You break the rules, you go feral or try to escape—and we know you like to bust out of every place you’ve been stuck—we’ll make sure that the rest of your short, sorry life, and your brother’s, is full of pain. Got me?”

  “Got you.”

  “Good. These gentlemen will escort you to your home for the immediate future.”

  She’s smiling as the door obscures her from view.

  It closes with a clang.

  NINETEEN

  The elevator is a big metal box, remarkable only because of the extensive security and a ring of metal benches. One of the soldiers—the bunker bull—places his hand on the biometric scanner and then taps a series of numbers into the keypad.

  I really shouldn’t, but I go in and snatch the number from his mind. The Helmholtz shivers the ether, but I get it. Fifteen numerals: 384623829317293. The length of the key code is unfortunate—I’ll never be able to remember it all—as is the fact that they change it every day. So, to escape, I’ll have to chop off his hand, place it on the scanner before it cools, and remember the code. I guess I could take over his body, pull his gun, and kill all these guys. Then find Jack. So close.

  Craptacular.

  “What’s with the benches?” I say.

  “You’ll see. Sit down.”

  Once I sit, the soldiers follow suit. The elevator shudders into movement. Descent.

  “Fifteen up and fifteen down. How much of my freakin’ life is spent in this damned box?” one of the soldiers says. “Be glad when I’m back on perimeter or guard duty.”

  “Shut up, Markos. We’ve got a package.” This from Sergeant Davies, the man with the passcode.

  “Figure, up and down with every escort, that’s five, six times a day. That’s three hours, seven days a week, twenty-one hours a week.”

  “Boo-fucking-hoo. I said shut it, soldier.”

  “Least they could put some Muzak on in here.”

  Another one of the guards snorts, shifts in his seat.

  Boredom is part of the job of a soldier. Long periods of nothing punctuated by intense episodes of violence and terror. I remember. But these boys are edgy, trying to break the stress with humor. I scratch at the surface of Markos’s mind. He’s seriously freaked by his assignment. One image is clear: kids flying in formation in a clear blue sky over a mountaintop. The idea of it corrodes his mind. He can’t explain it, and that challenges him, wears him thin. Everything here—in this bunker, on this mountainside—is wrong, and with each descent, it’s like being swallowed by strangeness. He’s overcome with panic.

  I soothe him, calm his mind. He relaxes and leans back into the bench. Davies, watching him, grips his M14 a little less tightly. When he’s satisfied Markos is cool, he shifts his gaze to me, notices me watching him.

  Most folks avert their gaze when challenged with another unvarnished stare. Not Davies. He just looks at me, indifferent and efficient, holding his rifle lightly, swaying with the movement of the elevator car.

  What seems like ages later, it shudders to a stop. The door slides open, and cold air seeps into the elevator car. There’s a short hall leading to a dark stone wall with a single door. There’s a Helmholtz box next to the door. Everything is rough; I can see the crags and fractures in the face of the stone, made prominent by the single fluorescent light. It buzzes and flickers.

  “And here we are.” Davies unlimbers his rifle and uses the barrel to indicate I should disembark. “Men, stay here.”

  He walks me down the hall, presses the code again at the keypad, and the simple metal door swings open, revealing a quite large room, a single bed, a toilet and sink. A stool. The Helmholtz pulses the ether, rising and falling, stronger than I’ve ever felt it. Around me, all around, is rock. The only sparks of life are Davies, Markos, and the other soldiers in the lift.

  Davies gestures for me to enter the room.

  “Can I get room service?”

  Davies grunts. I can imagine him with a cigar in his mouth. “I’ll have the concierge bring your bags.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and gently shoves me into the room. He pushes the door, and it swings shut with a click.

  It’s cold here, almost cold enough that I can see my breath.

  There’s a crackle, and I see a speaker hung high up on the rock wall of my room. There’s a small cluster of devices nearby, most likely a camera and a microphone.

  The speaker squelches, crackles, and then I hear a voice, a familiar voice say, “You’re a half a mile underground. The bunker’s on lockdown. Once the soldiers exit, no one will be able to enter or leave until I release the new access codes. So even if you’ve tried any of your little mental … tricks, you’re here for the duration.” She chuckles. It’s a look-at-how-powerful-I-am chuckle. “Consider this a little tenderization. Nighty-night, Mr. Cannon.”

  The lights flicker and go out.

  Absolute darkness.

  “You guys forget to pay the electrical bill?”

  Silence.

  Darkness.

  “Really?” It comes out more like a scream than the snarky way I’d heard it in my head. “Leave me in the dark? Really?”

  I wait for a response. Nothing.

  Reality stretches. For ages I wait, panting in the cold darkness, waiting for them to turn the lights back on. I have the car keys, and my wallet, loaded with the cash Jerry gave me, fat lot of good that does me now.

  Eventually, I fall on my hands and knees and crawl forward until I find the bed. The thick wool military blanket is rough on my skin as I wrap it around me and begin shivering in the dark.

  The ether pulses with poison. The cold seeps into my bones. The darkness is complete.

  And sleep won’t take me.

  I am alone.

  I cast out my mind, but the ether thrums with the corrosive effects of the Helmholtz and I am tired and the darkness is complete. I cannot fathom where I end and the night begins or the rock or the cold. I am misery bound tight in a woolen blanket. Muffled and buried underground.

  I have my memories.

  There was a girl once, buried underground. An evil man and his twin sister held her for their games. Held her secret and near death in the dark. Until two boys rescued her.

  Me. Jack.

  He’s nearby, I know, but farther away than ever. And I am locked here, incarcerado.

  Who will save the saviors?

  Darkness visible. And impenetrable.

  I’ve forgotten light. Colors are merely abstract thoughts, like numbers. I can’t remember warmth or sunshine or the sensation of wind. The scent of anything but hard stone beneath the mountain.

  It presses down from above. The weight of the earth and the mountain compresses me, like a deep-sea diver in the mounting darkness of the deeps. I am tiny, a particle trapped in a cage.

  I am nothing. Nothing except cold and gnawing hunger.

  No dragon in the East. No insomnia. No Riders. No Quincrux or Jack or Booth. No light, no love, no friends. Bound in a nutshell and the king of infinite space, left only with stolen memories.

  The leg of the bed will not bend. The stool will not break, no matter how many times I hurl it at the stone wall. The sink is metal and indestructible. I plunge my head in the toilet until my lungs strain in my chest and my body rebels, falling slack.

  I would end this darkness.

  My mind.

  Going.

  Going.

  I am you and you are me, though we always disagree, he is you and you is she, two makes one and one makes three.

  Two makes one and one makes three.

  It is joyous pain when I hear ticking and buzzing and the ceiling explodes in illumination. The creation of the universe, billions and billions of particles like stars.

  The speaker crackles.

  “Wake up, Mr. Cannon,” Ruark says.

  I make my body sit upright. The light hurts, and it’s hard to see in the brilliance of a thousand suns.

  “We’ve been enjoying the infrared video of your la
st forty-eight hours. Good stuff.” She chuckles. It’s a tinny, rough sound. The speaker makes it sound less than human, or maybe that’s the cruelty infusing it.

  “Let me out.” My voice is cracked, raw. I screamed at the darkness for a while, I guess. A few hours, maybe.

  “Not just yet, Mr. Cannon. You need to marinate a little more.” The door clicks and swings open. Flanked by two soldiers, Davies enters holding something in his hands. A tan packet. He tosses it onto the bed next to me. Black lettering reads MRE. And below that, BEEF STEW.

  “You have now cost us seven dollars more. Eat quickly—the lights will be extinguished in ten minutes.”

  “No! Just—”

  “Sergeant? If you would.”

  Davies looks at me and I scrabble at his mind, but I’m too hungry to concentrate and the Helmholtz thrums away, pulsing.

  “Ah, your body temperature has risen a degree in the last fifteen seconds. Please refrain from using your abilities, Mr. Cannon.”

  “Let me out. You’ve got Vig. I’ll do what you say.”

  “Yes, you will.” The smile is audible in her voice. “But we need to make sure you’ve been housebroken before we can let you out among the general populace.”

  Davies steps backward, through the door, and it swings closed once more.

  Her voice continues. “I would keep you here in this bunker and dust you off only when we need you, but the director thinks that won’t serve us best. He thinks you need someone else to complete you, to make you whole. Your little friend, Mr. Graves. Without him, you are useless. And possibly, without you, he is.”

  I tear at the MRE, ripping the top of the thick plastic packet off with my teeth. I manage to gnaw a hole in the beef stew packet and squeeze the salty meat-slurry into my mouth like squeezing toothpaste from a tube. It tastes wonderful. A smaller packet reads BROWNIE so I rip it open and stuff it into my craw.

  “But remember, should you ever disobey …”

  The lights go out.

  I don’t know what I say then; it’s lost among the rage and screams. But from the speakers come laughter. Then static.

  Then nothing.

  I explore the MRE by touch. A block feels like a granola bar. A thicker, mushy packet feels like congealed ranch dressing. As I shuffle through the contents of the MRE, my hands greet an old friend, known from hundreds of cigarettes lit for Moms. Fancy running into you down here.

  A pack of matches.

  My hands move of their own accord, by rote. Peel off a match, scratch on the coarse striking strip. A blossom of light in the darkness. The bright smell of sulfur, like a whiff of hell. I hold the match high and can only see a few feet in front of me.

  I shuffle through the rest of the MRE. Crackers. Bacon-flavored cheese spread. Chiclets gum. Instant coffee.

  The match burns down to my fingertips, and I hiss with the pain. The darkness lasts only a moment before I’ve lit another. There are eighteen more in the pack.

  Thirty seconds of light, this time, before the match light dies.

  I light matches one after another. I stare at the flames, thinking.

  The last match flame dies. I feel like my own awareness has been snuffed out as the darkness rushes back in.

  I’m sleeping when the lights come on again and Davies is standing over the bed.

  “Get up, son. You have an appointment.”

  I stand. It’s not that I’m weak, I’m just not a morning person. And the light hurts my eyes.

  “An appointment? With who?” My voice is hoarse. It hurts to talk.

  “Whom. And you’ll find out.”

  We ride the elevator up and out. I don’t have the energy to make a run at his head, take today’s key code from his mind. I barely have the energy to stand.

  When the doors slide open, exposing the motor pool, I’m overcome with light.

  “Kennel up,” Davies says as another army bull muscles me into a waiting windowless van.

  TWENTY

  “Fire up the Helmholtz. Use the new protocols Ruark gave us,” Davies says. The ether thrums, and I don’t even care. My throat hurts.

  The van rumbles over gravel first and then, judging by the sounds and vibrations, a smooth tarred surface until we hit another gravel road. More turns left and right up another switchback mountain road, I’m guessing. I don’t know. Somewhere, somewhere near here, is Jack. I could reach him, hijack the driver, find my way to him. But the thought of Vig presses down upon me, and every time I close my eyes there’s darkness. There’s always darkness waiting.

  Growing up, there were always dogs leashed to the weed-ridden trash heap trailers in the Holly Pines Trailer Park. They barked at every passing car. Now I know how they feel.

  The van slows to a stop. A rumbling sound and then the van moves again. Another rumbling. The doors open, and the soldiers indicate I should get out. A motor pool. Like the last. Ruark stands there, sour-faced, flanked by a lean, silent man.

  “Mr. Cannon, I hope you found your lodgings instructional.”

  When I don’t reply, she gestures at the man standing next to her. Her companion is a dark-haired, olive-complexioned man wearing black fatigues. He’s one of those guys who in clothes just looks thin, but under the fabric is rippling with lean muscle. He weighs maybe a buck fifty, tops. His dainty waist is encircled by a police belt that holds a pistol, a Taser, handcuffs, and buttoned compartments that could conceal any amount of evil devices. His nearness to her indicates he’s protection, and his body language radiates danger.

  Ruark laughs. “Shreve, let me introduce you to Mr. Negata, the only person of his kind in the whole world.”

  “Negata? He, like, from Japan or something?”

  “We think so. We don’t know, actually.”

  The man steps forward and extends his hand.

  There is no Helmholtz field, the ether is calm, and maybe I can do it before anyone notices. I slip into the wild blue yonder to find the man. I sense Ruark, and he should be right there, in the half-lit world of the space beyond ourselves. Yet, he’s not. It’s as if he doesn’t exist. An inverted ghost, this one existing only in the physical world. The thought chills me. I shoot back to my own meatsuit.

  My skin crawls, but I extend my hand to shake. There’s a moment just before the flesh of our hands presses together that I think he’s a projection, a mental hologram. Then our hands meet. His palm is warm, solid, totally real.

  Something about him makes me terribly uneasy, and I let go of his hand after one pump. His gaze never wavers.

  “Mr. Negata doesn’t exist to you and me, except here in physical space.”

  “I can see that.”

  “We don’t know why or how, but he was born without whatever it is that lets one of us touch him.”

  “A soul?”

  “Possibly. He’s never spoken in my hearing. Maybe his brain has arranged itself completely differently from ours because he’s never used language. Language makes certain pathways and patterns in the brain, in the synapses and neural networks, and without language, a person is rendered invisible.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a theory.” She shrugs. “No idea. It could just be his power, and he doesn’t like to talk. He seems to understand English. But maybe he can decipher the meaning without being sullied by the words. I don’t know.”

  What would life be like without the wonderful clutter of words? Empty and drab, most likely. Like living in the dark. I shudder.

  “After you proved stronger than we realized—” She touches her nose with the back of her hand, lightly. It’s a subconscious gesture, I think. “We thought it best that we keep him about the place, in case you turn unruly.”

  I want to say I’m always unruly, but I don’t want them to put me back in the dark. “I’d think you’d have a team of scientists figuring him out.”

  She laughs, but it’s not a jolly laugh. “You obviously have a mistaken idea about the resources or effectiveness of our government.”

 
“This place seems pretty cush. You’ve got an airplane.”

  She harrumphs, which is a feat, really. It sends large sections of her chest moving in alternate directions simultaneously, like tectonic plates shifting. “Are you ready to begin the testing, Mr. Cannon?”

  “There’s more?”

  “Indeed. You’re fractious and from all indications don’t play well with others. Consider this an object lesson. A gentling.”

  I don’t like the sound of that. It reminds me of when Dr. Sinequa so gleefully mentioned gelding. “I want my brother to be safe. I don’t …” It’s hard to admit the weakness, but screw her. I’m strong enough to say I’m weak. “Don’t put me back in the dark.” It comes out a whisper.

  She smiles in answer. She’ll never stop punishing me for taking over her mind.

  “And what happens if I fail your test?”

  “I suggest you give one hundred and ten percent.” She turns and gestures to the guards standing by another elevator. There’s a large B painted on the concrete wall. “Williams?”

  A soldier fiddles at a keypad, and the elevator opens.

  “This way, Mr. Cannon.”

  Negata remains standing to one side, his hands free, legs slightly parted. Ready for action. Ruark saunters off, a little bounce to her step.

  Nothing to do but follow. Into the belly of the beast.

  The elevator descent doesn’t take as long as the one in my bunker. Five minutes, maybe. Since I’ve come out of the dark, I have trouble telling time. My mind races.

  When the doors open, a bland office environment is revealed. Tile floor, hung ceiling. Many vents pushing conditioned air.

  We walk down hallways, past innumerable doors, each one with a key card lock. Some with what looks like fingerprint bioscanners. No pictures. It’s an office building, pretty much. I can’t help but note the lack of Helmholtz fields. I could jerk Ruark around, if I wanted to. And do something about the dark, silent figure of Negata.

  “Here we are,” Ruark says, stopping at a door labeled 142a. Looking down the hall, I see a door labeled 142b.