Dead Space: Catalyst

by Evenson, Brian

  Jensi kept whirling the footage back, looking at it, trying to understand exactly what had happened. Was it simply an indication that Istvan had come out of his fantasy world, was now realizing that the blood and brains were real? Had he convinced himself that the gun, when fired, would do something else? Or had he, in fact, been told that the gun would do something else: fire blanks, fire a flag, not fire at all? Was it a question of Istvan’s madness, or had he been set up?

  And, more importantly, was there any way in watching the vid to know for certain? After a few dozen viewings, Jensi guessed not. He might, he realized, never have a clear handle on what had happened to his brother. Yet he could not stop himself from continuing to watch the vid, continuing to hope that this time, by slowing the footage down to a crawl, he’d see something that he had missed before.

  * * *

  Henry had shown up shortly after they’d carted Istvan away, when Jensi was still standing there at the scene, trying to take in what had happened. “I came as fast as I could,” he claimed. “As soon as I saw it on the vids. I’m so sorry.” Without Henry, Jensi did not know how long he might have gone on standing there, shocked. But he let Henry gather him around the shoulders and lead him away.

  Back in his apartment, he slept the sleep of the dead, not waking up for almost twenty hours. When he did, he found Henry still there, asleep on the couch. Once Henry realized he was awake, he roused himself and made Jensi something to eat.

  “I’ve been asking about him,” said Henry. “Trying to find out what they’re going to do with him.”

  Jensi nodded listlessly. “They arrested him,” he said. “I was there. I saw it. He shot the man. What other choice did they have?”

  Henry shook his head. “They took him away, but they didn’t arrest him.”

  “What?”

  “No. He’s not at the police station or in any holding facility I could locate. Or if he is, they won’t tell me. Since you’re a relative, you might have better luck.”

  But when he began contacting people, he had the same results, or lack thereof, as Henry. Nobody in the police station admitted any knowledge of Istvan. None of the facilities in the incarceration dome had received him, either.

  “But he has to be somewhere,” said Jensi to a prison representative on the other end of the line.

  “No doubt he is somewhere,” she said acidly. “But he isn’t here.” And then she broke the connection.

  They tried again. Henry called his father and got him to talk to an acquaintance on the police force. He reported to Jensi that yes, there had been a man brought in with a bag over his head, surrounded by SCAC forces, but almost as soon as he had arrived he had been taken away again. He didn’t know where or why—this wasn’t, he made clear to Henry’s dad, standard procedure. The man promised to ask around if he could do so without raising too many hackles, see what he could find out.

  After that, they didn’t know what else to do. They sat silent for a while, trying to come up with other ideas of how to locate Istvan.

  “Maybe they killed him,” Jensi finally said, breaking the silence. And then, when Henry didn’t contradict him, said, “Say something. Did they?”

  Slowly Henry shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like a smart move on their part, particularly with the vids still available.”

  “But they seem to be getting rid of the vids.”

  “They can’t get rid of all of them. They don’t know who has them on private systems—it could come back to haunt them. It’s not in their best interest to kill him unless they’re sure he won’t be needed later. I don’t think they could possibly know that yet.”

  “But you think it’s possible they killed him?” asked Jensi.

  Henry nodded. “It’s possible,” he admitted.

  * * *

  He took sick leave. He watched the vids over and over, still looking, still searching for something that would mean anything. If only he’d tried to keep Istvan from leaving. Maybe if he hadn’t been as tired as he was, he’d have managed to do that. But then again, maybe not. Or if he’d asked Istvan more questions, tried to coax what he meant out of him. Then, even if he hadn’t managed to get him to stay, Jensi would have more of a sense of what he meant by his purpose and of who “they” were.

  Or maybe, he couldn’t help but think, even though he didn’t want to, I couldn’t have done anything to make any difference at all.

  * * *

  When Henry’s father showed up at Jensi’s door, it was only to tell him that his contact hadn’t been able to find anything out. Nobody seemed to know anything at all, though it was clear that a higher authority was at work, maybe even that Istvan was no longer on the planet.

  “No longer on the planet?” asked Jensi. “But how can he stand trial if he’s not here?”

  Henry’s father fell silent. “He can’t,” he finally said. “And he probably won’t.”

  “What do you mean, won’t?”

  “He’s a political prisoner. An enemy of the state,” said Henry’s father. “The rules don’t apply to him in the same way.”

  “The law applies to everybody the same,” said Jensi.

  Henry’s father reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Surely you’ve been around long enough that you can’t actually believe that,” he said. “Your brother has been taken away, somewhere secret, somewhere where the laws don’t apply. There, they’ll torture him until he tells them whatever they want to know about why he did what he did. After that, they’ll imprison him in an undisclosed location.” He gave Jensi a look of pity. “In all likelihood, you’ll never see your brother again.”

  * * *

  But still, even having been told that, he couldn’t help but try. He went to the police station, inquired after his brother, and when they turned him away and told him Istvan wasn’t there he simply returned again the next day. He kept coming, they kept turning him away, until finally they told him that he couldn’t come anymore. He insisted on seeing the chief of police, who also claimed to have no idea what had happened with his brother, claimed that the police had had nothing to do with it, but did actually listen to him. When he had finished and the police chief was still shaking his head, Jensi asked, “Who do I have to talk to next?”

  The police chief was happy to send him up to the superintendent, just to get rid of him. From there he got shuffled between politicians and the military, one sending him to the other and vice versa for a while, like a ricocheting bullet, until finally a councilman named Richard Savage was staring across a table at him and asking him to repeat the story one more time, and once he had he took pity on him.

  “Do you have a lawyer?” Savage asked him. Jensi shook his head. “If you had one,” said Savage, “he might be able to cut through some of this red tape.”

  He didn’t have enough money for a lawyer, but he got one anyway, a young, independent fellow named Lee Tomkins who was more interested in the politics of the case than in any money he might earn. Even with the lawyer it took a while, more shunting and shuttling, but finally he and Tomkins were in an office with a military official by the name of Granon.

  “What brings you here?” asked Granon. He had clear, pale eyes and a steady gaze, and a stony face that gave very little away.

  “You know why we’re here,” said Tomkins, and began to unload signed and stamped forms from his bag. He placed them on the desk, but Granon ignored them. “We’ve followed protocol,” said Tomkins. “We’ve done everything that the law requires of us. Now you are required to tell us where this man’s brother is.”

  “That information is classified,” said Granon.

  “We have all the approvals,” said Tomkins steadily. “You can’t stonewall us.”

  “I’m not stonewalling,” said Granon. “I’m just not in a position to answer your question.” He leaned back in his chair, tented his fingers. “I can admit we have his brother. But he is a political prisoner.”

  “My brother does
n’t have a political bone in his body,” said Jensi.

  Granon shrugged. “He killed a politician at a public ceremony,” he said. “He’s political.”

  “It’s all a misunderstanding,” said Jensi. “There’s something not right about him; he didn’t know what he was doing. He shouldn’t be in jail. He should be in a facility, somewhere where he can get help.”

  “He isn’t in jail,” said Granon. “He’s in a containment center.”

  “Where?”

  “I can’t say where. That’s classified information.”

  “How can you take someone off without even a trial and hide them in a containment center where nobody knows where they are?”

  Granon didn’t answer.

  “Is it off world?”

  “I can’t answer that,” said Granon.

  “What can you answer?”

  “I can tell you that we have your brother. I can tell you that he is still alive. I can tell you as well that he will not be released anytime soon, perhaps ever.”

  Jensi shook his head. “Who else can I talk to?” he asked.

  “Nobody else,” said Granon. “I’m the end of the line. I’m sorry, but this is as much as you’re ever going to know.”

  Jensi turned to Tomkins. The lawyer nodded. “I’m afraid he’s right. Next step is the courts. We can file a suit, but it’ll take years for it even to get heard. For all intents and purposes, we’ve run out of possibilities.”

  * * *

  Jensi kept trying, even after Tomkins drifted away and on to other cases, but he realized more with each passing day how hopeless it was. Eventually, it became almost a hobby, a way of stirring things up a little even though he knew there was no hope.

  He returned to picking, slowly started thinking of his brother less and less, though when he did think of him it was with a twinge of guilt and pain.

  But he had his own life to live. He had to keep on.

  Henry just squeaked by in school, then left to work off world for a while, the plan being to get a job that would let him build up some quick capital and then return and invest in real estate. Jensi was sorry to see him go. After that, it was just him, and picking, and lying around his apartment. Occasionally an evening out with an acquaintance or a friend. Or wandering the streets, late at night, alone, stumbling through endless self-accusations, making vows to himself about what he would do to get his brother back. But part of him wondered if he would ever see his brother again, and deep inside he knew the chances weren’t good. He would have to learn to live with that fact. He would have to learn to move forward alone.

  PART TWO

  9

  When he pulled the trigger the gun did not do what he had been told it would, did not make a funny joke. Instead, it killed the man Fischer. Who had told him? He couldn’t remember now, not for certain, not after all he’d been through. And he wasn’t entirely sure that it had been someone outside of him. There were voices inside of him as well, and these were the voices that, at times, he could not help but listen to. But no, this had been, he was sure, an outside voice. Or not sure exactly, but almost sure, nearly sure. Jensi was an outside voice, so was his mother, but his mother, now that she was gone, had become an inside voice, too. And Jensi, when he was away from him, could become an inside voice as well. How was he to keep it all straight?

  But still, Istvan was pretty sure that the voice that had given him the gun had been an outside voice, not an inside one. He had been more than pretty sure until the gun had gone off and instead of spraying red dye like it was supposed to, had blown apart the man Fischer’s head. Who was the man Fischer? He didn’t even really know. Just a man that someone inside of him or outside of him wanted sprayed with red dye to humiliate him. A kind of joke, the voice had explained to him.

  No, it must have been an outside voice: he remembered seeing a body along with it. There had been a man with a pale face, missing most of his hair. He had spoken with him for a while, and Istvan had been fed by him, and it had gone on for days perhaps or longer than that, the voice attached to the man asking questions, little needles sticking into his skin, and then the man nodding when Istvan answered them in a way he liked and gently or roughly teaching him other answers when Istvan answered in a way that he did not like. And it had been through that, through their conversation, that his purpose had developed. It wasn’t like the voice was exactly telling him what his purpose was, more like he was coming to it on his own, but he had to admit, now, now that he had time to think, that the voice had been like a funnel, directing him, guiding him in, slowly narrowing out all other possibilities. Like those chutes in the vids you drive cattle down just before you shoot them in the head with a bolt gun. Or pigs.

  Was the voice outside or inside? That was the question now. If it was inside, it would come back and he would talk to it, try to understand what had gone wrong, what he had done wrong, why he had managed to kill the man Fischer instead of fulfilling his purpose. If the voice was outside, then it was a trickier question. It might come back or it might not, there was no way of saying. And voices outside, he knew from long experience, were not always direct, not always honest. They would say things they didn’t mean. Voices inside weren’t like that. Not usually, anyway.

  * * *

  Where was he now? For a while he had been in a sack. Or his head had been in a sack anyway. His arms and legs had been tied and were slowly going numb and then a bunch of men wearing uniforms had appeared and put his head in a sack. It reminded him of what they used to do with horses, he had read about it, as a way to calm them when they had to go past something difficult or impossible, like a fire. They put their heads in bags and then they couldn’t see enough to get frightened. Did they think he was frightened? Of what? Horses also would eat food out of a bag hanging from their faces, but that wasn’t exactly the same thing since the whole head wasn’t in a sack. I’m like a horse, he had thought, though it was hard to think that with his arms and legs tied behind his back. You couldn’t do that with a horse, he thought, unless you broke their limbs and folded them back the wrong way. That would kill the horse, probably. At very least cripple it. And that made him feel like maybe they had done that to him, had broken his legs and limbs, and so he began to struggle. The inside of the bag smelled like sweat. And then suddenly there were hands on him, hands all over him, and they were lifting him up and carrying him away.

  * * *

  He was in a vehicle. He could tell by the way the floor he was lying on was rumbling, and by the hum of the electric motor. Then someone sat him up and leaned him back against something and cut the straps holding his wrists together and he began to chafe his hands to bring the feeling back. Someone, too, maybe the same someone, cut the straps on his legs and feeling also began to come back there. He started to reach up to remove the sack that was over his head, but someone grabbed his hands and pushed them down. No, a voice said, don’t touch it. Leave it on. He was pretty sure it was an outside voice, but since all he could see was the inside of the sack, how could he be absolutely sure? He decided in any case to listen to it, to do what it said.

  * * *

  They were in the vehicle for what felt like a long time. Maybe not all that long, a voice inside his head suggested, but no, he had to disagree, it was a long time. Then the vehicle stopped. For a while he just sat there, listening to muttering voices around him and inside of him. And then there was the sound of metal scraping and rough hands had grabbed him and were helping him to his feet and then pushing him out. He almost fell while leaving the vehicle but they were there to catch him. For a moment he could hear the sounds of the dome, and he could see the light, a hint of it, through the weave of his sack, but quickly they were in another space where it was quieter, enclosed.

  “Where are we?” he asked. But maybe his voice was muffled by the sack because they didn’t answer, nobody answered him. Though whoever was holding his right arm did, at least, tighten their grip. A clattering sound as he was propelled forward—his sho
es now on a different sort of flooring, something slick and hard—and then was abruptly jerked to the right. He knocked against something that must have been the side of a doorway and then hands were pushing on the tops of his shoulders and it took him a moment to realize that they were trying to get him to sit. Why don’t they just say sit? he wondered. Like they would to a dog? Why aren’t they talking? Slowly he lowered himself down until he found something solid beneath him and then relaxed into it.

  For a few minutes, there was the noise of bodies moving, a tramping back and forth in the space around him, the sound of breathing, the scrape and scuff of boots against floors, all of it slightly dampened by the fabric surrounding his head. Then, slowly it faded, all of it moving away and retiring to a safe distance. A door slowly closed, and noise became silence, apart from the sound of his breathing within the sack.

  He sat there, waiting. Was he alone? He didn’t know, but suspected so. For a moment he held his breath and listened, but still heard nothing. What, he wondered, should he do?

  Carefully he lifted one hand to the sack, felt his face through it, waiting for a hand to come and push his hand down and away. When it did not, he slowly pulled the sack off his head.

  He was facing into a corner, not more than a foot or so away from each wall, like a schoolboy being punished. First horse, then dog, then schoolboy, he thought. I’m evolving. He rubbed his face, then slowly turned.

  Behind him was a stretch of open floor. Then a large table, on the other side of which sat a small gray man. The man was motionless, just watching him. When he saw that Istvan had noticed him, he smiled.

  “Come pull your chair closer,” he said, and patted the table.

  “Why should I?” asked Istvan.