Parallax (William Hawk)

by William Hawk

  Four hundred twelve. Four hundred eleven.

  He moved through the crowd, chatting with the assembled nobles, the sophisticated people of this Italian court, feeling the other men slap him warmly on his back, and kissing the cheeks of pretty ladies.

  Then he was surrounded by several exquisitely beautiful women, all courtesans. They flattered him with sweet words.

  “Just a wonderful speech.”

  “Such passion for your city.”

  “Have you a wife?”

  His eyes landed upon one particular courtesan, a lovely damsel with makeup on her heart-shaped face and exposed décolletage.

  A nimbus encircled her head. It was orange.

  Grace.

  The courtesan leaned forward and kissed him on his cheek. She’d done the exact same thing back in the pod tank less than a minute ago, but when they were in different bodies. Then the courtesan pulled away and looked knowingly at him.

  “What is it?” he said.

  She leaned forward again and whispered into his ear. “Meet me in the refectory,” she said. “Five minutes.”

  William nodded, then continued on. Moving through the room, William felt himself buzzing with excitement. He didn’t know what or where the refectory was, but that was an invitation to a sexual rendezvous if he’d ever heard one.

  He pondered his good luck for a moment. Having sex during a snap, that would be a first. It was also sex with Grace, who had tagged herself into an equally attractive woman. This was unbelievably good fortune. He wondered if there was a way that he could always snap into men who gave speeches in public. Urging war in a charismatic way was usually bad for society, but it seemed to be good way to spark a woman’s interest. Although the very thought was exciting and tantalizing, something inside him resisted the idea.

  William’s eyes fell upon a man at the back of the crowd. He was dark, short and swarthy, with a thin moustache and piercing eyes. A black nimbus encircled his head.

  Hunter.

  William decided to ignore him. He didn’t want to spend time considering Hunter right now. Instead, he made his way through the room, accepting congratulations and small nods of the head. This was something new for William to feel, the sensation of being the center of attention.

  He arrived at a wild-eyed man standing in the corner, talking quickly and vociferously. A corona of unkempt frizzy hair was perched on his head, and his clothes were little more than rags, but his eyes were on fire with passion. Surrounding him were several people who seemed to be hanging on every word he said. One of them had a pale blue nimbus around his head.

  Jeremy.

  “This machine will carry humans up to the sun,” the wild-eyed man was saying. “It will feature a rotor that turns like this, and it will lift us up.” He lifted his hands into the air. “It will be powered with chains that the rider will move with his feet. I’ve made a sketch.”

  William heard himself say, “Those are a lot of words for someone whose engineering designs have often left the populace yearning for something a bit more substantial, Leonardo.”

  The man turned his gaze upon him. William immediately felt that there was something special about him, a special gift that very few had. He wondered if he was a CA3 agent.

  William had thrown the gauntlet, and Leonardo accepted the challenge. “You occupy yourself with the affairs of who fights who and who makes peace with who. Those are minor details. The things that I make and design will be discussed for centuries.”

  “Write me a letter when it comes to pass,” William heard himself say. “Our great grandchildren will thank you.”

  It was a snotty thing to say, and William felt himself strolling away from the group. Part of him wished that he could control his host, so that he could stay and talk with Leonardo a little more. In fact, he wondered what his host would say or do if he discovered that people in the twenty-first century would still be talking about the man he’d just mocked.

  Three hundred twenty-nine. Three hundred twenty-eight.

  William sauntered out of the meeting hall, down a side corridor lined with flickering torches, and entered a room with a row of seven large holes on a wooden board. Two men from the court were sitting on two of the holes with their fine hosiery rolled down to their ankles, their bare legs in the air.

  William felt himself roll his own tights down to his ankles and remove the piece of metal from his crotch. He got a good look at it. This was a codpiece, not much different from goalie’s cup in hockey, and it was definitely for show.

  He set the codpiece on the floor and looked down into one of the holes. Cool air blew up into his face, and twenty meters below was the smooth brown surface of a river. Then William turned and sat down on the hole and felt himself begin to defecate.

  Next to him, one of the other men strained hard, his face reddened with the effort.

  “Drink your olive oil,” offered the third man.

  “It makes me sick,” said the second. Then he rocked back and forth, and an expression of relief spread across his face. “At last!”

  “Sweet relief,” said the third. “How I wish it would visit me.” William noticed that he was holding a small book in his hands.

  The second man leapt to his feet. “Linen!”

  A maid appeared in the room with a tray of small towels and handed him one. The second man theatrically wiped his rear end with the linen and then threw it at her. It bounced off her shirt and onto the floor.

  “You are a mad animal,” said the third man.

  William looked at the maid. A yellow nimbus appeared around her head.

  Trina.

  William finished his duty and stood up and asked for a towel. Trina handed him one, which he used to wipe his backside. Then he dropped it in the canister that the woman had placed in the center of the floor.

  “Civilized, that one is,” said the third man.

  “We must elevate ourselves above such filth as Vittorio,” William heard himself say. Then he went back into the corridor without washing his hands. He supposed that was the way life was back in the day.

  Two hundred forty-three. Two hundred forty-two.

  He moved down the hall and arrived at the refectory. It was a long room, with a large cone-shaped hearth at the far end. The fire was roaring, and a large black cauldron hung over the orange flames. The sweet smell of meat stew filled his nostrils.

  It was hot in here. William stood in the doorway and mopped the sweat from his forehead.

  “Ho ladies, where has gone my Constantina?”

  At a long wooden table, three female cooks were busy chopping vegetables. One looked up at him, a homely woman, and there was nearly spite in her eyes. “Why do you ask, Ludovico?”

  “Because she was feeling poorly and I came to offer her my ministrations,” William heard himself say.

  “Certainly,” said a second one, “she was feeling poorly. Of that, there is no doubt.”

  “Did she enter this refectory?”

  “No, she did not,” said one. “But she did stand right in the place where you are and announce that she was going to her quarters.”

  “It was a conspicuous announcement,” said the third.

  “Thank you, ladies,” he said, grinning.

  Before they could roast him any further, William left the doorway and bounded up a side stairway. A moment later, he arrived at the top floor of the castle, where it appeared the bedrooms were located. He moved down the long corridor, past the sconces, his footfalls muffled by the heavy runner carpet. He passed door after door, the iron rings built into the thick wood.

  One hundred fifty. One hundred forty-nine.

  William paused at one door. He knocked on it. “Constantina?” There was no response. He pushed the door open.

  Inside was a suite with a four-poster bed in the corner. To his surprise, a portly man lay nude on the mattress, his fingers laced on his prodigal belly. His mouth was open and a snore emanated from his mouth.

  William looked a
round. The room was empty otherwise. “Apologies,” he said, slowly backing out of the doorway.

  He shut the door and continued down the corridor.

  Ninety-six. Ninety-five.

  He knocked on another door. “Constantina?” he said again. No response here, either, so he pushed that door open.

  He stepped inside. In this room, a man sat in the windowsill, a bottle of wine in his hand, yelling to people below. “How you wish you could be in this position, elevated above the common scrum!” he said. Then the man threw the bottle out the window. A second later, William heard it smash on the street below, and a woman cry.

  Then the drunken man saw him. “Ludovico! Have you any wine from the Catalan region? I’ve grown so exhausted drinking this local plonk that my tongue has threatened to throw me out the window if I don’t provide it with some variety.”

  “I have none,” said William, “but I’ll bring you some shortly.”

  “That would be most excellent!” The man clapped his hands and promptly fell off the windowsill and tumbled onto the floor.

  William backed out into the corridor again. He felt himself growing impatient. It wasn’t every day he was promised sex, certainly not by Grace, in whatever body, and this snap was winding down quickly.

  He crept along the carpeted hallway to yet another door. He pressed his ear to the wood. A man’s voice said something curt and abrupt inside. A woman gave a muffled cry.

  Fifty-two. Fifty-one.

  William felt himself growing curious, worried, and enraged, nearly all at once. His hands pushed the door open, and what he saw sent him reeling.

  A woman lay on a divan, her face blocked by the swarthy man with the black nimbus. He was standing over her, his knee pinning down one leg, and his left hand pinning down both of her wrists over her head.

  It was Hunter.

  He’d almost finished ripping the clothing off the woman. Her beautiful garments were strewn on the floor, some whole, a few torn. Her breasts were exposed, and he was furiously working on the undergarments around her waist with his free hand.

  “How do you open this? Tell me!” He slapped her across the face. Then Hunter’s body shifted, and William got a glimpse of the woman’s face.

  The orange nimbus around her head was unmistakable.

  It was Grace.

  Twenty-four. Twenty-three.

  “Ho there!” shouted William, leaping forward.

  The swarthy man whirled around. His eyes went wide, and he quickly backhanded William across the face.

  William fell to the floor, feeling the taste of blood in his mouth. “You haven’t got the right!” he shouted.

  The swarthy version of Hunter turned to Grace. “Haven’t I got the right to take what I want? Haven’t I?”

  “No!” she cried. “You have no right to my body!”

  “The world doesn’t work in that way, my princess.” He spat the last word out with special disdain. Then, with one yank, he tore her underpants off her body.

  William gasped, averted his gaze. Grace was utterly embarrassed.

  The swarthy rapist reached a hand inside his own pants and began to loosen them.

  William rocketed to his feet. “Hunter, stop!” he shouted.

  Time seemed to stop. Then the air in the room seemed to stretch and twist and warp, as though someone were pulling the universe like a piece of taffy. William slowly realized that he’d just committed an incredible blunder.

  “Who, pray tell, is Hunter?” hissed the swarthy man.

  “I don’t know what possessed me to shout such gibberish,” William heard himself say. “It was a nonsense word that came to mind.”

  Grace looked helplessly at William. “Ludovico, you must help me.”

  Seven. Six.

  “Be a good lad and excuse yourself,” said Hunter.

  “I will not,” said William, “because that woman invited me here. I’m the man with access to this bedchamber, not you.”

  An evil expression seeped across Hunter’s face, like sewage welling up out of a drain. “If she’s like most women, there’s room enough for two.” A vicious wink fluttered briefly at the corner of his eye.

  Three. Two.

  William noticed that wink. He recognized it. That was Hunter’s wink, the same one he’d given William yesterday after the snap ended.

  That was all the proof William needed. In that moment, he knew that Hunter had been controlling his host. And, in this case, he’d been trying to rape Grace.

  One.

  The thought enraged William. He pulled the short dagger with the decorative handle from the holster on his belt and leapt forward, weapon in hand. “You bastard.”

  Snapback.

  CHAPTER 11

  ILLIAM’S EYES FLEW OPEN. THE TOP OF the pod was fixed in place directly over him, and he could feel the white goop all around him, cooling his skin. Still, he felt possessed by anger. His fingertips began to furiously claw at the translucent polymer.

  “Let me out!” he shouted. “Shana!”

  “Hold on!” came the muffled response.

  The top slid back, and he leapt out of the pod like a deranged man.

  “What are you doing?” Shana said, catching him by the arm. “I have to take off the cuff before you can go anywhere.”

  Steaming mad, he stopped his flight, just long enough for her to remove the digital cuff from his arm. “There,” she said, “but you’ve still got the stuff in your hair.”

  William didn’t listen to her. He didn’t care about the goop in his hair. He had only one objective in mind. He ran to Hunter’s pod and flung open the top. He looked down. It was Jeremy.

  “Damn it,” he said, “where is Hunter?”

  Jeremy opened his eyes, startled to see him, and a little frightened at the same time. “We switched pods today.”

  William turned and looked across the room. At Jeremy’s usual pod, Shana had slid open the top, and Hunter was starting to pull himself out.

  “Hunter!” he shouted.

  His teammate and supposed compatriot rolled his eyes as he unfurled his long limbs and stood himself upright on the floor.

  “What is the problem now?” Hunter said in such a way that suggested William was the issue, not him.

  “You know good and well what the problem is, asshole!” shouted William. He flung himself across the room and was a half-second away from Hunter when he felt Shana place herself between the two of them.

  “Save it for the debriefing,” she said.

  William stood there, breathing. Over her shoulder, he saw Hunter affecting a casual look. He forced his breathing under control.

  “Fine,” said William.

  

  The five members of the team sat sullenly in their seats, refusing to make eye contact with one another.

  Proof stood before all of them, arms crossed. “Somebody had better talk, or else we’re going to sit here all day.” He looked at William, then to Hunter. “You two want to contribute first?”

  “I don’t have any problem with William,” said Hunter, raising his hand, “but I think he’s got a problem with me.”

  Proof turned to William. “Are you going to tell us the reason for this anger?”

  William inhaled deeply, then slowly released the breath. “Maybe it’s got something to do with the way he attempted to rape Grace in the snap.”

  Proof looked shocked. “Is that for real?”

  “My host was trying to rape Grace’s host,” said Hunter.

  William rocketed to his feet. “That’s a load of crap! You were doing it yourself! You took over the host and influenced him!”

  “How are you so sure that I took over that host’s body?” said Hunter. “People do bad things all the time, all through history, you know? For the record, I didn’t even like the feeling of it.”

  William felt himself trembling. “Hunter, I saw you wink at me! I recognized you in that wink!”

  Hunter smirked. “Do you think people didn’t
wink in fifteenth-century Italy?”

  William turned to Proof. “It was the way he winked. It was the same kind of wink that he gave me earlier, here. All I can say is that my intuition is never wrong, and my intuition told me that Hunter was controlling this man’s actions.” Hunter tried to interrupt, but William silenced him with a hand. “I saw him do it yesterday in the Mongolian snap, when he made that host try to steal something inside the ger.”

  Proof stroked his chin, as though deliberating. “Those are pretty serious charges.”

  Hunter stood up. “Wait, wait, I need to defend myself. There’s something that William is forgetting to tell you.”

  Proof put out his hand and made a sit-down motion, as though willing Hunter back into his seat. “What is that?”

  The others, who thus far had said nothing, turned to look at Hunter. Nobody knew whether he was going to spout a brazen lie or say something of value.

  “William spoke my name,” he said.

  “We all say your name, quite often,” said Trina.

  He whirled on her. “No, he said it in the snap. His host was named Ludovico, and he spoke my name, right at the end. Hunter.”

  William sank his face into his right hand. That wasn’t a lie. That was absolutely, completely true and he didn’t realize that he’d done it until after it had slipped out of his host’s mouth.

  “Deny it, William,” said Proof.

  William lifted his face wearily from his palm. He looked around the faces, all of which were watching him. “I can’t deny it,” he said. “I don’t know how it happened. I had no intention of controlling him or making him speak my thoughts. It just . . . came out.”

  Proof blew air out of his cheeks and ground the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. Then he dropped his arms by his sides. He turned around, paced the front of the room, and dragged his fingertips along the projection screen.

  “You interfered in your host, William,” said Proof, staring at the corner. “Humans are endowed with free will, and you interrupted that individual’s free will.”

  “But are we?” said Jeremy. “The blank slate theory was created by people in the eighteenth-century who had almost no knowledge of physiology. We’ve learned since then that brain structure determines some of our behavior.”