The Conformity

by John Hornor Jacobs

  Something in me gives, and I feel light and disconnected. I think about the years of raising Vig and my stupid betrayal of his trust—stealing that truck, getting shot, getting put in good ole Casimir Pulaski Juvenile Detention Center for Boys. I let my brother down. I forgot my responsibility.

  I shake my head. “If I can bear it, I’ll take it,” I say, staring him straight in the eye.

  He nods, places a hand on my shoulder.

  “Thank you. This means more to humanity than you know.”

  “Oh, I have an inkling.”

  nine

  I take the test tube with Hollis’s weaponized genome and Jack hefts the extranatural bomb to his shoulder with a grunt. We follow Priest. He leads us through the maze of rooms and corridors under the mountain until we find a large storage area in which we can hear the mutters and shufflings of many people.

  “Here I will leave you. I hope we will all be able to return here, eventually.”

  He extends his hand. I take it in mine—it’s dry and soft and papery. We shake.

  We will not meet again in the flesh, I fear, he says directly into my mind, and I realize this is true.

  It’s a monster of a world, boss. But you never know.

  A pleasure knowing you, Shreve. I shall look for you in the ether when I reveal myself.

  I’ll be there, bells on.

  His gaze searches my face, and I feel the faint scratching at the fabric of my mind, like he wants to get in and knock around, see what I’m thinking, hear my thoughts, but the scratching desists and he gives a rueful smile.

  Boom.

  “Good-bye, Shreve.”

  “Later.”

  I turn and walk into the storage area.

  The Irregulars mill about in the corner of the storage area amid unmarked fifty-five-gallon blue plastic drums and crates of unknown origin and content. Goddamned Lost Ark is probably here.

  The Red and Green Teams look like they want to throttle each other, while the nerds and lab coats and civilians just appear terrified. Muttering and moaning can be heard with each boom.

  We crowd together. Our own little Conformity soldier.

  Negata approaches, joining us.

  “So, you know what’s going on?” I say to him.

  He nods. Davies approaches and says, “Is it just you, then, Li’l Devil?”

  Jack moves to stand near me. “And me.”

  What’s this? Danielle asks. What’s going on?

  Casey broadcasts a wordless, nervous interrogative. A quick image of a hand, opening as if during a conversation when a question is asked.

  I have to lead the thing away, I respond.

  Why you, man-child? Why’s it got to be you?

  It’s drawn to me, I guess. Bugfuck stuff.

  A concerned look crosses Danielle’s features. The second soldier did head straight for you.

  Seems my noggin’s like a big old lighthouse, and the soldier wants to snuff it out, I say, trying to keep my nervousness out of the mental timbre.

  I feel a secret warmth in the palm of my hand. Casey holds it with her own invisible one.

  “I’m going with you,” Tap says. “Not because you’re all that, but because I can’t stay in here anymore.”

  He’s got a point. It is getting a bit claustrophobic in here.

  Blackwell looks at me from across the storage hall and pushes his way over, Ember and the rest of his team in tow, like eddies swirling behind a particularly large walrus.

  “What’s all this? Something’s about to happen?” he asks Davies.

  Davies, sensing the alarm and fear rippling through the assembled extranaturals, raises his hands. “Listen up, people! Listen up!” The remaining Army guys straighten and come to attention. Lab coats rustle and shift their weight nervously. “Good news. There’s a small service passage to Bunker G. In a moment, you’re all going to get in single file, and we’re going to take you over there. We’ll assemble in the motor pool by the blast doors. Red Team, Green Team, you will be on hand to escort and defend the civilians. Understood?”

  A soft tremor rolls through the assembled people. I can’t tell if it’s nervousness at the looseness of the plan or relief to be doing something. A bit of both, probably.

  “Meanwhile, Shreve and his Irregulars will lead the soldier away while we evacuate the valley. Miss Tanzer and Mr. Holden have prepared a roster and will assign you to your evacuation duties once we’re in Bunker G’s motor pool.”

  “Hold up,” Blackwell says. “Why are Shreve and his—” I’ve roughed him up in the past (and he me) so he stops himself before saying something stupid. “His little group leading the soldier away? Why not Solomon’s team? Or mine?”

  Captain Davies grinds his teeth. It’s a terrible thing, really, grinding your teeth—it wears down the enamel and can cause all sorts of deleterious things to your choppers and your gums. But Davies is a freakin’ natural at it. His jaw looks like steel girders stressing and groaning during an earthquake.

  He does not like being questioned.

  “Because, Mr. Blackwell, that is how the Director has designed the plan. And the damned thing has a hard-on for Cannon, or so the Director says.” It comes out all smooth and measured. And then, “Do you understand me, Blackwell?” Spittle flies from his mouth. The force of his shout causes us all to take a step back.

  “Yes, sir! Understood.”

  “You will escort the civilians and non-flyers. That is your job. You may start now.” He turns, waves Holden and Tanzer over. “Let’s start moving them to Bunker G.”

  Man-child, I’m coming with you. Ain’t going in them lifeboats.

  You can’t fly, Bernard. If you get caught in the transport—

  A quick eruption of angry drumbeats flashes in my mind, and Bernard says, “Neither can Davies or Casey. Or Negata here. And they’re all going with.”

  “Your boy Iggy’s lining up with the rest of them,” Jack says, pointing to Bernard’s paired telekinetic.

  Fuck that motherfucker. He’s just some fool they assigned me. And you two have forgotten something.

  What’s that? I send.

  I got the beat. You’re gonna need me.

  “I’m going, too,” Ember says. I didn’t even notice her here. She looks at me with a defiant glint in her eye, as if daring me to naysay her.

  “What about your team?” Jack asks.

  “I’ll write my resignation next time we’re near a typewriter.”

  Jack looks stunned. Things are happening too fast. The Society—Jack’s home for the past two years—is in shambles, and the world beyond its borders is in an even worse state. If there’s one thing Jack likes, it’s the fiber of daily routine.

  “What, you don’t want me to come with you?” Ember looks from me, cocking an eyebrow, to Jack.

  “Of course I do! It’s just, I’ve never heard of someone leaving one of the teams …”

  “Learn something new every day, don’tcha?” She puts her arm around his waist and pulls him in tight. “Anyway, I wasn’t going to let you run off with these Irregular girls.”

  Jack blushes. It’s weird, but, when she says it, Ember’s looking straight at me.

  I know reindeer games, and this chick is playing them.

  “Well, that’s it, then. Where do we go?”

  Davies says, “Back this way. It’s a long walk to the warrens.”

  “The warrens?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He leads us back through another, smaller lab—this one full of equipment that would seem more appropriate on a space shuttle than beneath a mountain—and down a concrete stairwell that diminishes to a vanishing point both up and down and echoes strangely. A few floors below, he keys us into another door and through a weirdly mundane office complex full of fluorescent lights and cubicles, ferns and Casual Friday! fliers. Then we’re out into another corridor, this one a rough-hewn hall cut from the living rock of the mountain.

  I can feel the weight of stone above me.
>
  At the end of this hall, Davies unlocks another keycard door to reveal a small armory. Tap’s and Danielle’s eyes light up as they spy rack upon rack of automatic weapons and smell the spiced fragrance of gunpowder and munitions oil.

  “There’s some clothing over there, I think,” Davies says, pointing at a couple of crates. Bernard, Jack, and I toddle to the boxes and begin rifling through them. I set aside some flak vests. They don’t look like they’d keep me warm, just not perforated. I don’t think the forecast called for partly cloudy with a 75 percent chance of gunfire, but what the hell do I know? I’m a mind reader, not a psychic.

  Bernard grunts at the discovery of black fatigues, and we all sort through them. Casey, pulling out a jacket, says, “Shreve, will you help me?”

  I assist, pulling the jacket over her shoulder. The one sleeve hangs loose, empty, and she looks down at it with an unsatisfied expression. “This is going to get in the way.” Her one visible hand trembles, and the resounding booms of the Conformity shudder through the mountain. My heart catches and begins to hammer in my chest.

  Davies slaps a knife in my hand, and I tie the sleeve as close as possible to the shoulder, cutting away the rest, fast. With an almost imperceptible tremor in her voice, Casey says, “Shreve, promise me you won’t do anything stupid.” The rush is on me, and it takes a moment to discern that she doesn’t mean the knife.

  People have said that to me before. For a moment, I can only think of Booth, big-hearted Booth. My enemy. My friend. Whatever remnant of him will be left behind with Priest.

  “I won’t,” I say. “Nothing more important to me than the integrity of my skin.”

  “I find that hard to believe.” She doesn’t smile, just looks more worried. “I’ve seen your scars.”

  I can only nod. She’s close now, and I can feel the eyes of some of the others on us, and that makes me very nervous. It’s one thing to be close to a girl, a beautiful girl, and another thing to be close to one in front of other people. I feel like I’m on a stage.

  Boom.

  With Casey’s face so close to mine that I can see the delightful spray of freckles on her nose, I’m flooded with memories of all the lives I’ve known, each one bound in some sort of love. I’ve eaten those memories—sex with men and women, the fanatical whirlwind of ceaseless love, the mania of the bloodlust of war, the murderous pleasure in death and the causing of it.

  She stirs things in me I’d rather keep tamped down.

  Her lips are parted, moist, eminently kissable, but I move away because the cacophony of memory and emotion is almost too much to bear. And if I became swept away in it? What then? Could I burn out her mind? My own? Start speaking in other languages again?

  No.

  It’s only after I move away—leaving her there, staring at me with an inscrutable look on her face—that I realize she never really needed my help at all. She’s got her telekinetic arm that can do anything. It was just a pretense to be close.

  Weird how my intelligence varies with proximity to girls. You can live a thousand lives, have countless memories of love and youth, but it never really prepares you for the real thing.

  Davies gives us guns and heavy ballistic-nylon bags full of armaments. I’m not real keen on toting all this crap around, but Tap looks like he’s got a boner and Danielle looks like Santa just gave her a puppy, except this puppy fires one thousand rounds a second and has a grenade launcher.

  I find some MREs—my best friends when all light is gone—and I dig into one with gusto. CHICKEN SPAGHETTI in a bag is the breakfast of champions.

  Negata prowls the room, looking like a jaguar caged. He opens a door at the far side of the room, and I move to join him.

  Beyond the door is blackness, absolute and, I will admit, terrifying. (You have someone stick you in a pitch-black hole for a week and see how you come out on the other side.)

  When he walks forward, vanishing from sight, I reach out for him. He’s swallowed by darkness. “Negata, don’t—”

  I hear a mechanical clank, and suddenly lights flash, flicker, and buzz. An electrical hum. The door swings shut behind us. We stand in a corridor much like the rough-hewn one we traveled before, twenty feet wide and equally tall, but this one stretches off into infinity, a straight passage through the heart of the mountain, flickering lights bursting into incandescence every fifty feet. The floor is smooth, like that of a garage. To my right I notice a pair of oversized golf carts near charging stations.

  “So, we’re taking those?”

  “Yes.”

  Negata walks to one of the carts, unplugs it from the wall, and chucks his head at me, indicating I should take charge of the other one.

  We pull the pair to the door to the armory. He stops me on the way back.

  “As you lure the Conformity away from here, I want you to think about the sensation of being noticed.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “The attention of the entity behind the Conformity will be upon you. I want you to become aware of the sensation.”

  “Why?”

  He turns and opens the door to the armory. “Because you cannot become unnoticeable until you know what it is to be conspicuous.” He holds the door for me. “Understood?”

  “Okay.”

  “This is good.”

  Inside, everyone’s geared up. We usher them into the corridor and load up the electric carts. Ammo, weapons, MREs. Nothing more. No personal items. No baggage. We’re either refugees or nomads now. Or both. I can’t decide.

  I stop Davies before he slides behind the wheel of the cart. “I need to talk with you, just for a moment.”

  “What is it? Time is tight—”

  “You’ve got walkie-talkies?”

  “None in the armory. So no. We’re just going to have to focus on planning.”

  “No.” I point at the Irregulars. A motley group. “We’re connected.”

  “What do you mean?” He looks puzzled, and that’s to be expected. I’ve been in his head before. I know I can unlock the doors and putter around in his brainmeat, but it’s important that this be voluntary.

  “I can get in people’s heads.”

  He nods, wary.

  “We’re connected,” I say. “And they can speak to me and each other over distances.”

  Davies whistles.

  “I can give this to you.”

  “No.”

  “It’s a matter of survival, Captain. We need every advantage we can get.”

  “That mean you’ll be able to read my thoughts?”

  “I can already do that.”

  His hand involuntarily twitches. I imagine it’s wanting to hold a gun or my throat.

  I hold up my hands. “I’m not! But I can.”

  The muscles in his cheek are like steel bands. Mr. Toothgrindicus is here to stay. But there’s a small shift to his shoulders, as if he’s bearing some unseen weight.

  “It’ll just be like me flipping a switch—” Or so I hope. “And then we’ll all be able to communicate. Well, except for Mr. Negata.”

  “Why not Negata?”

  “He doesn’t exist. In the ether.”

  “The ether?”

  I wave away the question. “The telepathic world. He’s a ghost. He can’t be seen.”

  Davies stares hard at me, like he’s evaluating something in me only he can see. “Give me your hand.”

  “What?”

  “Give me your hand.”

  We shake, and then he says, “Okay. Do it.”

  I waste no time. I’m on him and moving in his consciousness like an arsonist. Blazing. His eyes widen and then no more.

  He pats me on the shoulder and moves to the carts. Casey looks at me expectantly. Danielle, Bernard, and Tap watch as I clamber into the cart and Davies takes the wheel. Jack sits with Negata, who simply stares down the corridor.

  I’d like you all to welcome Captain Davies to our little shindig. He’s the newest member of the Irregulars, I send. The ether th
rums, the shibboleth stirs within me. I am a conduit, a switchboard.

  The Irregulars send various jocular images and words of welcome to Davies, who looks gruff and slightly embarrassed. He grips the cart’s steering wheel and mashes the accelerator.

  The vehicles make small whirring sounds as we accelerate down the hall, and everyone remains silent. The tires buzz on the smooth concrete of the corridor floors. The reality of our situation settles, and I can sense small personal mental conversations flickering in the minds of my companions like heat lightning flashing on a far-off horizon.

  Everything is hushed now, and expectant.

  It’s a strange feeling, riding on golf carts underneath a billion tons of rock, sliding almost soundlessly down an endless corridor to an unknown fate. But hey, that’s why we get paid the big bucks, right?

  After ten or fifteen minutes, Tap says, “Are we there yet?”

  Davies, without missing a beat, says, “Don’t make me stop this car, son.”

  The group laughs; there’s an easing of tension. In the distance, a familiar-looking streaked-metal blast door appears and grows as we approach.

  “Tanzer tells me this was originally a Cold War hidey-hole for high-level government officials and their families,” Davies says. “God help the common man.”

  “It looks as if it would take a nuclear explosion to get through those doors,” Jack says.

  Davies stops the cart, climbs out, and approaches the keypad. He presses in an inordinately long string of digits, and then a grinding sound echoes down the stone passage. The blast doors begin to swing inward, opening, revealing another motor pool, similar to the one on the other side of the mountain we’ve just traveled underneath like some mutant species of dwarf.

  A Jeep is up on blocks, wheels off, hood up, but a large troop transport—dull army green and marked with a white star on the door—looks ready for action.

  “I’d suggest you get your shit in order, people, before we open those outer doors. I don’t know how fast that thing will be on us, but our job is to lure it away. Bernard, Casey, Negata, and I will be in the transport. Shreve, Jack, help me to take off the tarpaulin covering the bed. There should be tools over there to remove these struts.” He pats the bed framing.