Black Horizon

by Robert Masello

  He was still wrapped up in his thoughts when someone else took a seat, at the other end of the bench. An elderly man, incongruously dressed in a bulging down coat and a stocking hat. At first Jack took no notice of him, then realized, when he looked again, that it was actually a young man sitting there. He'd been fooled by the drawn features of his face, the lack of any hair poking out from the hat, and the slow, fragile way in which he'd sat down. When their eyes met, the man nodded, and Jack nodded back.

  “Beautiful here, isn't it,” the man said, looking out over the gray water and the boats bobbing along the piers.

  “Yes... it is.”

  “Ever since I was a kid, I've found the sight of water -- an ocean, a river, a lake -- soothing. The bigger the body of water, the smaller my own problems seemed to be in comparison.”

  Jack knew what he was talking about -- he had always enjoyed such vistas himself, and felt that they somehow put things in his own life into perspective. But this guy looked as if he should be studying nothing less than the Pacific.

  “My name's Baldwin,” he said, “Adam Baldwin,” and he waited, as if Jack might possibly recognize it.

  “Jack Logan.”

  “I know.”

  “It took Jack a second to grasp what he'd just heard, then, suddenly, he felt a steel gate drop somewhere deep inside him. This wasn't just some stranger sharing his bench -- this was another setup, or another needy case, or even, could it be... “You're not from the Investigator, are you?”

  “The what?”

  “The tabloid.”

  “No.”

  “Are you a reporter?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know me?”

  “I don't. I saw you on TV the other day. I went to your building, to try to talk to you, but you were just leaving, with that man carrying the camera.”

  “And you don't know him?”

  “Never saw him before in my life... I will admit that I trailed you here, which wasn't easy.” He smiled weakly. “You walk pretty fast, and I walk pretty slow -- these days.”

  “Why did you?” Jack asked, though he already knew. He knew from the sad but eager look in the man's eyes, from the dead-white pallor of his skin, from the hairless skull he knew was concealed beneath the stocking hat with the bright red pompom dangling forlornly from its top. He knew, and his heart virtually contracted in his chest.

  “Because I'm dying,” the man said, “and because I thought you might be able to help me.” He looked down, and then away again, off across the river. They sat in silence as a couple of kids raced past on beaten-up dirt bikes. “I know it's asking a lot,” he said, “but I'm sort of beyond being polite these days. It's one of those things I can't afford anymore.”

  “What's wrong?” Jack asked, gently, though he dreaded to hear the answer. This guy looked to be more than a few years older than he was.

  “Cancer of the brain,” Baldwin replied. “Inoperable.” He sounded quite matter-of-fact about it. “My wife spoke to the Institute of Abnormal Psychology after we first heard about you. We never heard back.”

  Exactly how many calls had there been like this, Jack wondered? What was Sprague doing with them all? What could he do?

  “I realize you've probably been inundated,” Baldwin said. “Still, after seeing about the ten-thousandth specialist last week, and hearing the same prognosis -- which is, basically, forget it -- I thought I'd take a chance.” Seeing that he had engaged Jack's attention, and even his sympathy, Baldwin slid a littler closer to him on the bench, and recounted the history of his disease.

  Jack, as he listened, could not get his mind off the fact that this ravaged man, with possibly only days left to live, was somewhere close, very close, to his own age. It brought home the horror, and the sadness, of it so much more strongly, made him feel some aching sort of bond with him. When Baldwin reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet -- “I want to show you a picture of my baby girl” -- Jack almost begged him to stop. But the picture was already out, and Jack was holding it in his fingers. A young woman, in a hospital bed, beaming and holding a ruddy-faced baby.

  “She's gotten a lot prettier than that since then,” Baldwin said. “The baby, I mean.”

  “Your wife's pretty too.”

  Baldwin took the picture back, gazed at it, then replaced it in his wallet. His motions were all slow and fearful, the motions of an elderly man afraid of breaking fragile bones. “It's as much for them, as myself, that I want to live,” he said. “As much for them, as myself.”

  “If you saw that television show,” Jack said, having to restrain himself from resting one hand on Baldwin's shoulder, “you know that I can't cure people. Whatever I can do, it isn't that.”

  “How do you know?” Baldwin replied. “Have you ever tried?”

  “No... I haven't.”

  “Then you don't really know that you can't. What if I believed that you could? And asked you to try it on me?” He looked over at Jack, his eyes filled with pathos, and challenge. “What if I believed,” he said, urgently, “and what if that was enough -- all you ever needed, in fact -- to heall What if that was true, and just another miracle -- like the ones you've already performed -- was waiting till now to happen? What if all you'd ever needed was someone who believed, in his heart and in his soul, that you could do it?” His eyes glittered, brightly, feverishly, as if all the life that was left in him had fled there. He reached up and plucked the stocking hat from his head. The skull was bony, and dotted in several places with discolored patches and a light furze of hair.

  “Put your hands on me,” Baldwin pleaded. “I believe that you can heal me.”

  “Adam, please, there's nothing -- “

  “Don't tell me there's nothing you can do.” He clutched at Jack's hands, lying restive in his lap. “You can. You can.” He bent his bare head down toward Jack's hands. “You have nothing to lose -- and I have nothing to lose. Do it -- please, do it. I believe in you, I believe.” His head was bent, as if in prayer, the knobs of his vertebrae poked up from his neck. “I believe,” he was muttering, over and over again, “I believe.”

  A middle-aged nanny, pushing a stroller, gave them an odd look as she passed. Jack, as much to get it over with as to console Baldwin, lifted his hands and placed them, like a benediction, on top of his bowed head. He held them there, for a few seconds, feeling the skin, still warm from the hat, and the few prickly hairs. Baldwin had fallen silent, but when Jack started to take his hands away, he grabbed them and rolled his skull, hard, against them, as if to cover every inch with the healing powers they contained. When he'd finished, he slipped his hat back on, with his head still lowered, before slowly sitting up again. He took a deep breath, and sighed.

  “If you want to know if I feel any different,” he said, evenly, “I don't. But I'm not disappointed, because I didn't expect to. I knew I wouldn't jump up feeling great again. I believe that what you've done will show up slowly, over the next few days, or weeks. I believe you've set in motion the healing process.”

  He was talking to himself, and nothing Jack could say would make any difference.

  “I believe in what you've done for me... I believe in what you've done...”

  The boats bobbed at the ramshackle wooden piers and Jack sat quietly, measuring the depth of the emptiness he felt inside.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  "IF THEY PLAY that goddamned ‘Ave Maria’ one more time, I'll bomb that station.”

  Cazenovia lifted his head out of the tank and looked at Sprague. “It's because of Christmas... only four days away.”

  Sprague gave him a disgusted look. “You think I don't know when Christmas is?”

  Cazenovia tugged on his short black beard.

  “Have you finished with the camera yet?”

  “Almost.”

  Cazenovia's head disappeared again, into the emptied sensory deprivation tank. There were a few small noises -- screws being turned, wires threaded -- then his head ap
peared again. “Done.” He clambered out, and onto the wrestling mats. “Everysing now is done.”

  Sprague looked around the room with satisfaction, but a lingering sense of uncertainty too; was there anything he'd forgotten? At all four corners of the windowless chamber, on poles that stretched from floor to ceiling, he had installed -- or rather, Cazenovia, the technical genius, had installed -- infrared video cameras; they were capable not only of rolling continuously, but -- in the event of any sort of motion occurring within three or four feet of their stationary field of vision -- popping a bright flash and taking a still image of whatever had been fleetingly caught. Another such camera -- but without the flash attachment -- had just been mounted inside the tank itself.

  Strapped to each of the corner poles, beneath the camera, was another device that also served two purposes; Sprague was very pleased that he'd thought of this. The thermistors, which were roughly the size and shape of large cucumbers, were programmed to record any change in air temperature, and any alteration in the room's air flow. If something passed by them, even if it could not be seen by the cameras, the thermistors would record its presence.

  Finally, above the glass wall that separated the control booth from the tank chamber, there was a supersensitive, two-way intercom speaker. The radio was playing on it now, carrying more of that Pavarotti Christmas crap; but later, it would be used to carry voices -- and other sounds, in frequencies not normally heard -- between both halves of the laboratory.

  Cazenovia wiped his hands on his rumpled trousers, and said in his fractured English, “I must have to be leaving now. Everything is done.”

  “What about testing it all,” Sprague said, “to see that it's all been done properly?”

  “I must have to be leaving now,” Cazenovia repeated. “I come tomorrow if you wish to test.” He stood around, waiting for something.

  “Well, if you're going, go,” Sprague said, impatiently.

  “Ze money?”

  “You want me to pay you for something when I don't know if it works yet?”

  Cazenovia, who'd been holding his hand out, put it down. “Ze money tomorrow zen?”

  “Yes, tomorrow -- provided it all works right.”

  Grumbling in whatever language it was he spoke, Cazenovia slouched out of the room. And Sprague was left wondering how he could test all this apparatus without him.

  It was ten o'clock at night, too late to call Nancy over to the institute. Nor, for that matter, would he even know where to find her. He had his suspicions -- he could probably call Logan's place and get her in two seconds -- but he wasn't yet prepared to let them know that he knew about their little romance. He snorted. The two of them were, in some respects, a team now, and he would have to keep in mind that whatever he told, or showed to, one, was no doubt instantly transmitted to the other.

  Given that, maybe it was better if Nancy didn't know anything about these modifications he'd just made. No use alerting, or alarming, Logan.

  His mind returned to the immediate problem: to test all these new devices, he needed to create noise, and motion, and some degree of body heat inside the tank room. He could do it himself, of course, but then he wouldn't be able to monitor everything from the control booth. If only that damned Cazenovia hadn't been in such a hurry to leave... what, after all, did a gnome like that have to get back to? His rats, and pigeons, and... Sprague smiled with glee at having so effortlessly hit upon the solution.

  He hurriedly passed through the control room, and across the hall. He put his ear to the steel door of Cazenovia's lab, before unlocking it and stepping inside. There was an idle fluttering of wings in several of the darkened cages, a rustling in some others. The smell was as bad as always. But at least no one was there -- Cazenovia had gone home, and Potter was nowhere around. Sprague felt a little like a kid in a candy store: what animal should he take? He paced, quietly, up and down the moonlit aisles. The pigeons stirred, flapping their wings -- but pigeons were such filthy, and stupid, birds. What if he took one and it simply perched on top of one of the cameras and stayed there? The snakes, which slumbered, glistening, like lengths of rubber hose, were out of the question -- too difficult and dangerous to handle. The same for the rats. From the far end of the room, he heard a bark -- a dog might be just the ticket. He was hoping it might be a fairly friendly specimen, when his sleeve suddenly caught on the edge of a cage. He reached around to free it, and felt his fingers clenched by something tight and pincer like. He jerked his hand away and whirled around. The creature screeched and leaped to the back of the cage.

  A monkey, he thought.

  The animal leaped again, to the front of the cage, flattening himself against the grille work, chattering wildly.

  A rhesus, if Sprague remembered correctly from his own animal experimentation days. Of the genus macaca. The animal threaded his arm through the bars, fingers extended.

  And very cooperative, as Sprague recalled.

  He lifted the cage by the steel handle at its top, and carted it out of the room. The animal, perhaps pleased by the novelty of the excursion, stayed silent. Sprague locked up Cazenovia's lab behind him, and returned to the tank room. On the way in, he used his free hand to slam off the radio.

  But how best to release the creature? Propping the glass door to the control booth open with the floor bolt, he took the cage to the far corner of the room, behind the sealed sensory-deprivation tank, and in one swift motion lifted the front bars away. Before the monkey could grasp that he was free, Spague scuttled out of the room, closing the glass door and kicking down the floor bolt to lock it.

  Done.

  Sprague sat down, triumphant, and watched as the monkey, with some initial trepidation, ventured out of the cage. Looking all around, with his white-hooded eyes, he acted as if he thought at any moment some greater trap was about to be sprung. His tail, about two feet long, rose up above his body and coiled in the air. When he turned and saw the pale blue tank, he stopped in his tracks, to assess what it might be.

  Ah yes, thought Sprague, take your time -- I have plenty to do in here. Rolling up the sleeves of his lab coat, he went about flicking on the various monitors and recording devices. Yes, yes, much to do in here; it was no easy thing to devise an experiment which would, if successful, register the presence of a human soul. Trapping it, of course, would be better, but as yet Sprague had no idea how to go about that; he didn't know enough about its properties. Soon, he hoped he would. But for now, he'd have to be content to record some visual, auditory, thermal, or kinetic evidence of the spirit, and then throw that in the teeth of his detractors... and he knew exactly whom he'd throw it at first.

  The day before, Frelinghuysen, vice-chairman of the institute's board of directors, had called him in and waved Arlette Stein's latest article at him; she'd given her own account of Logan saving Garcia. “What on earth are you up to, Sprague? This has always been a reputable institution; we do real science here. You're turning us into some sort of media side-show with all this stuff about bringing people back from the dead. I'm telling you now, I want it to stop.”

  Sprague had retorted with something about the freedom of the press, and their instinct for what was genuine news, when Frelinghuysen held up his hand to stop him.

  “You've done solid research over the years, Sprague. And I'd hate to have to move for your eviction from the institute. But I'm not sitting still for this resurrection nonsense.”

  Sprague had not recanted, but he hadn't put up a fight, either; better, he thought, to bide his time and later surprise them with something irrefutable.

  Surprise the world, for that matter.

  The rhesus had prowled, on all fours, over to the tank, then climbed up onto it. In no time, he'd found the indentation for the hatchway, but his fingers were neither large enough, nor strong enough, to pull it open. He was getting bored trying.

  Flicking on the two-way intercom, Sprague said, “Don't worry, my little friend -- we'll soon have more interesting things for you to
do.” The monkey looked up, toward the speaker, then spotted Sprague behind the glass. He stared at him with eyes as black as obsidian.

  Yes, yes, much more interesting... Sprague checked to see that the thermistor calibrations were all correctly synchronized. All four registered the temperature in the room at exactly 80.1 degrees Fahrenheit, with no appreciable air movement. Sprague had covered even the ceiling vents with plastic garbage bags. The monkey suddenly turned, and a split second later the thermistor closest to him showed a tiny blip on its meter, indicating a transient air current. Cazenovia had done his job well, so far. But there was still the video element to check.

  On top of the console, Cazenovia had balanced an old Sony portable TV. When Sprague turned it on, the screen was broken into four separate squares; Cazenovia had originally used it to observe the behavior of rats at four different parts of a maze. Now, Sprague saw four different views of the tank room, and the monkey inside it. With a little fine tuning, the picture, still black and white, came in much more clearly. The only thing left to do now was test the whole system, to see how it would work in actual operation.

  “Lights out,” Sprague said over the intercom, as he darkened the laboratory except for the dim violet light around the control console. The monkey sitll showed up tolerably well on the portable TV. “But what we need is movement.”

  Sprague turned on the radio again, tuned it to the first rock ‘n’ roll station he could find; what he wanted was cacophony.

  And that was what he got -- screeching guitars, pounding drums, a lyric having something to do with nuclear destruction. The monkey shrieked and leaped off the tank, then raced to one of the steel poles on which a thermistor and camera were mounted.

  “Yes... climb it, if you like,” Sprague said, under the crashing music. “Let's see how sturdy everything is.”

  The monkey leapt halfway up the pole, swung himself around it in the dark. The room was very nearly pitch-black -- what kind of night vision did the animal have, Sprague wondered? Enough, apparently, to find its way to the top of the thermistor, and perch there, with its tail wrapped tightly around the pole. The music blared, and the monkey held fast.