Perdigon

by Tom Caldwell

  A few longsat calls to Earth could have cleared all that up, but Bija was stonewalling him on that too. The Lumen’s AI told him ask your system administrator to remove this restriction, and the human staff shrugged their shoulders.

  “This just says you’re restricted from placing longsat calls,” they told him, while staring helplessly at their screens. “Would you like me to escalate this issue to our troubleshooting team?”

  Jacob always told them yes please and thank you, because he remembered what it was like to work for Bija. It wasn’t their fault.

  Jacob knew this could all be much worse. Nobody was hurting him, really. He wasn’t chained to the wall. He had the run of the place. Access to shoelaces and belt buckles. As if they didn’t think he was desperate. Meals in the nearest cafeteria with everybody else—he had as much food as he wanted, and he was famished after the abbey’s thin rations. Maintenance workers cleaned his bland, hotel-like room once a day. There’d been a time, not that long ago in the big scheme of things, when Jacob would have thought this was a paradise.

  At night, because he couldn’t sleep, Jacob turned the Lumen screen on and searched for all the things he’d wondered about while they’d been marooned on Perdigon. Settling pointless arguments that the kids used to get into, resolving questions they’d had that neither he nor Ezra had been able to answer.

  Out of curiosity, he searched for the prophecies of Handsome Lake, which were bleak.

  Now there are no doors left in the houses, for they have all been kicked off. There are no fires in the village and have not been for many days. Now the men, full of strong drink, have trodden in the fireplaces. They alone track there and there are no fires and their footprints are in all the fireplaces.

  Now the dogs yelp and cry in all the houses for they are hungry.

  So this is what happens.

  Old news, the destruction of a way of life. Even so, Jacob felt uneasy when he read it, as if still under the old prophet’s threat.

  Jacob also looked up the Jewish prayer for the dead, thinking of the kids praying the Rest Eternal by the highway. The Mourner’s Kaddish wasn’t quite right—that was something you said only for close relatives. He had taken a year to say it for his mother, long ago. Better late than never. But the Kaddish wasn’t right for a therapist, or a pile of dead monks, or all Jacob’s co-workers, or Shruti’s parents, or anyone else from Bonaventure.

  But he found a translation of El Malei Rachamim, and the scratchy recorded singing of a long-dead cantor filled the bare, anonymous room.

  God, full of mercy, who dwells in the heights, provide a sure rest upon the wings of the Shekhinah, within the range of the holy and the pure, whose shining resembles the sky, to the souls of the dead, for charity and righteous deeds have been pledged to their memory. The Master of Mercy will protect them forever, from behind the hiding of his wings, and will bind them up in the bond of life. The Everlasting is their heritage, and they shall rest peacefully upon their lying place, and let us say: Amen.

  As Ezra had said at the time, Jacob wished it actually helped. But maybe it didn’t matter if it helped or not—it didn’t matter how it made him feel. It was a small gift he could make of his own attention and concern, his memory and his love. Above all, at least he wasn’t ignoring all those people who’d died on Perdigon. They deserved this moment of attention and respect.

  He listened to the old cantor, whose aged voice cracked with emotion, and when it was over, he turned off the Lumen screen and lay awake in the dark.

  The Lumen said it was May 19th, and since Magnus had come to him, it had been…more than two days but less than five. That was all that Jacob could work out. Night and day blurred together. He’d been wandering the corridors of Siddhartha station’s level 9, looking for Ezra.

  It was a med bay, or so Jacob thought at first. Steel and glass, a noisy air filter filling the corridors with white noise, harried-looking staff in scrubs. Large sectors of the level were blocked off with plastic sheeting and movable plywood partitions, all plastered with signs announcing renovations. Coming Soon.

  At every desk and nursing station, the staff gave him the runaround. The official story was that Ezra’s implant was malfunctioning—credible, Jacob had to admit. Likely, even. Whether it was true was difficult to pin down. It took eight hours to chase down a doctor who would comment.

  “Oh, the implant was damaged well beyond repair,” said the doctor when Jacob cornered him. His nametag read Parnell, and he was cheerful but glib. “Some of the inner components were melted, and there was damage to the surrounding tissue—”

  “Are you saying brain damage?” Jacob interrupted.

  “That’s the tissue I’m talking about, Einstein, yes. It’s the least of his problems. I can’t believe you were trying to market this thing to the public,” said Parnell, holding up a small plastic bag with the disconnected implant inside. “Not that I’m trying to discourage you. This’ll be the greatest thing for neurosurgeons since the invention of the motorcycle.”

  Jacob took the little bag from him, as if it were a talisman that would bring Ezra back. The implant was the size of Jacob’s thumbnail, shaped roughly like a nautilus shell, the plastic of its outer case bubbled and distorted now. He could still make out the tiny green swish of the Taltos logo. “I wasn’t even notified that you were doing this without—”

  “Easy, wildman, I don’t make the rules. He came through it fine, anyway, after our team saved his life—you’re welcome—and he’ll be recovering for about four to six weeks.”

  “What about the psychological effects of this?” Jacob said. “You can’t just rip this thing out of his head and call it good. Ezra…really depends on his abilities.”

  “Look, sorry you didn’t get to do the extra paperwork, okay? You must’ve been looking forward to it. But my idiot of a patient was in danger and there wasn’t time for hand-holding,” said the doctor. “Anyway, he’s probably more powerful without the implant by now.”

  Jacob wasn’t sure if that was good news or not. “Really?”

  “If you keep stimulating the brain artificially, it’ll eventually start reacting even without the stimulus. More and more severely, over time. It’s called the kindling effect. Relieving the intracranial pressure should help with the headaches,” said Parnell. “We do actually know what we’re doing, chief. I mean, I may be burned out and dead inside, but I’d be in serious trouble if I fucked up Magnus Vollan’s second-favourite brain, right?”

  Bija didn’t care if Jacob lived or died, but they cared about keeping Ezra in good condition. Even if it was only to extract some extra profit from him. Jacob could take some solace in that. “The thing is I just want to see him—”

  “Ask the nurse.”

  People got nervous around Jacob when he was short of sleep, and he wasn’t sure why. What did they think he was going to do? Jacob took a step closer to the doctor, and Parnell backed away. “See, anytime I ask the nurses anything, they tell me to wait for the doctor to come by for rounds,” he said. “So I’ve been here for nine hours. Waiting.”

  “Hey, I don’t have any control over—”

  “And now you’re here,” Jacob went on, as if Parnell hadn’t spoken. “Tell the nurses that I’m allowed to see my husband. Please.”

  In the tone of someone who didn’t care enough to put up a fuss when challenged, Parnell replied, “Sure. Fine.” He brushed past Jacob to lean over the counter of the nurses’ station. “Folks, just give this worried stick insect what he wants, okay? Let him visit.”

  The nurse sighed, and tapped her screen to call someone else. After a long, muffled conversation, she looked up at Jacob and gave him her customer service smile. “Mr. Barany is in suite 9843. That’s on the Nirodha arm of the station, so you’ll have to take the moving walkway to the centre hub first. I’ll let them know you’re coming, but there’s another security screening at the Nirodha gate anyway.”

  Jacob had been burned before, so he wanted to hear some e
xtra confirmation. “And if I leave now and follow your directions, I can expect that when I get there, they’ll let me see him?” He was trying to stay calm. Neutral. Not accusatory. “They won’t tell me to come back here and ask you again, will they?”

  “I’ll let them know that you’re medically cleared to see him,” the nurse said carefully. “The department he’s in might have other security concerns. You’ll have to ask them.”

  Jacob decided it was worth a shot, and headed for the centre hub of the station.

  In the busy central hub of Siddhartha, Jacob was studying the backlit map of the station when he heard a familiar voice.

  “Jacob! What are you doing here, man?” Their old friend Marty, whom Jacob hadn’t seen since the wedding. “I saw you guys on the news! Nobody told me they were bringing you here.”

  “Marty…” Jacob impulsively pulled him in for an awkward, lopsided hug. Jacob was tall and Marty was short, a good ten inches between them, so they didn’t prolong it. “Please, I don’t want to get you in trouble, but if you could just get me in to see Ezra—”

  “Oh man, Ezra’s here too? No way,” said Marty with a grin. “I didn’t have anything important to do today—well, I hardly ever do. Sometimes they make me give, like, speeches and stuff? It’s all written for me, I just read the prompter. Where were you trying to go?”

  “Suite 9843 in the Nirodha arm.”

  “Weird. I used to work there.” Marty led Jacob to the security checkpoint for the Nirodha arm of the station. “I thought it was all BijaNext offices down that way. That’s their precog tech project—they thought I could help them develop it just because I used to work with you guys. Wild, huh?” Marty laughed at the idea. “Couldn’t have helped them if I wanted to.”

  “Are you off that project then?” asked Jacob, as Marty waved the security guards away as if they were over-attentive waiters.

  “I guess so!” Marty joined him on the moving walkway that would take them down the length of Nirodha. “Did you guys ever figure out the in-ear model of the implant? I remember when we were trying it on everyone in the office.”

  The small version, the size of a grain of rice, was so innocuous that they’d tested it widely. Shruti got to try it as well, during her initial tour of the Taltos campus. “The old prototype works on anyone with latent ability, but it does a lot of damage too. We settled on the model with the lower side effect profile, but it still doesn’t…really work,” Jacob admitted. “At first, maybe 3% of our testers would feel anything. We kept at it and got our numbers up to 8%. That’s very weak—we still haven’t beaten the placebo.”

  “Okay, that’s good,” said Marty in relief. “Because Bija sort of…they took mine. I’d completely forgotten it was still in there—for weeks, so comfortable, dude. But Bija found it one day in a routine security scan and confiscated it. So I’m glad it doesn’t really work.”

  Jacob didn’t like that news. “Why would they—were they afraid it was a listening device?”

  “Yeah, they found out that it communicates with Ahriman, so they decided it was enemy tech that might be snitching to competitors.” Marty shrugged. “They’ve had it for months, but if it’s only a failed prototype then that’s no big.”

  “Still, though. That’s long enough for them to be reverse-engineering something,” said Jacob, checking his pocket again for Ezra’s broken implant. It was safe. He kept his hand folded around it. “Even the less effective version could be enough to give them a clue.”

  “For sure. Bija still wants precog tech,” Marty said. “That’s why they keep me around. BijaNext was a pretty lowkey program, because like…if they fail, they’re gonna want to sweep it under the rug, you know?”

  Down the Nirodha arm, the renovation barriers were patterned with blue BijaNext logos. Sheets of plastic rippled in the recirculated air, and they could hear sounds of machinery nearby.

  “This looks like they’re getting ready for something,” Jacob said, looking back over his shoulder the way they came. Do not leave the moving walkway, said an automated Lumen voice. Wait for a designated stopping point. “But I don’t see a launch date anywhere.”

  Marty was scrolling through his news feed on his phone. “Dunno. I think someone would’ve told me if Bija had figured anything out about precog tech. Like, since they need me to talk about it on the news for them.”

  Maybe it wasn’t too late, then. The walkway deposited them in a white corridor, where the paint was fresh and the lighting gentle. It was quiet here, without even the Lumen’s usual ambient sounds: no fake birds, no fake wind, only the station’s natural hum. The window was angled toward the face of the planet, an unfamiliar blue marble. Not Nephele, although this too was an ocean planet, cloud-streaked. A colder planet, its sea ice shimmering with a high albedo, pale and clean.

  Marty strode over to the nursing station. “Hey, you’ve got Ezra Barany staying here, right? Can we see him?”

  Instant compliance. Anything for Bija’s boy genius. A single smiling nurse came to offer them visitor passes, disposable booties to wear over their shoes, bottled water, a warmed blanket—

  “What’s the Wi-Fi password for Nirodha, again?” Marty was settling down on a white sofa with his tablet. “Jacob’s going first.”

  “Right this way,” said the nurse, leading Jacob down a dimly-lit hall. She was soft-voiced and dark-haired, youthfully maternal, like a kind babysitter. The kind of girl Jacob used to date, back when he dated girls. “See that wall up ahead?”

  It was part of the new construction, metal-reinforced. Warning: Unshielded Area, it said in stencilled red letters beside the door. Jacob said, “Through there?”

  She nodded. “I can’t follow you past the barrier. He seemed like he was in a better mood today, but just in case, the touchscreen by the door will call security if you mash it three times. It’ll work even if you can’t use the interface or the voice commands.”

  None of this made sense to Jacob, exhausted and sleep-deprived. “I’m sorry?”

  “The touchscreen beside the door when you get inside,” she repeated. “To call for security.”

  “I understand, but I mean—why would I need that?”

  The nurse made a moue, her mouth ticking to one side. “Well, we’ve had some incidents. Just accidents,” she reassured him. “No one blames him for it. We’re all so excited to be working on this project, really, we are. And so far, the shielding is really helping.”

  Jacob didn’t know what to believe, but he hoped that was true. He hoped Ezra had fought back against these people. Somehow. It was hard to imagine Ezra successfully hurting anyone, really, at least in physical fights unfolding in real time. Ezra did vengeance well, if he could survive long enough to nurse a grudge, but in the face of direct aggression he would freeze. So I have to protect him. “May I go through?”

  “I’ll be at the desk if you need me,” she said.

  Jacob knocked on the metal door, ceremoniously, but it was too thick to hear any response from the other side. Whatever the “shielding” was, it was heavy-duty. The panels slid back to admit Jacob through a series of three air locks. Seemed excessive.

  Wait for the tone, said the Lumen, in the last air lock.

  A high-pitched, tooth-rattling beep sounded through the narrow space, making the metal walls vibrate; an unseen mechanism buzzed—probably a scanner, Jacob thought. Typical Bija invasiveness.

  When the last panel slid open, it was dark.

  Jacob liked to keep one hand on a doorframe when he passed through. To reassure himself that it wasn’t too late to back out again. He wasn’t alone, he thought, but that was all he was sure of. “Ezra?”

  He let go of the doorframe, and the panel slid shut again behind him. Jacob was sealed in a small, black space where his own voice echoed strangely. He didn’t like confined spaces, but when he fumbled against the wall his hand brushed the touchscreen beside the door. Red light spilled from the screen into the darkness, and finally he could see Ezra.
/>   Bathed in the red light, Ezra was sitting on the floor—cross-legged, slouching, in a space that now seemed infinite. Mirrors, Jacob realised. A small room panelled with highly-reflective metal, like an art exhibit. Their repeated figures receded into the distance.

  “I knew you’d come today.” Ezra was in a hospital gown that hung loose from his bony shoulders, and the surgeons had shaved his hair haphazardly on the right, dressings taped over keyhole incisions. “Babe, sit down, you’ll get dizzy.”

  “I’m sorry it took me so long, I’m so sorry…” Jacob was getting dizzy, actually, constantly caught in his own peripheral vision, so he lowered himself to the floor. Ezra pulled him closer, so that Jacob’s head was resting in his lap. They curled together on the floor.

  “You have to tell me what’s happening,” Jacob told Ezra. “Are you okay—the doctor said you had brain damage—”

  “That guy’s just a dick,” said Ezra, stroking Jacob’s hair back from his forehead. “I mean. Physically, everything feels…rough. Mentally—I don’t know,” he admitted. “I feel…different.”

  Jacob could feel the fine vibration of the station’s stabiliser engines, thrumming through the metal and glass. “Do you know what day it is?” he asked, the introibo of the mental status exam.

  “May 19.”

  “And where are we?”

  “Magnus Vollan’s toilet bowl.”

  Jacob smiled. “I’m so frazzled, I can barely remember the rest. I haven’t slept in days.”

  “I can do it for you, it’s okay. Name me some things that are red.”

  “Apples. Cherries. Pomegranates. Strawberries. Um, beets…”

  “You must be hungry.”

  “You picked an appetising colour. But I am,” Jacob admitted. He closed his eyes to the infinite reflections. “Do they keep you in here? All the time?”

  “A few hours a day,” said Ezra. He sounded indifferent. “I sleep someplace else.”

  “Why?” said Jacob. “What’s this place for? And why so small?”