But Ramiro noticed something.
I don't know what it was or why then, but after a few trips back and forth in the yard, the prisoner paused, passing one of the rubberized weights to his other hand and then bending down, picking up the thick dried and very dead leaf from the floor beneath the starved tree.
For a long moment, he stared at Jim, saying nothing.
They were ten feet apart, and the guard was watching everything.
Normal procedures demanded a second guard be on duty outside. She was watching on monitors and through the two-way glass, and sensing trouble, she set off a silent alarm. I arrived half a minute after a backup team of armed warriors, and two steps ahead of Jefferson.
In that span, nothing had changed.
Maybe Ramiro was waiting for an audience. But I think not. My guess is that he still wasn't sure what he would say or the best way to say it, and like any artist, he was simply allowing time to pass while his invisible brain struggled to find the best solution.
Through the monitors, I watched the brown leaf slip free of his hand.
“So, Jim,” said Ramiro. At last.
Jim didn't move, and he didn't make any sound. And if his face changed, the expression didn't register on the security cameras.
As if getting ready to unwrap a wonderful gift, Ramiro smiled. It was an abrupt, startling expression followed by the joyous, almost effervescent words, “So how's your home town these days? How is Salt Lake City doing?”
Jim sagged against the door.
From outside, Jefferson ordered, “Get in there!”
“No,” I ordered.
The backup team ignored me.
“No!” I stepped in front of them and looked at Jefferson. “You tell them. Who's in charge here?”
With a tight sigh, Jefferson said, “Wait then. Wait.”
Jim was crying now. In a matter of moments, a weepy little boy had emerged and taken charge.
I told the guards to back away from the door.
Jim muttered a few words, too soft for anybody to understand.
“What's that, Jim?” asked Ramiro.
Nothing.
“I can only guess,” the prisoner offered with a warm, infectious tone. “Another nuclear weapon must have struck another reactor. But this one was closer to us, wasn't it? And the wind must have blown those poisons over the top of us.”
That was a dreamy, hopeful explanation, considering the circumstances.
“So we're temporarily cut off down here. Isn't that about it, Jim? And we'll have to wait what? A few weeks or months to be rescued?”
“No,” said Jim.
Finding success, Ramiro smiled.
“Am I wrong, Jim?”
The response was abrupt, and vivid. With a string of awful sentences, Jim defined the scale of the new war and its brutal, amoral consequences.
“Everything above us is dead,” he declared.
Ramiro's smile wavered, but he wouldn't let go of it.
“About a thousand nukes went off, and wildfires are still burning, and the entire continent is poisonous dead. The field office is abandoned. We aren't getting any messages from anybody. Not a squeak. We've got some security cameras working, our only connections to the surface, and they're only working on battery power. It's the middle of August, but there isn't any sun, and judging by what we can see and what we can guess, it isn't even reaching forty below at noon...!”
Maybe Ramiro had genuine hopes for his dirty nuke story—an awful but manageable nightmare. But this nightmare was more plausible, and he must have known that for several days. Yet he refused to react. He did nothing for one, two, three breaths. Enormous events had pushed him farther than even he could handle, and discovering what might be a weakness on his part, the prisoner suddenly looked lost, perhaps even confused, unable to conjure up one thin question, comment, or even a word.
And then Jim pulled his weapon.
The pistol would work only in his hand, and its ammunition was small and lightweight, designed to bruise and break bones but never kill. That's why I told everyone, “No. Leave them alone!”
My instincts were looking for a revelation.
But other people's instincts overrode my order. The guards pushed me away and started working at the door's stubborn locks. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Neither man spoke or moved. But then Jim set the gun's barrel against his target's eye, and I heard a quiet thump, and the bullet shattered the back of the socket before burrowing its way into the miserable, dying brain.
Ramiro dropped the weights, one striking his right foot. But he didn't appear to notice. Unblinking eyes stared at the corpse twitching on the floor in front of him. The prisoner was impressed. Enthralled, even. Perhaps he had never seen a man die. Cities and nations had been destroyed, but carnage had remained cool and abstract. Until that moment, he never appreciated just how messy and simple death was, or that he would have to take a deep breath before regaining his bearings, looking up slowly before noticing me standing in the open door.
“So this is what you wanted,” I said. “The death of humanity, the end of the world...”
“No,” he whispered.
“Are you sure?”
He sluggishly shook his head.
“Or Abraham wanted this,” I suggested. “A nuclear winter, the extinction of our species.”
No reply was offered.
I stepped over Jim and then stared up into Ramiro's face, allowing him no choice but to meet my eyes. Quietly, I said, “There is no such creature as Abraham, is there?”
He didn't react.
“And no army of temporal jihadists either.”
His eyes closed.
“Just you,” I persisted. “You're the only time traveler. Fifteen years ago, you arrived alone in the backcountry of Kashmir. You brought no more than what you could carry on your back, including the uranium and a few odd gizmos from your world. Then you littered the Middle East with just enough physical evidence to give your story legs. Like that bomb in Islamabad, right? You set that up before you came to America. And then you let yourself get caught in Montana, which was your plan from the beginning.”
His shoulders lifted, a shrug beginning.
I grabbed his chin and shook him. “Why send an entire army? Why bother? When a single soldier armed with the right words can do just as well ... that's what this is about...”
Ramiro opened his eyes.
An impressed little smile began to break loose. He asked softly, “And when did you realize this, Carmen?”
“Always,” I admitted. “But I couldn't believe it. I wouldn't let myself even admit that it was possible. Not until I saw a photograph of a former official with my own government, bloodied and terrified, and I realized that our own hands had done that to him.” I shook his chin again. “That's when I saw what made sense. Finally. Maybe there was an Abraham, but if you happened to be him...”
Ramiro laughed, and with a cat's grace grabbed my wrist and yanked, stepping out of my grip.
“Who's the prisoner here?” I muttered.
The laugh brightened.
“And who is the torturer?”
He offered a slight and very quick bow.
“But why?” I wanted to know.
“Carmen,” he began. “Believe me, I could offer a thousand plausible stories. But how would you know if I was being truthful, in whole or even in part?”
“Try it anyway,” I said.
But he backed away, waving both hands as if to fend off those temptations. “The point is, Carmen ... your world was deserving. Almost every outrage that has happened to you has been justified. A necessary, reasonable revenge has been taken. And these many years ... almost every day that I have spent in your world, Carmen ... has brought me untold pleasure...”
* * * *
11
Last year, during an official leave from the prison, Collins managed to slip away from his official escorts. His shadows. I can only speculate what he did during most o
f the day, but fourteen hours is a very long time, if you have a good plan and the discipline to make it happen. My personal knowledge extends to two hours spent together during the afternoon, inside a second-story room at a Red Roof Inn just outside Denver. Despite Ramiro's insistence to the contrary, I'm not unlovely and I have my charms, and his interrogator and I had been carrying on an infrequent but cherished affair—five surreptitious encounters over the course of an ugly decade, moments where sex and sexual talk could dominate over the secrets of state.
I never discussed my work with him, and he almost never mentioned his.
But Denver was different. I stepped into a darkened room to find a changed man. Collins was pale and much heavier than usual and obviously exhausted. After an hour of sweat and modest success, we gave up. I talked about showering, and he talked about slipping away in another minute or two. Then for a long while, we just sat side by side in bed, and in that way people in our world would do, we began to list the friends and associates that had died because of Indian Point.
Until that moment, I didn't realize that Collins had been a father. Not that he was close to his fifteen-year-old son, but the unfortunate boy had lived on Long Island with his mother. The fallout plume blocked every bridge to safety, and like a million others, they spent the next several days chasing a string of promised rescue ships and rumors of airlifts. Collins’ best guess, based on a couple of sat-phone calls received near the end, was that they had managed to survive for a week or eight days, and then both died, probably during the Islip riots.
“Sorry” is a weak word. But I offered it anyway.
This man that I didn't truly know silently accepted my sorrow. Then he tried to shrug, and with a bleak resignation that I couldn't understand at the time, he mentioned, “This could have turned out differently.”
When haven't those words been valid?
With his deep, godly voice, Collins said my name. Then he smiled—a crooked, captivating smile on his worst day—and quietly asked, “Why are we doing what we do? Anymore, what are we after?”
“It's our job,” I offered.
He saw through those words. “Bullshit, darling. Bullshit.”
“Yeah, but we're still the good guys,” I said.
Then we both enjoyed a sorry little laugh.
“I'll tell you what I'm doing,” he said, shaking his head. “Every day, I'm trying to save the world.”
“Oh, is that all?”
He kept smiling, though he didn't laugh. He let me stare into his eyes, taking my measure of his soul. Then carefully, slowly, he said, “You once told me about this woman. Do you remember? You met her on some cross-country flight. You got her to talking, and she eventually confessed her plan to kill her elderly husband. Do you remember that anecdote?”
“Sure.”
“Did you ever follow up on it?”
“What do you mean?”
He didn't have to explain himself.
With a defensive growl, I admitted, “No, I haven't bothered.”
“Why not?”
I could have mentioned that it wasn't my particular business, or that I never knew anything of substance, or that no crime had been committed. But I didn't offer excuses. Instead, I admitted, “The woman loved her husband. Agree with her or not, I don't believe she would have harmed the man to be cruel or out of convenience.”
“And you're sure that she loved him?”
“I could tell,” I said.
“And I believe you, Carmen.”
I sat quietly, wondering what was this about.
“You know, you're very good. Piecing together clues, I mean. Reading the subject's emotions, their intentions.” Then he laughed, insisting, “Maybe you're not quite my equal. But there's nobody better than us.”
Just then, I could not read that man. I had absolutely no clue what Collins was thinking.
“Saving the world,” he repeated.
I waited.
“I'm working on something huge,” he admitted. Then with a wise little sneer, he edited his comment. “I'm working on somebody huge. A subject unlike anyone you've ever met or even imagined.”
I didn't want this conversation. He was breaking our most essential rule, bringing work into our bed.
“That man is still holding some big secrets,” Collins confided. “All these years working on nobody but him, and I still haven't gotten to his core.”
I climbed out from under the sheets.
“If I could just get what I wanted from the guy,” he muttered.
I said, “Stop that.”
With sharp disappointment, Collins stared at me. It took several moments for him to decide what to say next. Then he offered what had to be the most cryptic and peculiar excuse that I had ever heard.
“If he gives me what I want,” he began.
A genuine smile broke across his weary white face.
“If he shares what he knows, Carmen, I can save the world. Not once, but a thousand times. A million times. More times than we could count ... and now wouldn't that be a legacy worth any cost?”
* * * *
12
We decided to throw the prisoner into Jefferson's apartment, accompanied by half a dozen pissed-off guards, and the guards were instructed to sit Ramiro down before the television, and in sequence, play the Apocalypse recordings for him.
Jim's body was carried away, and Jefferson found himself standing alone with me. He asked the walls, “So what do we do with him next?”
“What do you want to do?”
My colleague refused to look at my eyes. “Our food is limited,” he pointed out. “Ramiro constitutes more than 1 percent of our population. At this point, can we really afford to keep him alive?”
Then he braced himself.
But I surprised him, saying, “Agreed,” as if I had come to the same inescapable conclusion.
But our methods seemed important, and that's what we were discussing when one of the guards returned.
“Lemonade-7 wants paper and a pen,” she reported.
“Give him whatever he wants,” I said.
She glanced at Jefferson.
He nodded.
“And tell him he doesn't have much time,” I yelled as she ran off.
For a few moments, Jefferson studied me. But he didn't have the stomach to ask what he wanted. Instead, he quietly admitted, “Maybe you're right, Carmen. A bullet is simple. But shoving him out on the surface, letting him fend for himself ... that makes more sense...”
Yet that left various logistics to consider. One of the elevators had to be unlocked, power had to be routed back into it, and every passenger except Ramiro had to be protected from the radiation and cold. Those necessities took dozens of people nearly two hours of determined labor, and then somebody mentioned that a short-wave antenna and Geiger counter could be set up on the dead prairie and spliced into the elevator's wiring—helpful inspirations, but cause for another hour delay.
According to the guards, Ramiro remained cooperative and busy. Unblinking eyes paid close attention to the news broadcasts, particularly during those desperate minutes when city after city suddenly quit transmitting. Each of his guards seemed to nourish a different impression of his mood. The prisoner was relishing the slaughter, or he was numbed by what he was seeing, or maybe he was only pretending to watch events play out on that tiny screen. But every witness agreed: the prisoner's first focus was in filling the yellow pages of the legal pad, his head dropping for long intervals, that delicate artisan's hand scribbling dense equations and weaving diagrams and sometimes adding a paragraph or two in his unborn hodgepodge of a language.
It was early afternoon when he set down the pen. A few minutes later, without explanation, he was brought to the elevator. He was still wearing dress trousers and a short-sleeved shirt, plus his favorite sandals. But the two volunteers waiting for him were half-hidden inside layers of cumbersome gear.
Ramiro handed the filled pad to the shorter figure.
I didn
't look at his gift. I knew what was on it. With both hands, I folded it in half and handed it to the nearest guard. “It's a little goddamn late now, isn't it?” I snapped at him.
“Maybe enough people will survive,” he offered.
I tried to cut him open with my gaze. Then I turned and shuffled through the open steel door, my oversized fireman's boots clumping with each step.
Jefferson checked his sidearm, picked up the makeshift antenna and Geiger counter, and followed me.
There was just enough room for our equipment and three bodies. Jefferson pulled his oxygen mask aside and gave a few final orders. Then the door shut, and with a sudden crotchety jolt, the elevator started to climb, shaking slightly as it gained momentum.
“Do you understand what I just gave you?” Ramiro asked.
“Of course I understand,” I said.
“Tell me, why don't you?” Jefferson asked.
Ramiro smiled, but he sounded uncharacteristically tense. “Time travel is not particularly difficult.”
Neither of us reacted.
He said, “Lorton Energy is cheap, if you know the right tricks.”
I looked only at Jefferson. “The first time Ramiro wrote about Lorton and Casimir plates, he didn't give us those tricks. He pretty effectively misled our scientists into chasing the wrong methods. But of course a man who remembers the dates and positions of dozens of supernovae—a creature with that kind of faultless memory—would easily digest the plans for a working time machine. That's what Collins realized. Eventually. He didn't mention it to anybody, but for these last years, Collins was chasing the tools that would allow us to go back in the past, like Ramiro did, but this time make things right.”
Jefferson shook his head. “Yeah, but each incursion in the past is a separate event,” he recalled. “If he jumped back, he would accomplish what? Setting up a new time line?”
“Except we could send back a million teams,” I replied. “A million attempts to make amends, and each new history owing its existence to us.”
No one spoke for a moment. The only sound was the air rushing around the racing elevator.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2008 Page 34