Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014

by Penny Publications

"Covey's a demon on games," said Quarles.

  "You can turn it down," said Weston, and the guard complied till the chatter became a hum. The volume jumped momentarily when one of the dogs barked sharply in the direction of the roof. The guard tugged his chain and said something firm to the animal. "This is pretty much it," said Weston. "This goes on for half an hour." She sighed and opened her hands. "I'll be in my quarters," she said. "You tell me if you get anything."

  "Immediately," Jimmy said.

  Building the passageway required a way in, images and notions from the subject's own life. Jimmy had a host of those keys already, superficial though they may have been: books, intelligence, scholarship, rootlessness, adventure, invention. Now he had another: In control.

  Over the course of the exercise period, the only change was when the prisoner bent down, put a hand to the dirt, and lowered himself to his knees. Even from here, Jimmy could see the figure shaking with the effort. Then Methusaleh touched his head to the ground.

  He remained that way until the guards rousted him.

  Cook arrived around seven o'clock to let Jimmy know he had assumed hall duty.

  To Jimmy's dismay, Cook stayed to watch the prisoner—upright in his chair, eyes shut, hands at either side.

  Cook wanted to talk. "We've got nothing to do most of the time, but we keep up our end. This can't last much longer. That's what we figure. Not even the government of the United States wants to waste this much money on one guy.... But that's why you're here, right?" Cook had trouble holding still, dancing slightly from foot to foot. Or perhaps the unnatural stillness of the prisoner made him physically anxious. "You're shuttin' this whole thing down."

  "Am I?"

  "What, you're not? Come on, you're just drawing up some final report. Sitting here just watching, making some kind of evaluation. They gonna Guantanamo his ass? Or send him to Egypt or someplace, let them work him over? Or they gonna send him back to Afghanistan?"

  "What makes you think he's from Afghanistan?"

  Cook twisted his face, then flexed his neck as if a change of angle were necessary. "What, you think he looks American?"

  Jimmy didn't know how to answer.

  Cook righted himself. "You should check out his eyes. There's a zoom on this screen. They're kind of orange."

  "Zoom," Jimmy said. He took a step toward the multicolored control panel.

  "I mean, it doesn't matter. Dude's a terrorist, right? Probably Muslim?" Jimmy blinked slowly at Cook's twitchiness. "No offense if you're one, but, he's gotta be Muslim, right?"

  Resisting the urge to formulate a dismissive answer, Jimmy settled for ignoring Cook. He pictured the scene in the exercise yard. The prisoner went to his knees. He touched his head to the ground.

  "Hm," Jimmy said, his questions too many, a swelling cloud. Cook gave him a nod before leaving.

  One desk lamp shone. Bed at a right angle to the screen, using the little space available at the room's far end, Jimmy lay on his side to watch the other man. He knew blacking out his own room would make him feel as if he and Methusaleh shared a space. Later, they would share a space of his own making. Not yet.

  When lights-out came for the prisoner at ten, Jimmy continued watching. As the hall lights never went out, the yellow rectangle in the prisoner's door glowed all night. Jimmy's door had an interior shutter he had closed. Eventually, he left the bed and turned off both the audio and video. The wall went gray. He hesitated, then switched off the lamp.

  In Jimmy's dream, the prison cell was brighter than he remembered. Methusaleh sat cross-legged in the other room. Voices skittered along the walls. The voices might have been leaking in from the outer world, but in his dream, Jimmy somehow understood that minute beings occupied the room's edges. Spectral, Jimmy moved unencumbered and unnoticed through the cell: swooping close to the prisoner's face, which seemed yellow before deepening to brown like tobacco juice; rising to the ceiling to inspect whatever the prisoner might have found of interest in its speckled surface; hovering above the tidy, unvisited bed. Then he observed the prisoner from the front once more and noticed that the man was suspended several feet above the floor.

  Jimmy woke, saw the gray wall, concluded that the prisoner had floated away, and went back to sleep.

  Cook showed up again in the middle of the night, just after Jimmy had awakened and jotted his dreams in his notebook.

  "I saw you were up," Cook said from the doorway.

  Jimmy frowned at the door's small window, still sealed, and Cook pointed his weapon in a sweeping motion toward the ceiling. "Cameras."

  Jimmy hadn't thought. "Of course." Of course the people in security were watching him as well. What else was there to watch at this hour?

  Quarles knocked, though he opened the door without waiting for Jimmy to respond. Onscreen, the old man stood facing into the observation room, crookedly upright.

  "How'd crashing in here work for you?"

  It took Jimmy a moment to answer; he'd been staring back at the prisoner for several minutes. "It was all right," he said. "Thanks," he added, though he wasn't sure the man was concerned. Jimmy took a drink of warm water. The clammy air made him shiver. Quarles looked back and forth between Jimmy and the prisoner.

  "What do you want to ask me?" Jimmy said.

  "This gentleman here. You think he's... a brother?" One eyebrow cocked.

  "What, black?"

  "Yes." Both brows came up. "Buh-lack."

  "The file... I think the file says he's white." Jimmy's own father was half-white, but not to most eyes; Jimmy's aunt was pale, straight-haired without ever touching relaxer.

  Quarles nodded his head side to side. "Oh, well, if the file says so...." Jimmy regarded the prisoner with altered eyes. "Want a closer look? It's easier if you don't use that pad." Quarles touched the wall screen, and a green dot appeared beneath his finger. He let his weapon hang from its strap as he brought up his right hand and spread the fingers to make a box that framed the prisoner's face. He tapped the box, and the face took up the entire wall. The orange-brown eyes took in everything. Jimmy had taken a step backward without realizing it. There was something to the shape of the face.

  Another key to the passageway: Hidden. Even when seen, still hidden. Only you know who you truly are.

  Quarles said, "You've really got to find that manual."

  8. Hole in the World

  Jimmy drove without seeing the road, seeing instead—reenacted, himself in the narrative—the eyewitness account he'd read online.

  A street between shops becomes the turning sky; the sky retreats as the helpless driver sees the world narrow and darken on all sides. A scream rummaged up along Jimmy's throat, though he didn't himself make a sound. Anyone in such a situation would scream without thinking someone might hear, only because it's what a person does, cry out for help, whether or not you believe anyone might be near enough to listen. The driver lies sideways, pinned, and the car shudders deeper still. Then comes the shock of icy water gushing in. And then, against the impending dark finale, the door grinds back and away. You're hauled up, drenched and breathless, into the light. He has you in his arms.

  Jimmy gasped.

  Here was his problem: it was often easier to imagine himself as someone else.

  He noticed his speed had dipped. It was a two-lane road, curving, with no passing allowed, and five cars crawled behind him, the nearest one flashing its lights. He swallowed and accelerated.

  His car on a side street, Jimmy stood behind the ring of yellow sawhorses while another car groaningly rose, winched upward from the pit, an SUV with a smashed windshield. The news stories hadn't done justice to what had befallen the town—or he'd failed to appreciate the magnitude of the problem. A day after the event, wreckers still labored to lift cars from the sinkholes, three of which he'd passed on the way into town. This hole—scene of the eyewitness account—had consumed nearly half a block in the center of town, a four-lane collapse digging into the sidewalk, taking out in addition the cement un
der a pizza place awning and the walkway by a barber shop door on the side of the street where he stood. Fat brown pipes, one of which had ruptured, criss-crossed the rift. The sun hung directly overhead.

  At his back, a diner's bell jingled. "That the last one?" The man wore a blue corduroy jacket that couldn't possibly close. His ruddy beard reached nearly to his navel.

  "The last car?"

  "Yeah."

  "It looks to be."

  "That's the one. The Stitch family. Good thing the kids weren't in there. She had just parked and gotten them out."

  I heard two people died."

  "Not here. Beech Street." The man regarded him frankly, and Jimmy saw himself recognized as a stranger. "You came to see this?"

  "Not this. I'm looking for one of the rescuers. I thought I recognized him from the report."

  "What, one of the EMTs?"

  "No. A... stranger." The other man's eyes had gone glassy, and he squeezed his beard reflectively. "Did you know the people who died?"

  "I did. Not well."

  The SUV slammed down onto its chassis, the edge of the sinkhole having given way just as the back wheels of the vehicle breached.

  "Ouch," said the other man.

  Jimmy said, "Did you hear that story, about a stranger pulling somebody out of the wreckage?"

  "I did indeed." Now he patted his beard while watching the activity at the sinkhole. Two jumpsuited workmen peered into the deeps. "Several people were pulled out. But I know the woman you mean, the one they interviewed. She's a teacher."

  "Do you know where she lives?"

  The other nodded as if agreeing with a profound thought, then stepped past Jimmy and continued to the yellow tape, where he surveyed the scene. Jimmy waited for a beat, then joined him.

  The two men operating the winch noticed them. They both raised their hands and called. "Mr. Seton!"

  "Gentlemen!" he called back, not otherwise moving.

  "Ain't this somethin'!" one man shouted.

  "You can say that again!" Seton turned to Jimmy. "I taught them. Math."

  "You said you know—"

  "Back here," Seton said, turning about. "I just left her. You know what's odd about these sinkholes?"

  Jimmy gave the street another look. "The size?"

  "The unlikelihood. One is possible. Some kind of groundwater erosion or poor structure over the sewers or... I don't know. But five at once, or nearly at once? Not a'tall likely."

  "Do the holes lead somewhere?"

  They had paused at the diner door. One small table with two chairs sat on a dais in the window, but Jimmy couldn't see beyond that. "Lead somewhere? What do you mean?" He tugged on the door. "Cheryl Larsen's in here, trying to enjoy what's left of her summer." Jimmy remembered the book, back in the car.

  "I have to get something. Can you just keep her there a minute?"

  The other man's head dipped so his brows hooded his gaze. "You're not getting a camera, are you?"

  "No," Jimmy said. "No. A book. My car's right around the corner. I left a book. Right back," and he strode away, wanting to run but having kept a permanent recording inside his head of his father saying, "It always looks bad when a black man runs away." He gritted his teeth to think that he would likely never lose that recording.

  The book lay on the back seat, alongside the duffel, warm to the touch.

  Seton had remained by the door, arms folded. "That was quick," Seton said, and Jimmy gave him a smile meant to put the other man at ease.

  The place smelled of baked goods and air-conditioning. At one table, an older couple facing at right angles to each other munched on sandwiches. The woman behind the counter wiped the surface without applying evident pressure.

  Seton led Jimmy to a table where a single woman sat, her arm in a sling. A cap unsuccessfully contained the permed ball of her hair.

  Seton said, "Here's a man who's come to see you."

  "Ms. Larson?" Jimmy said.

  Keeping her good hand on the table, she raised its index finger. "Did I teach you? I'm terrible with names."

  "No, ma'am. You don't know me."

  "It's about the sinkhole," Seton said.

  "Actually," Jimmy said, holding the book toward her, "it's about this man."

  Cheryl Larsen's mouth opened as if tugged down by an invisible string. She met Jimmy's eyes and shut her mouth. Her good hand tapped the book.

  "That," she said, "is uncanny."

  9. In Plain Sight

  The prisoner slumped on the floor, perhaps napping. Jimmy tugged the lever on his chair, adjusting the back. Reflexively, he cleared his throat. He would not be speaking. If he succeeded, Methusaleh would speak; he would, of his own free will, answer their questions.

  Oblonski, the lieutenant colonel who had trained Jimmy and those whom Oblonski called "my happy few," made sure to differentiate their methods from the methods of their enemies and the methods of the past.

  "Our ways are not their ways," he had insisted. They would not engage in the farce of confession and reeducation by which the Chinese Communists had coerced the state's foes. Neither would they break people on the rack of sleep deprivation, confusion, threats, and physical abuse. No, this process slipped beneath a subject's problematic motives, established sympathy, and redirected the will based on an enlightened view of the world and the common good.

  That was the theory.

  And you had to know yourself, what you held true as well as what seized you with terror. You had to embrace your past—not only memories, but those forgotten events and people who had shaped you nonetheless, recollected in your muscles and your ethics, your way of smiling, walking. You were what came before. Every prior moment went into this one. What was this moment?

  Jimmy silenced himself and opened the pores of his sensations. Once you established the fullness of context, you could slice away at what you did not need. He shut his eyes. First to be eliminated from his awareness: the room in which he sat— chairs, table, machines—and Methusaleh's cell—bed, toilet. The lit space around the prisoner darkened, not as if the lights were dimming, but as if nearer walls were being set in place. The passageway. Everything inessential eradicated. To move along the passageway, to cross the brief yet impossible distance, Jimmy required key words, ideas, insights; whatever he knew about a subject advanced the two of them toward each other. Where they would meet in the middle was where Jimmy, who had built the space, could speak to the subject's deepest self.

  There sat an image of the prisoner, an image built not only of Jimmy's perceptions but, if he had done his work well, of the other person's own sense of self. In that way, the other was drawn forward, sharing space with the conception Jimmy had built. Jimmy could linger with that other, listen to the mutterings of another self. If the process worked, these stages moved more quickly with each iteration, and the other person, unconscious yet aware, could more readily slip into that virtual homunculus.

  Jimmy peered down a black corridor, the prisoner faintly visible at the other end. Jimmy maintained the distance, studying the figure, keeping it steady and coherent.

  He drifted forward along the passageway; he compelled the prisoner to move forward as well—all he wanted was to see some potential for movement on this initial attempt. He employed his keywords like charms. In control. You're always in control. No one tells you when to speak. Powerful. You can make people do what you wish. The strength of your arms and the strength of your intellect motivate people. You toss your enemies away. Hidden. In the tower room. In the Arctic ice. No one knows who you truly are.

  Jimmy went through the monologue again, as he'd rehearsed, summoning the old man forward, open to response.

  Nothing. The passageway smelled ancient, disused. He opened his eyes, and the details of the world returned, so sudden in their actuality.

  He was drenched, and he stank. He chugged down water.

  The image of the prisoner at the tunnel's end didn't leave him. He turned from the viewscreen and saw him still, uprigh
t and steady on the chair, hands at the chair's edge. Was the man not as relaxed as he appeared?

  Jimmy approached the viewscreen and saw what he hadn't seen before.

  Five of the BrightLine employees sat in the weapons room, heavy black uniform shirts and protective vests off, all wearing the same gray tank tops, breaking down weapons. "Mr. Quarles," Jimmy began.

  The other men gave Quarles a look; he licked his lips. "Just Quarles."

  "Quarles. Would you take a look at something with me?"

  "Need some other men, LT?" asked Covey, turning from a locker.

  "I just need Quarles." Quarles stood. "It's about the screen." Covey gave Quarles the nod.

  Jimmy had left in place the viewscreen's image: looking down from a ceiling corner, focused on the bed, skewed forty-five degrees from true.

  "I take it that's not what you wanted," Quarles said.

  "I took a stab."

  Quarles tapped the center of the screen several times, and the standard image appeared. The old man sat cross-legged before them.

  "What do you need?"

  "I need to magnify down where his feet are."

  "You draw a box," said Quarles. He put his finger to the screen and, a lime-green line following his finger's path, drew a rectangle enclosing the prisoner's feet. The box remained when he withdrew his hand; when he tapped the box, the image within expanded to fill the screen, black bars along the top and bottom. The image initially appeared hazy. "Give it a—" Quarles said, and the picture sharpened.

  "Do you see that?" Jimmy touched the screen and jerked his hand away, leaving a green smudge by the prisoner's left foot.

  Quarles moved his face closer. "I'm not—what are you seeing?"

  "What's this look like from the side?"

  Quarles restored the original image. "What side?"

  "His left."

  Open palm on the screen, Quarles pulled to his left, and the image rolled away to be replaced by a side angle. "Same spot?"

  "From the foot on back. Can we get lower?"

  "I think there's a camera down there."