Collective Mind

by Klyukin, Vasily

  Intending to calm the terrified woman, he got halfway up, and at that instant the policemen burst into the hall. A blow to the head knocked Isaac off his feet and he lost consciousness.

  Chapter six

  It took a while before Isaac tuned back. His head was buzzing and spinning and he felt slightly nauseous. They were dragging him somewhere, with his arms twisted hard behind his back. He was handcuffed. A van, a police station, iron bars slamming loudly. His consciousness fully recovered only in the cell that they had manhandled him into. “Never mind, they’ll figure things out” he thought wearily and lumped on the metal bed. Still feeling a bit sick, he closed his eyes and instantly blanked out.

  He dreamt of a war…. a big war. He didn’t know who was fighting whom or why, but he saw a nuclear explosion with entire cities ablaze. Like in the Hollywood movie of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. He saw lots of different cities without names and all he knew was that one of them was Paris. In the bright orange-yellow light, Isaac observed the immense, towering conflagration from a hill about thirty kilometers away, he couldn’t make anything out clearly, but he knew for certain that it was Paris. He was gazing, spellbound at the appalling spectacle, when suddenly some soldiers drove up, six or maybe eight of them. They didn’t see him.

  There was no fear, he calmly emptied his cartridge clip into the first two, grabbed his automatic and killed the others. He did it absolutely dispassionately, quickly and without a single hitch, feeling slightly frustrated that the bullets – they were bright blue, he could see them quite clearly – flew through the air with a strange slowness. Darkness. The picture had disappeared. Isaac was somewhere between sleep and waking, and he even started trying to analyze his dream, still without waking up.

  In real life I could never even come close to killing someone, but this isn’t the first time I’ve killed in a dream. What can you say about the life of a man in whose dreams cities burn, wars are fought and planes crash? Why do I kill in cold blood in my dreams? I often have dreams… I could be at a party in my first apartment with my old classmates, or flying in a balloon and a helicopter, or crashing in a plane, walking across ice or running away from the police or a psycho… What’s the meaning in all this? Someone who lives in Kenya probably doesn’t dream about Paris or ice, about things that he’s never seen. Maybe dreams are a parallel life, or what I dream is a warped version of my thoughts, memories, emotions, or something else? Or is it really a parallel life? We don’t know a damn thing about the man or the universe, we only have our guesses. A Neanderthal’s guesses about the Northern Lights

  Someone was prodding Isaac insistently in the side and he finally woke up. His head was filled with some kind of soft goo, weariness had eaten its way into his thoughts and settled there. He felt like saying: “Leave me alone, get off me, I’m tired and I want to sleep”, but his meddlesome neighbor won’t let up. The drowsiness in Isaac’s eyes gradually dispersed and he recognized who it was. The man had been there, in the agency; it was the hobo….fanatical terrorist.

  Isaac remembered him smashing the computer. It was such a vivid impression that even after the blow to his head he hadn’t forgotten a single detail of that picture. After he was certain he had woken Isaac up, the hobo looked intently into his eyes.

  “Hey, how are you doing?” he inquired.

  “Fine.”

  “That’s good, good. You sure?”

  “Fine,” Isaac repeated angrily.

  The stranger gave him another searching look.

  “What’s your name, lad?”

  “Fine,” hissed Isaac again and closed his eyes.

  “My name’s Mr. Elvis. I’m the Messiah, I fight the devil. We’ve got to…”

  Isaac heard the stranger speaking on and on. He opened and closed his eyes repeatedly, without attempting to understand what this madman was driveling about. His head hurt badly enough already.

  Suddenly he felt something on his palm, something hard and prickly. Tried to turn away, but Elvis jerked him rather sharply by the shoulder.

  “Hey you? Don’t you understand? I’ve been going all out for half an hour and you still don’t understand?”

  “What? Yes, I understand, I do,” Isaac gasped out. Anything to get this guy off his back.

  What does he want from me? Hell, I’m in here because of him as it is. Someone clubbed me over the head because of this asshole I wish those thickheads would get on with figuring this out. Maybe I need to go to hospital. – Isaac’s thoughts flowed sluggishly through his head. He closed his eyes. He felt the hobo shake him by the shoulder with crude determination.

  “Hell spawn! Heart of the devil! Cursed machine!”

  Isaac started feeling thirsty. Water. He was suddenly desperately thirsty! He couldn’t open his eyes. Sleepiness was still stronger than the thirst. However the need of water was indeed ferocious.

  “It will bring disaster, it’s the devil….”

  It was some kind of hideous dream! A waking nightmare! Isaac tried to stand up and call a policeman, but the attempt to get up gave him such a sharp pain in his head that he groaned out loud.

  “God has no need of soulless bodies, and then the end will come…” Elvis went on raving, as if nothing had happened. “Are you listening to me?”

  The hobo didn’t look like he was going to give up. He seemed blinded by his own insanity.

  “Orange energy is people’s souls, don’t you understand? He’s taking away our souls.”

  “Screwball talk. Roaring. Roaring in my head. Everything’s weird, and I do need water.”

  “Well then?” – Mr. Elvis was certain what he’d said was convincing, even though Isaac hadn’t grasped a single thing.

  A sharp pain in Isaac’s shoulder woke him up completely and he concentrated.

  “And only by tearing out the devil’s heart and destroying it, can I complete my mission. What you have in your hands is absolute evil, destroy it.”

  Only now did Isaac finally realize that everything happening was real and he was holding an object that looked like a piece of a microcircuit. Of course! It was from that computer, a piece of the board with some kind of circuits and chips on it.

  “Henri Cavalier, get out here.”

  “My name’s Mr. Elvis!” the crazy messiah growled, then he turned to Isaac and added in a whisper: “Remember what I told you. Destroy the heart of the devil. Promise me. And then the victory will come.”

  Isaac nodded and his thoughts immediately flew to Vicky. “Oh God! The surgery, the money for the surgery. Oh God! I’ll be too late. Where am I? Oh, God! Vicky!”

  It was a nightmare: the jail cell, the policemen running around, Elvis. Isaac hammered desperately on the bars several times with his hands, but no one took any notice of him. Only once a doctor came, examined Isaac’s head, shone a little torch into his eyes and said indifferently that it was no big deal, Isaac would live, and then he left, leaving some kind of prescription behind. A nightmare, only it wasn’t a dream.

  Chapter seven

  “Isaac Leroy!”

  Isaac opened his eyes and stared at the policeman who was shining a little torch in his face. Isaac took an instant dislike to him, firstly because the torch was shining in his eyes, and secondly, because shining a torch in someone’s eyes was quite abusive. Especially since he was innocent.

  “Out you come!”

  The attempt to stand up gave him a dull, aching pain. Isaac sat back down again. Something pricked his hand. The computer board! He stuck the hand holding the piece of board in his pocket. “What a jerk I am,” he thought. “What did I take it for? If they find it, I’ll never beat the rap”. The words of Mr. Elvis came to his mind.

  “Come on, move it, you little shit,” Isaac heard the same malicious voice say. “I’m not going to hang out here all night because of you.”

  The policeman walked into the cell and put handcuffs on Isaac. More and more of the details around him were assuming clear forms. They walked down a long corridor and t
urned into an office.

  “Patrice, take the handcuffs off him and bring him something to drink,” the officer sitting in the office told the policeman who had woken Isaac up so crudely.

  “Good evening,” Isaac heard the dry voice say, this time speaking to him.

  “Evening,” Isaac mumbled, kneading his hands, which had instantly turned numb, and putting them in his pockets.

  Feeling the piece of computer board in his hand and realizing how dangerous his position was, Isaac clutched it tightly and thrust it down deep into his pocket.

  The pocket was strangely empty. Although, why was that strange? They’d probably taken everything he had as a safety measure. Yes, exactly, his belt was missing too, now he understood why his trousers kept slipping down during the short walk. He wondered where Mr. Elvis had been hiding the board. They must have searched him. But that was a fanatic for you, he would give his life for the cause, so hiding a microcircuit was no big deal.

  “In fact, I’ve already got to the bottom of everything, but we need to run through a few formalities, so let’s get started quickly and then you can go home.”

  Isaac nodded again. He didn’t understand what these formalities were, he wanted to find out as soon as possible how Vicky was, and dump the dangerous object that was in his pocket.

  “So, first name?”

  “Isaac.”

  “Surname?”

  “Leroy.”

  “Age and date of birth.”

  “Twenty-seven, 28th of December.”

  “Parents’ names?”

  “Alexander Leroy and Anna Kramer.”

  Isaac kept on and on answering questions. It was ok, but he wanted to sit down. He kept shifting from one foot to the other.

  The officer looked up from the report.

  “I’m sorry, have a seat! I don’t usually stand on ceremony during an interrogation. A habit – pardon me, sit on the chair.”

  Altogether the questioning and drawing up the report took about twenty minutes. Isaac explained that he got up to help the woman; he didn’t know they were going to storm the agency.

  Captain Nero – the officer turned out to be a captain – explained to Isaac that he had been stunned when the office was stormed because he got up, and only two people were standing – the terrorist and Isaac. The security guard in the agency had switched on his walkie-talkie, so when they stormed the place the assault team knew that all the hostages were lying down. That was why they had taken Isaac for an accomplice.

  However, the testimony of the other victims, employees and especially of Pierre Canton had completely convinced Nero that Isaac wasn’t involved in the terrorist attack. Incidentally, Pierre had been the only one hurt and he was in hospital. Nero had checked that Isaac was there to download his energy, having first drawn up a provisional insurance contract. Nero had read it and he had discovered that Isaac’s only relative, Victoria Frank, was in the hospital, waiting for surgery, and the contract stipulated that the cost of the surgery should be paid out of the UNICOMA money, and thus his final doubts about Isaac had evaporated.

  “You can collect your things now.” Nero added calmly. “By the way, what’s this gismo?” he asked, holding out the V-Rain. “I can tell you quite frankly that I deleted it from the inventory of your things, otherwise we would have had to hold you for another week, until we’ve figured out that this little thing wasn’t connected with the attack in any way. I’m really sorry, we dealt with Cavalier first and sent him to Marseilles, and then a whole horde of people descended on us; our bosses, prosecutors, the deputy prefect, journalists. It took us a long time to get round to you. And then, your sister’s surname isn’t the same as yours. I didn’t know she was your stepsister. But I checked all the information on you today, so that you could get back home, even if it is late. Off you go, it’s already ten o’clock.”

  “It’s my invention. Harmless. It’s just to keep the rain off.”

  Isaac raked up his things, and the V-Rain squeaked plaintively. All this amiability from Nero made him feel uneasy

  “Isaac, I’m very sorry,” the captain suddenly added in a quiet, fatherly voice. “The news I have from the hospital isn’t too cheerful. Your sister has been in a coma since this afternoon.”

  The ground suddenly crumbled under Isaac’s feet. He started crying. His mouth still felt dry, but tears the size of large hailstones rolled down his cheeks. He couldn’t say a single word, small change scattered onto the floor and his hands, full of various little bits and pieces, shook so badly that he simply couldn’t find his pocket.

  It wasn’t fair! Bastards! Isaac loathed them all.

  “I spoke to the doctor, don’t despair, of course it’s bad, but her life isn’t in any danger. You’ll definitely find the money for the surgery. And you should also see a doctor yourself, our medic said you have a slight concussion.”

  No one was waiting for Isaac in the dark street, even the journalists who were usually sneaking around in cases like this had all gone home, or were finishing things off in the newspaper offices to make the morning edition. Isaac couldn’t have added anything new, and the opinion or recollections of yet another person who hadn’t been harmed didn’t interest anyone any longer. Time hadn’t stopped, time was inexorably racing on. For reasons of privacy, his name hadn’t been released, and no one he knew came to collect him. There was no one to come in any case. It wasn’t raining any more, but the air was dank. All taxi drivers had been asleep at home for a long time, it was quiet and the busy season was only just beginning on the Côte d’Azur.

  A voice shouted out to him from the street, “Get in, I’ll take you to the hospital or back home, you decide.” Isaac turned his head. In the rolled down window of a grey Peugeot he recognized the captain.

  Part two

  Chapter one

  It was only lunchtime and Isaac was struggling to keep his eyes open. His body was complaining after the strain of the previous day, the despair that had made him decide to sell his creativity. The explosion, the hit to the head, the police station, Vicky in a coma; his head was spinning after everything that had happened yesterday.

  He plodded into the bathroom. Looking at himself in the mirror, he opened his eyes wide and raised his eyebrows. Squeezing his eyes open and shut he thought he looked more like a shabby hobo Gazing out at him from the mirror was a thin young guy with dark hair and piercing grey-green eyes. The nose was a bit on the large side, so were the ears, and the cheeks were slightly hollow. You couldn’t really call him classically handsome, but the girls always saw something in him and they probably knew better. Even the small scar on his chin didn’t spoil his looks, instead it added a touch of the brutality that was lacking. Isaac made a slipshod attempt to tidy up his hair, but it still stuck out rebelliously. He glanced at the uneven covering of stubble on his face. “Unshaved as always, and I’m not going to shave,” he thought.

  “Women like stubble for some reason,” was the first clear thought that came to him. And at the same time they complain that it’s prickly.” He tried to imagine what it was like when you stood at the mirror first thing in the morning and a girl walked up to you and ran her hand over your unshaven cheek like in an advertisement. But that was on television, that sort of thing didn’t happen in real life. Hop into the bathroom, grab a quick wash and dash off to deal with business at hand. The few girls Isaac had dated before had never done that.

  To get your cheek stroked, you needed someone you loved. A girl who loved you, not just some casual hookup. There hadn’t been any genuine loving in Isaac’s life since his sister had been ill and he didn’t wonder where it had gone.

  No one needs a boyfriend with problems, especially one who’s almost a beggar. Everyone has enough headaches of their own; they can do without anyone else’s. After discovering Vicky was ill, Isaac didn’t have the time or the money or – more importantly, the desire to have a genuine affair.

  He had to make do with the girls – the drunk ones – who came his way
at the Stars’N’Bars. Hints were quite often made and he was given to understand or even told straight out that he was cute, that he had handsome features, that he was tall and well built. In fact he wasn’t all that tall, but that didn’t bother Isaac, it wasn’t a problem in his life. No one needed to explain to Isaac what the female tourists had in mind when they said that sort of thing to the first young guy they met. Take everything given, as they say, though he was always short of strength after a long shift.

  Isaac awoke from his thoughts beside his computer, with a cup of coffee in his hand. “Oh, coffee! When did I manage to make that? Some things get done on autopilot, as if you have your own barman sitting inside you,” Isaac chuckled to himself, but he wasn’t feeling cheerful. “Stop. Why go straight to the computer? That’s a habit.. I have to call the hospital and find out about Vicky.”

  “Grace Kelly Hospital, how can I help you?” the phone said in the familiar rapid patter.

  “My name is Isaac Leroy…” Isaac cleared his throat, his voice was hoarse. “I’m calling to find out about the condition of my sister, Victoria Frank, age twenty-two.”

  “One moment” He was put through to a different number, introduced himself again and was reconnected again. Finally he heard the duty nurse in the right department rummaging through her papers and the clatter of a keyboard and then a considerate voice chirped in his ear.

  “Monsieur Leroy,” Isaac could never get used to that ceremonial form of address, and he winced every time. “Monsieur Leroy, your sister has stabilized and the worst has passed. At the moment she is listed as serious but in stable condition.”

  “But I was told she’s in a coma! I want to speak to her doctor.”

  The stupid, pathetic hope aroused by the medical term “stable condition” had been a mistake. The doctor confirmed that Vicky was in a coma, but only yesterday her condition had been much worse. She could have died. It was all over now, the doctors were monitoring her progress and it would be clear when the surgery could be performed.