Zanesville: A Novel

by Kris Saknussemm

  “The first probe!”

  “It vanished without a trace.”

  “So you sent out a search party to look for the posse?” Aretha fumed.

  “The second probe targeted the cerebellum.”

  “You were trying to take motor control!”

  “Of a potentially hostile invader! Probe Two was destroyed. It was worse than an interferon attack. Heinously effective.”

  “Surely that constitutes self-defense of the most basic kind?” Aretha croaked. “You’d better not tell me any more such actions were taken!”

  “What did you expect?” foamed the Major. “He presented as a fortress. He’s even locked out. We responded as a military investigative unit!”

  “Listen!” Aretha demanded, glaring at the screen. “You give me the full breakdown on that third probe or you’ll be banished from the Auditorium. You and your wire-splicer friends—you’re worse than anything Vitessa has to throw at us.”

  The second the words were spoken, a cold fear gripped the drag queen. The Major’s demeanor, the radical and aggressive plan undertaken without authority—there had been near security breaches in the past, but nothing like this. This struck at the very heart of their technology. Only the Mirror Field, the hazing system that kept Fort Thoreau invisible to the outside world, was more sophisticated. It was said that Parousia Head herself had set it up, after she’d stolen the equations from the Vitessa R&D division that she’d headed. Demiurgent, PrimalWhisper, Itchy Logic—the names and hints of her exploits had entered the realms of legend at the same time that the technical achievements she was involved with had turned mythology into reality. The Mirror Field proved this minute-to-minute. Now, if they’d been infiltrated, what hope did the Satyagrahi have?

  “Tell me about the third probe.”

  The Major’s face seemed to contort the very monitor.

  “It’s a stealth combat unit, targeting the hypothalamus,” the construct admitted finally. “Its mission is to exploit key drives like sex—then to work though the limbic system to take control of fear and anger. It disappeared without any confirmation signal but it’s more robust than the other two.”

  “What’s the life span? How does it disband?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “Do you mean to tell me it’s—”

  “Ultimately cancerous.”

  “Cancerous,” Aretha replied in a slow stinging whisper. “Right. One last thing. If his mind’s encrypted and he’s as powerful as you fear—how could you get any info?”

  “There was only one way,” the Major answered.

  “What did you give him?” Aretha hissed.

  “Tiresias.”

  “You madmen!”

  “He’s dangerous!” the Major replied. “His more or less immunity to the Tiresias proves that!”

  “You should know, if anyone does, Tiresias can have major time delays in its impact. Goddamn you!” Aretha cried, losing control.

  The Major looked as if he was going to say something, but Aretha shut down the program and hotlined Finderz. “Quarantine Dr. Zumwohl immediately—there’s been contamination. And don’t tell anyone outside MedTeam and CyberIT.”

  “But the Zumwohl recommendations impact on every psych consult we have,” Finderz whined.

  “Damage-control your ass off!” Aretha replied and flung his aqua wig at the wall of his tent.

  The arrival of this prodigy threatened all that they’d worked for—particularly after the ominous pathology that Dr. Zumwohl had just demonstrated. Now the strange pilgrim was on the verge of a psychic crisis. Tiresias was one of the most interesting and dangerous drugs ever synthesized. For a very few people, secure and open in mind and spirit, Tiresias acted as a lens, focusing brainwave energy to laser strength. But for those who suffered from depression or psychosis, Tiresias could have catastrophic consequences. For someone like Clearfather—and it was hard for Aretha at that moment to think of anyone like Clearfather—the reaction could be horrific. With the heightening power of Tiresias, his mind might be powerful enough to reverse the polarity of the Mirror Field. He could be a weapon of fearsome psychological and physical force.

  We can’t let all our work be destroyed, even for humane reasons, Aretha thought. But that would mean sending Clearfather off. Did they have that right? And where would they send him? Where could they send him? The drag queen wished Parousia Head were there. Only two nights before he’d heard the younger people arguing that she didn’t really exist. If she’d ever existed at all, they said, she must be dead or in prison now. Just when they needed her most. He put on Miles Davis’s Someday My Prince Will Come and sipped some cocoa. Then he hotlined Finderz.

  “I’m damage-controlling!” Keeperz insisted.

  “Keep doing that,” Aretha directed, “but check with MedTeam about the most reliable antidote to a Tiresias mindstorm.”

  “Oh, sure!” the flustered datavar grumped. “Anything else?”

  “Yes, I want all the Strategists at IQ-HQ in fifteen minutes. We’ve got an armed, unguided missile stuck in the launch tube!”

  Aretha disconned and put on his fluorescent pink wig. He found Clearfather in a hammock in the Post Anesthesia Recovery wing of Fort Thoreau’s surgical facility.

  “How do you feel? Aretha asked.

  “Tired,” Clearfather answered. “But I’m remembering some things.”

  “Such as?”

  “A man in a radio station. And Uncle Waldo. He worked on a hundred jigsaw puzzles at the same time—and Aunt Vivian—she liked crossword puzzles. But I don’t remember their faces.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A boy . . . in a bathroom . . . with his pants down.”

  The image filled him with a sense of horror and disgust.

  “You’re worried about the results of your tests—” Aretha said.

  “You’re worried about them,” Clearfather corrected. “You’re afraid of them. And me. You’re going to send me away.”

  “There are a lot of issues involved,” Aretha hedged. “This is a resistance movement. We’ve been very trusting.”

  “Who are you resisting?” Clearfather asked, swinging the hammock.

  “The Vitessa Cultporation for a start.”

  “So why do I have to leave? There are a lot of people here who are damaged or in need,” Clearfather replied.

  “Sometimes we have to make hard decisions. But I’m reluctant to make this decision on my own. So we’re going to seek advice.”

  “Aren’t you in charge?” Clearfather asked.

  “I wouldn’t put it so hierarchically,” Aretha replied.

  “Who is?”

  “Parousia Head. The most wanted person in the world. A master hacker and alchemist of R and D.”

  “Am I going to meet her?” Clearfather asked.

  “I’ve never met her,” Aretha answered.

  “Then how do you know she exists?”

  “If she didn’t exist, the authorities wouldn’t be so concerned about her.”

  “That’s an interesting argument. If you fear something enough, it must be real.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it like that.” Aretha smiled in spite of himself. “Come on. We’re going to consult the III Chings. Are you all right to walk?”

  “I’d better be—if I’m leaving soon,” Clearfather replied.

  Aretha winced and led him outside to a cement bunker. They passed a tent in which a group of catatonics were being rolled around by people in jumpsuits.

  “Deconditioning. For those who suffer from overexposure—to get them back into their bodies and interactions with other people,” Aretha told him. “Tinkerbell started there. She’d scored a Voyancy connection when she was tricking and disappeared into her own head. She has media flashbacks now—but who doesn’t?”

  “Maybe that’s my problem,” Clearfather said.

  If only, Aretha thought as they went down inside the bunker.

  “These are the III Chings,” he announced, poin
ting to a diaphanous enclosure in the center of the basement. Inside the silky veiling, lying side by side in hospital beds, Clearfather saw three Chinese men. Each was attached to an intravenous drip and a bioscan monitor, but they were all connected to each other via dermatrodes that, in the hybrid lighting, seemed to cover them like a web.

  “Who are they?” he asked.

  “Identical lab triplets. In one of the strikes during the Holy War, the clinic where they were being studied was infiltrated with a nerve agent. Parousia Head rescued them a few years back, so the story goes. They’ve been in a coma almost their whole lives—a single shared reality.”

  “They don’t look like they’ve ever gotten out of bed!”

  “They haven’t. All they do is dream. But we consult them on all important decisions.”

  “You ask three little men who are basically the same man, who’ve been asleep for years, for advice?”

  Aretha ignored the question and asked aloud in a precise voice, “Should we allow Clearfather to remain with us?”

  A moment later the silence was broken by a rat-a-tat-tat, and out of a printer popped a slip of paper. Aretha plucked it from the perforator and handed it to Clearfather.

  “The price the dragonfly pays for its mobility is that it cannot fold its wings. What sort of answer is that? You might as well flip a coin. Let’s try another one. Will I get my memory back?”

  “No,” Aretha said. “One question.” But before he could lead Clearfather away, the printer replied.

  “All right,” Aretha agreed—and was just about to read it when Natassia rushed down the steps.

  “I’ve got a line on what you heard when Clearfather spoke before,” she said. “You know Old Fernley? Used to be a philosophy professor at NYU. He said those were the last words of Plotinus, the most important of the Neoplatonists.”

  “Thanks, Nasty.” Aretha waved, slipping the second message in his pocket.

  Tolstoy and Flip Flop took Clearfather to Recreation, which was housed in the IRT car. Tinkerbell and Ripcord stood on guard out of sight.

  “All right.” Aretha clapped, stepping into the rigifoam wigwam that served as Situation Room. “Clearfather, as you probably know, is not some schmuck off the street. One scenario is that he’s a high-powered AI embedded in a flesh-and-blood matrix based on a cult leader murdered by the Feds thirty years ago. During his psych exam with Dr. Zumwohl, he was given a unit of Tiresias. He was also injected with three mind probes. One was destroyed on insertion; the other two haven’t been heard from. This unauthorized behavior raises serious questions about the integrity of Dr. Z. Whether the Auditorium can be examined and repaired is a question for later. The point is, our security may have been breached. We have to adopt lockdown procedures across all operations. Second, we have to decide what to do with Clearfather. We may be at risk from external forces for harboring him—but even if we aren’t, he’s a psychic time bomb that’s ticking as we speak. My view is that despite any desire on our parts to care for him, we aren’t capable of managing the risk. I’ve consulted the III Chings and their advice supports this.”

  “What did they say?” inquired Dr. Quail, former head of Neurology at Bellevue.

  “‘The price the dragonfly pays for its mobility is that it cannot fold its wings.’”

  “That’s pretty conclusive,” Broadband agreed.

  “But this is too significant a decision for us all not to have our say, so I want to go around the room, starting with you, Heimdall.”

  Heimdall went to pull on an earlobe and then remembered he didn’t have one. “I’d like to see him stay. If it could be harnessed—imagine the juju!”

  Aretha nodded to Broadband, whose stalks of hair vibrated like antennae. “We can’t handle the learning curve. Too dangerous.”

  “I hate to agree,” Finderz said, shaking his great head. “But we’ve got a responsibility to what’s gone before.”

  “All strangers come from Zeus,” Natassia flared. “Besides, AIs don’t get hard-ons! One way or another he was brought to us.”

  Lila Crashcart spoke next, her voice quivering. “The psychic energy reading for the compound has more than doubled in the last two hours. In another two hours the Field will start to feel the effects—and in two more hours—who knows?”

  Dr. Quail somberly completed the circle. “We can’t predict how the Tiresias will affect him. He may have a mindstorm, he may not. The only treatment now is to administer a nepenthe-related drug. We’ve recently acquired an Efram-Zev product called Oblivion.6. It will buy the maximum amount of time—it may even counteract the Tiresias entirely. We can be confident that we’re not sending into the world anything more dangerous than what we took in.”

  “Is Clearfather at risk?” Aretha asked.

  “He may never regain his memory. He may lose critical functionality.”

  “So he’ll end up a toast head? Shit, we’re real heroes!” Natassia coughed.

  “Chill, Nasty,” Aretha commanded. “No one feels good about this.”

  “We certainly don’t,” said Dr. Quail, speaking for the MedTeam. “But I believe that Oblivion.6 will decrease the threat with the minimum harm. There’s a very strong chance that he will be no more amnesiac than he is now.”

  “Why can’t we dope him up and see him through the crisis as we’ve done with hundreds of others?” Natassia complained.

  “Your objection is noted,” Aretha said sourly. “Dr. Quail, you and Lila get on the countertreatment now. Clearfather will leave tonight. Where do we send him?”

  Finderz cleared his throat. “The logical destination is Pittsburgh.”

  “Pittsburgh!” Heimdall blurted. “How inhumane is that!”

  “He has history in Pittsburgh,” explained the dwarf. “Or his body does. And he may very well have a current connection. Julian Dingler, a Vitessa R and D guy there, may know quite a bit about all this. I say we should send him to Dingler.”

  “Jesus!” Natassia yelped. “We’re going to FedEx him to Vitessa!”

  “I somehow doubt that Dingler’s role in this is Vitessa-approved,” Finderz replied. “He might even be secretly on our side, or at least working for some other resistance cell. In any case we need to flush him out. To me this has the signs of a Minotaur project—some secret weapons/Overman op that’s gone Bush. I have a feeling Wynn Fencer doesn’t even know about it. Either way, we’re in a zugzwang position.”

  “What’s that?” Aretha asked.

  “A chess term. It means being forced to make a move even though it’s to one’s disadvantage. If we keep him on, we put everything at risk. If we send him away, we may lose a great asset. It’s a lose–lose situation, but the latter option’s the safer.”

  “What if Vitessa doesn’t have anything to do with him?” Broadband asked.

  “If the truth of Clearfather’s story lies outside Vitessa’s involvement and he withstands the Tiresias, then Pittsburgh is the best place for him to start trying to piece the puzzle together,” Finderz answered.

  “Providing his brain isn’t melted rubber,” Natassia scoffed.

  “What about Texas?” Aretha wondered. “That’s another reference point.”

  “A hamlet called Dustdevil. That’s where the original body was killed,” Finderz informed the group. “It seems a bad trip to send him back there.”

  “Yeah, but Pittsburgh wasn’t any picnic for him, either,” Aretha noted.

  “No,” Finderz agreed. “But it was where the original body life began—and it’s also the origin of the most recent external interest. I think the combination of those two makes it the most compelling choice.”

  “What other reference points do we have?” Natassia asked.

  “In his earlier incarnation he was born and abused in Pittsburgh—institutionalized throughout his teen years nearby. He became a porn star in what was, before Bigfoot, the City of Angels—and then was hospitalized in old Las Vegas, where his first wife died of an OD. He later transformed himself into a cu
lt leader in Texas, where many commune members including himself were eventually massacred by the ATF and Homeland Security.”

  “What a life!” the dark woman lamented. “I say if you’re going to send him to Pittsburgh, let him know about those other places. Give him the whole story—tell him everything we know. We owe him that.”

  “Let’s not forget that we don’t know any of this for certain,” Aretha countered. “We suspect. Second, we can’t say what he’ll remember when he comes down off the drugs. But there is a larger issue. By giving him the synopsis of his past life, we may be dooming him in part to repeat it.”

  “All right, what about this,” Broadband interjected. “What if we alter his appearance and send him along via Greyhound? There won’t be anywhere near as much scrutiny as at the airports. If we’ve got a Jiminee Kricket on him we’ll be able to track him and see what happens. We’ve got a bunch of American Safari passes. All I have to do is hack in and activate one in his name. On the back of every pass is a map of the United States. We mark on it those places you’ve mentioned and leave it up to him and to chance what he makes of it.”

  “How cowardly is that!” Natassia blurted.

  “No,” Aretha argued. “There’s sense there.”

  “What about LA?” Heimdall said. “Can’t send him there anymore.”

  “LosVegas will have to do. So, it’s settled. Anyone disagree?” Aretha called, and only Natassia did. “All right,” said the drag queen. “Broadband, round up Go-Go and Hermes. We’ll need to organize clothes, food, money, the bus pass—and a haircut. Finderz, we’ll need instructions about Dingler. And don’t forget that Clearfather may not remember any of this when he gets to Pittsburgh.”

  Aretha felt in the pocket of his robe and found the second of the III Ching’s prophecies. A cockroach can live without its head for nine days.

  “What’s that?” Finderz asked.

  “Nothing,” Aretha snapped. “I’ll get Tink and Ripcord ready to ride as backup.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Good to Go

  The Strategists and team leaders worked with precision as Clearfather struggled in the throes of the conflicting drugs—Tiresias stimulating electrical storms throughout his brain, countermanded by the obscuring mist of Oblivion.6. During the power surges a multiplicity of images flared. He saw a bathroom lit by candles—then a terrible light that made him gag—women holding hands around a needle of stone and a boy crying in a mirror—shattered by bullets—one of the shards stabbing him in the back. Then he was in a chair and someone was cutting his hair, dirty blond silk falling in his lap in the mercury vapor half-light.