“Have you ever had an incident like this before? The seizure I mean, not the accident.” That might have been a joke, but Decker doubted it.
“No,” he replied, not quite truthfully.
“Who caused the accident?” Japtesh asked. So they were looking for someone to blame, then.
Decker shook his head.
“Nobody caused it,” he said. “It was an accident.”
Japtesh’s dark eyes gave no hint of what he was thinking.
“Surely someone was responsible?”
Decker held his gaze, and mulled over his response before he spoke.
“Well, there were issues with the sand there in the Sea of Sorrows.” The doctor frowned.
“What is the Sea of Sorrows?” he asked, and he looked at the screen on his digital notepad. “I see no mention of that.” He seemed to be flitting from one document to the next, and then he looked up again. “There was no water involved.”
Decker stifled a laugh.
“It’s just a nickname—I think it has something to do with the Bible,” he said. “We were in a sandy area, and the sand shifted—the equipment slipped, and I got caught.” He was damned if he was going to point a finger at anyone on his crew. Did a couple of them deserve it? Yes, but he still had to work with those people. If word got out that he’d ratted, no one would ever trust him again.
Japtesh stared at him as implacably as ever.
“Ah, yes, the core sampler,” the doctor said, and he studied his screen again. “I don’t believe you’re certified to operate one of those, are you? Why were you near the machine at all?”
Decker didn’t like the course the conversation was taking. He was used to dancing around with bureaucrats, but this guy was supposed to be his doctor.
“Well, there was a fight brewing, and as soon as I felt it, I stepped in to prevent it from becoming a full out fight.” The moment he said it, he knew he’d regret it. “There’s nothing wrong with being able to know what other people feel, but some people won’t understand it.”
Japtesh almost radiated excitement, though his round face showed nothing.
“Those men were Badejo and Bronson?”
“Yes. That’s all in the report.”
“But how did you know they were preparing to fight?” the doctor pressed. “What did you mean when you said you ‘felt’ it?”
“Well, how could I not?” Maybe he could still get out of this. “They were arguing, and Bronson was acting a lot more aggressive than usual.”
“Why do you say that? Do you know the man that well?”
Paranoia. It had to be. He was reading something the wrong way. Damned if the man didn’t seem excited by the questions he was asking. Decker shook his head to push the notion away.
“I could just tell… because he wound up swinging first.”
“Yes, but before that happened, what made you think he was more prone to violence than usual?”
“A gut feeling, I guess.”
Japtesh stared at him for a very long moment, and then nodded.
“I see—a gut feeling,” he echoed. Then he turned his attention back to the screen. “That appears to be the beginning of the seizures you’ve experienced—can you describe them in any detail?”
His stomach twisted at the thought.
“Um… No,” he replied. “I was too busy having them, I guess, to really focus on what was happening at the time.”
The doctor stared at him for a moment longer, and then made another note on his screen.
“Thank you for your time, Mister Decker.” He looked up and offered an insincere smile. “I think that’s all we’ll need.”
Decker left the doctor’s office feeling decidedly uncomfortable. That pervasive sensation—that someone was staring daggers in his direction—stubbornly refused to go away.
* * *
It was winter, yet the air outside stank of ozone, and worse. That was the way it had been in Chicago for as long as he could remember, though it seemed better than it had when he was a kid, even if it wasn’t by much. Constant newsfeeds were filled with the usual reports about pollution hovering at dangerous levels. He doubted it would ever change.
Every few years someone suggested more aggressively terraforming the Earth to remove even more of the damage. The problem was with the weather. On a planet with almost no atmosphere, or where a new atmosphere was being generated, terraforming engines would be set up across the globe to slowly, continuously mold the environment. At times this caused violent storm fronts that would devastate entire regions of the planet—regions that weren’t populated.
On Earth, such storms would cause unimaginably widespread death and destruction. So the efforts had to be handled with great care.
Subcommittees were formed to debate the pros and cons, but nothing ever happened. Bureaucracy at its finest, brothers and sisters. Given the state of the government, he doubted anything would ever be accomplished.
The city housed more than thirty million people, if you counted in the suburbs, and though there were a few parks, it was mostly an endless landscape of buildings and streets—glass, concrete, and asphalt. He couldn’t say the personality had been completely washed out of the place, but then again, he couldn’t say it was the same city where he’d grown up. Nevertheless, he stayed. He really wasn’t on the planet all that much, and at least here he could see his kids from time to time.
* * *
When Decker got back to his efficiency apartment, the notice was waiting for him. An audio message, impersonal and faceless, with a homogenized, vaguely feminine voice.
“We’re sorry to inform you that, pending a complete investigation into your actions on New Galveston, you have been suspended without pay,” it said without feeling. “Should you wish to file a grievance with your union representative, you will need to call the following number between nine am and three-thirty pm, Monday through Thursday…”
Fuck it, he thought, breaking the connection. He knew the routine. He would, indeed, file a protest—but he already knew it wouldn’t make a difference. This whole thing was spiraling out of control. He’d known that all along, really. He just hadn’t been willing to admit it. Walt wasn’t exactly a friend, but he’d always thought the man would have his back.
Decker sat there for a while, shades closed and the light dim, and then decided that he needed to move. So he headed for the door, made a beeline for the El, and took the train to New Cabrini.
His ex would be there, but that couldn’t be helped. She worked third shift, leaving her sister to watch the kids. Decker had visitation rights, and he intended to use them, Linda or no Linda.
The marriage had fallen apart a couple of years ago. It was a common occurrence when one spouse spent too much time off-world. Everyone said so, the statistics supported it, and he wasn’t about to argue.
He didn’t have to be an empath to know he was lying to himself.
When Linda had cheated on him, he had sensed it long before the facts had come to light. He didn’t know the details, but he had felt her guilt, and as soon as he’d confronted her, the accusations had started. The fights, the screams, the insistence that he was at fault—despite the fact that he’d managed to remain faithful throughout.
She’d claimed that he hadn’t been there to support her, appreciate her. He’d thought he could get her back if he tried. They would have had rough times, but he was certain they could have remained together. If only he’d wanted it enough.
Apparently he hadn’t wanted it enough.
* * *
When he climbed out of the tunnel, he stopped long enough to link into a video chamber so he could call and let Linda know he was coming. His daughter Bethany answered. Bethany, who looked two years older than she should have.
“Daddy!”
“Hey, honey. Wow, look at you.” The knots in his stomach loosened a bit when he looked into her eyes. “I thought I might come by and see you guys. Would you like that?”
“That
would be neat!” she replied, and despite the distance, he knew she meant it. Seven was too young to be a good liar. Too young even to have a reason to be a good liar, thankfully.
“Can I talk to your mom?” he asked.
“I’ll get her! Mo-ooom!” She knew enough not to haul the video link with her. The last time that had happened, Bethany had run into the bathroom where Linda was answering the call of nature. Both parents had been properly horrified, though there had been laughter after the fact.
Linda came to the screen a moment later with a carefully neutral expression plastered on her face. They were friendly these days, but too much had happened, and too many wounds weren’t completely healed.
“Hello, Alan,” she said. “It’s good to see you.” A part of her seemed to mean it. “I didn’t realize you were back already.”
“Yeah, it’s been a couple of weeks,” he replied. “I was wondering if I could come by and see the kids, maybe take them out for a meal or a movie.”
“They’d like that. It’s been so long, I think Josh is beginning to wonder what you look like.” A slight exaggeration, but he winced inwardly. Decker talked to his kids at least once a week—unless he was in a hypersleep chamber. Then again, he’d been away for quite a while. And since he’d returned, he’d purposely stayed out of touch while he was trying to get his affairs in order.
“I know, I know,” he responded. “That’s why I wanted to come by. I figured you could use a little downtime, and I want to make sure Josh and the girls remember me as more than a vid-call.”
He put on his best smile. It worked. Maybe he wasn’t the best looking guy on the planet, but Linda still liked his smile just fine.
She managed a weak grin in return.
“So come and get ’em,” she said. “I’ll make sure they’re ready.”
* * *
Bethany was seven. Ella was five. Josh was four. They were the best parts of his world. When the door opened and his kids ran to him, everything almost managed to make sense again. If he could have, he would have held them forever.
It never worked out that way, though. Never. There was always something that had to be taken care of. That was the way the universe worked. But for a little while—just long enough, while he took the kids to a late lunch and treated them to a movie with outlandish characters that were too bright and friendly for the real world—everything made sense again. Their emotions were like a breath of fresh air.
After he dropped them off, he stayed to catch up with Linda for a few minutes. The last time he’d visited, they’d wound up sharing her bed, although it hadn’t led to anything more. Now she was feeling guilty, though, and he knew that meant she was seeing someone new. He could even tell it was serious.
The possibility didn’t bother him, though. She was happy, the kids were happy, and as he headed back to his apartment, he felt rejuvenated. The weather was pleasant enough, so he walked the long blocks home, using the time to gather his wits.
As he walked, however, a sensation crept back into his mind—the sense of being observed. By the time he was home, he’d spent as much time looking over his shoulder as he had watching where he was going. Even after he’d locked the door, it left him unsettled. That wasn’t how he wanted to live his life, acting like a fugitive.
6
PARANOIA
The night brought him no rest. Instead there were more nightmares, and though he couldn’t be sure, he was almost certain when he woke up that he’d had another seizure. The bedclothes were on the floor and he was soaked through with sweat. His muscles felt sore and he could taste blood in his mouth. A quick look in the bathroom mirror showed that he’d bitten the hell out of his tongue. He could feel it, of course, but looking showed him the tooth marks.
After a shower Decker took advantage of the benefits that he was guaranteed with or without pay—thanks Walt. He made an appointment to see someone about the paranoia. For once he got lucky. The union-approved clinic had an opening for that very afternoon.
The receptionist was friendly and attractive, if ten years too young for him to do anything more than flirt. Doctor Jacoby had a face only a mother could love, but Decker had seen him before, and he was usually good at helping his patients sort things out without getting all touchy feely.
This time, however, Decker got a damned peculiar sense of déjà vu. His conversation with Jacoby seemed spookily similar to his session with Japtesh. But he shrugged it off as a symptom of the paranoia. And when he brought up the dreams, the doctor seemed particularly interested.
So he talked about the things that he could remember from his dreams. The nightmares that came so often, took him to dark places, and made him see dark things. People dying on his…
Claws?
“Where’s that coming from, doc?” he asked. “There’s a lot I can’t remember, but I always get the sense that the people are prey, and of more who are begging for an end to the pain.” It gave him the heebie-jeebies just to think about it. “Hell, I’ve never killed anyone in my life. And the people always look wrong, somehow. They’re human, I think, and yet…”
“How do they look wrong, Alan?” Jacoby asked, and his pen raced across the notepad as he took careful, detailed notes.
Decker struggled to find the right words.
“It’s like I’m seeing them, but not in any way that makes sense.” He shook his head. “Okay, it’s like this—have you ever looked at the stars using a topographic display?”
Jacoby’s face wrinkled into a smile for just a moment.
“I can’t say that I have.”
“I have,” he continued. “Just for the hell of it. You get the stars you’re familiar with, but all you see are the lines of the topography map. It’s weird, and it’s a terrible waste of technology, because what you see isn’t really what’s there.”
Damn. Shitty choice of words. He pressed on.
“Topography maps show you height and dimension as a series of concentric lines. So if you’re looking at a mountain, as an example, you get these circles that show you the shape of the thing from the base all the way to the top. The tighter together the circles are the smaller the object is and the closer it is. Well, when you do that with the stars it’s the same sort of thing. You see the stars, okay? But what you’re really seeing are lines that draw closer together when they converge on a star and spread farther apart when there’s nothing to see.”
“I think I get you.” The doctor was trying at least.
“Okay, so let’s say you see that way, and then that you smell sounds. I know that doesn’t make sense. That’s the point here. I was seeing people in ways that didn’t make sense. They looked completely wrong, completely and utterly… alien.”
Jacoby nodded.
“It’s like you were seeing beyond the spectrum you’re used to.”
“Exactly! I saw colors that I can’t describe, heard things that I shouldn’t have been able to hear, and could smell all sorts of things. Hell, everything I smelled had texture.”
“So how do you know they were humans?”
“In the dreams I didn’t,” Decker replied. “I understood it when I woke up, but when I was dreaming, they were just the things I needed to hunt.” He hoped that didn’t sound as bad to the doctor as it did to him.
Doctor Jacoby flinched, then recovered himself, and nodded slowly. He pressed for details, but nothing Decker said seemed to do the trick. When the session ended, Jacoby gave him some little green pills that would help him sleep, and insisted that they make an appointment for the following week, same time.
* * *
Although opening up gave him some relief, by the time Decker reached his apartment, the sense of impending doom was crawling over him yet again. His head ached, and exhaustion pressed at the backs of his eyes. He was exhausted, but he was also wired.
Despite having told himself that he had no intention of taking any sort of medications, he swallowed one of the little green pills. The effects were almost immediat
e.
* * *
He felt his essence rise from his body below, and looked down on his slumbering shape. His face was drawn, tense and his muscles were stiff. Though he was sleeping his hands were clenched into fists and his legs twitched as much as a dog dreaming of chasing rabbits.
He looked away from himself and studied the familiar apartment. Something was different. Something was wrong. It took him a moment to realize that the walls had become dimly translucent, like stiff banks of fog instead of drywall and reinforced concrete.
He might not have noticed anything more, if the shadows within those walls had stayed still. But they moved, shifted and crawled along the insides of the heating ducts and between the wooden supports and the drywall. He could only dimly see them, but he also felt them, their hunger and need.
More than hunger.
They were angry—propelled beyond conscious thought with the need to cause damage to the source of their hatred. But before they could do so, they would need to locate their prey.
Decker stared down at himself, and at the same time he was aware that the shadow-shapes were doing the same thing, that they had noticed him in his sleep-induced paralysis.
Decker tried to reach down to touch his body, but his hands and arms weren’t long enough. His feet would not quite bridge the distance. He tried to cry out a warning, but his throat was locked into silence.
Angry? No. Having found him, the shadow forms were rabid with fury, driven mad by the need to reach him, to cut into his body and rip him into fragments, body and soul. Their hatred was a silvery venom that frothed from their glistening teeth and burned whatever it touched. Their disgust radiated so intensely that it burned. They were silent, but they screamed loudly enough to blind the stars.
The shapes in the walls scrambled closer, pushing slowly through the thick stuff of the walls. Not translucent, not quite, but not what they should have been. No, these were walls of fibrous material. One hand, complete with savage claws, pushed through the heavy strands and revealed the stuff to be spider webs. The strands broke slowly, and as they did so, they allowed more of the black, glistening arm to strain down toward him.
Sea of Sorrows Page 4