Neuropath

by R. Scott Bakker

  He kicked off his shoes, then crawled in, jeans, shirt, and all. He huddled to conserve warmth, stared at the great bowl of the night sky. Things seemed clear enough, the black gaping between pinpoints of white, so much so it was hard to believe they were abandoning all the earth-based telescopes because of the way jet exhausts hazed the upper atmosphere. There seemed to be plenty of stars.

  He stared and breathed. But no matter how deep he peered into the cavernous light years, the sense of awe he was searching for eluded him. Instead, all the lunatic images from the previous week crowded through the turnstile of his mind's eye. Glimpses of Cynthia Powski blurred into images of the widowed Cream writhing about the porn minister's cock. Fingertips pinching nipples. Glass unzipping skin. On and on, no matter how hard he blinked.

  Abyss upon abyss. The psychological spread across the cosmological.

  He groaned aloud, rubbed his face furiously. What was his problem?

  The easy answer was that he was suffering from some kind of mild post-traumatic disorder. The brain actually possessed two ways of laying down long-term memories: a high-resolution, detail-intensive path processed through the cortex, and a low-resolution, emotion-intensive path processed through the amygdala. Traumatic events usually produced memories of the second variety: it was one of the brain's rapid-response mechanisms. The problem was that the system could be easily fooled, generating intense emotional reactions in harmless situations—which was why so many Iraq War veterans heard gunfire instead of firecrackers, car bombs instead of thunder. For the sake of reaction time, their brains simply weren't taking any chances.

  But then why was it Cynthia Powski who haunted him in the small moments of his day, and not the horror of Peter Halasz chewing a little girl to the core?

  Was it simply because she was a porn star?

  The idea, Thomas knew, wasn't as preposterous as it seemed. For heterosexual men, simply glancing at a beautiful woman lit up the reward systems of the brain. Neuromarketing firms had funded hundreds of so-called 'endogenous opoid' studies, trying to unravel the alchemy of images and the male erection—adding layer after layer of cultural reinforcement to what was at best a basic tendency. Then there was the unnerving discovery of neural mechanisms dedicated to assessing the sexual vulnerability of women. Or the notorious study that mapped the brains of men watching Jodie Foster's rape scene in The Accused, suggesting that they found it even more titillating than run-of-the-mill pornography. The now infamous Time magazine headline, IS EVERY MAN A RAPIST? still surfaced from time to time in the press.

  Was the image of a porn star slicing her way to bliss a kind of visual narcotic? Could that be it? Had it simply turned him on in some dark and primal way? Hatred and lust, after all, predated mammalian love by a few hundred million years.

  Thomas cursed, rubbed his eyes again. What a fucked up animal a human being was. Well and truly.

  The Thomas Bible animal in particular.

  Stars, he chided himself. You came out here to enjoy the fucking stars.

  They were beautiful, like motes in morning sunlight, forever falling in vast gravitational drafts.

  Watch the fuckers, then. Absorb the awe and beauty…

  Breathe deep.

  Absorb …

  He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard clicking at the patio door. He cursed himself when he realized he'd forgotten to let out Bart.

  Mia was right. He was more than jumpy. Jumpy-jumpy.

  'Why couldn't you remind me I'm an idiot before I warmed up?' he said, fighting his way free of his sleeping bag. In the gloom, Bartender was little more than an imbecilic, Cheshire grin. Thomas absently scratched the old boy's ears, then crawled back into his cotton and polyester cocoon.

  His heart hammered in his ears.

  Calm down. Everything's fine. You're safe.

  Safe.

  So much of the so-called 'modern malaise' could be chalked up to the differences between the modern and the stone-age environment the human brain had evolved to thrive in. What had been advantageous in highly interdependent communities of 200 or so souls had since become at best trivial, and at worst species-threatening liabilities. When energy-rich fatty foods were scarce, a hankering for them was adaptive. When work was mandatory for survival, slacking was recuperative. Most people lived in a kind of media-constructed, virtual stone age, indulging their ancient yens for sex, gossip, violence, simplicity and certainty, flattery and competition—those things humans in small, highly interdependent communities required in the great reproductive scrum called evolution. They lived in worlds that indulged and reflected their weaknesses, and that only incidentally captured the complexity and indifference of the real thing. Disney Worlds. And since ignorance was invisible (Neil used to always say that making ignorance invisible was God's idea of a one-liner), they thought they more or less saw it all.

  Small wonder, Thomas thought, we humans were so jumpy, so arrogant, so defensive. Small wonder the internet, which was supposed to blow the doors off of narrow, parochial views of the world, had simply turned into a supermarket of bigotries, a place where any hatred or hope could find bogus rationalization. For the human brain, it was like living in a schizophrenic world, a paradise of plenty where any second now, something really bad was going to happen.

  In a sense, that's all popular culture was, a modern, market-driven prosthetic for the paleolithic brain. How could such a culture not be seduced by the psychopath? By Neil.

  Lurking in every shadow, following housewives home from the grocery store, stealing schoolgirls through bedroom windows, pulling over for hitchhikers, scoping out prostitutes through tinted windows…

  This was a bad thing in a stone-age village of 200 people. A very dangerous thing.

  Making up the rules as they went along. Taking no shit no way no how. And of course, getting laid with a capital 'L'.

  In a Disney World of 9 billion, few things could be as cool.

  For Professor Skeat, psychopaths were nothing less than the horsemen of the apocalypse. Contemporary culture had digested the meaninglessness of natural events, the fact they were indifferent to all things human. A few stubborn fools still shook their fists at God, but most simply shrugged their shoulders. Most knew better, no matter how ardently they prayed. What made psychopaths so indigestible, Skeat claimed, what drove culture to slather them with layer after layer of cinematic and textual pearl, was that they were humans that were indifferent to all things human. They were natural disasters personified.

  They were walking gnosis, secret knowledge, an expression of the nihilistic truth of existence. And this, Skeat insisted, was why psychopaths were the only holy men, the only real avatars left to humankind.

  Thomas wondered what Professor Skeat would think of Neil now. Star pupil. Prodigy.

  A prophet of the oldest testament of them all.

  So many stars.

  They reminded Thomas of Neil's crazy seminar in Skeat's class. Rather than present anything of his own, Neil had dressed as the Man in Pink and sung Eric Idle's 'organ donation song' from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life. The whole class, including old Skeat, had roared with laughter. But Skeat wasn't about to let Neil off the hook for sheer moxy's sake. Afterward, he demanded that Neil explain the significance of the song.

  Neil nodded, smiled rakishly, and said: 'We live in a world where asking about the meaning of life has become a joke. It's no longer just the answer that eludes us. We've lost the question as well.'

  The prick received an A, of course.

  Staring at the stars, Thomas silently mouthed the lyrics—how could he forget them after enduring so many drunken rehearsals? And it seemed he could feel the entire earth float beneath him, wheeling beneath the light of a never-ending nuclear holocaust… A sun. A star.

  A granule of light drifting in an infinite void.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  August 25th, 7.23 a.m.

  'Dad! Daddy, wake up!'

  'Wah?'

  It was Ripley, sob
bing. She had blood on her palms.

  'Bart's dead, Dad! Somebody killed Bart!'

  Thomas pulled a hand across his face, struggled out of his sleeping bag, stumbled to his feet, at once alert and still sleeping. What was happening?

  Bart seemed impossibly black, slumped across the dew-grey lawn between the patio and the kids' pup-tent—so black that Thomas didn't realize the wetness matting his fur was blood until he looked at his finger tips. Brown eyes fogged and open. Tongue slack across the grass.

  Ripley stood sobbing, wrist pressed to wrist, hands clutching her cheeks. 'Bart!' she cried.

  A terror unlike any he had ever felt clutched Thomas about the throat.

  'Sweetie,' he said as calmly as he could manage, 'where's Frankie?'

  'I dunno.'

  His daughter's words struck him like a hammer. He stood, his stomach bubbling, his limbs as light as styrofoam. Just adrenalin, he thought.

  He walked over to the pup-tent, calling, 'Frankie?'

  He jerked open the flap. Nothing but tangled sleeping bags in orange gloom.

  He ran to the house, yanked open the patio doors, crying, 'Frankie!'

  The house had the falling-snow quiet of returning from a long trip.

  He ran upstairs, hoping that Frankie had crawled into his own bed. Nothing.

  'Frankie!' he shouted.

  He tried to laugh, to tell himself that Frankie sometimes liked to hide.

  'This isn't funny, son!'

  He dashed down the stairs through the main floor to the basement.

  'Frankie! Jesus Christ… This is not funny!'

  He searched the basement. Nothing.

  He exploded through the front door, desperately rooted through the bushes, shrieking, 'Frankie!'

  'Daddy!' he heard. His heart stopped.

  'Where are you son?' he croaked.

  'Daddy!' again—from the backyard!

  He dashed around the house, smiling through his tears even though he knew.

  Oh-you-little-bastard …

  He jumped the driveway gate, rounded the corner, and saw Ripley still standing next to Bart's inert form. Somehow, it seemed he had known it was her calling all along.

  'Daddy, I'm scared!' she bawled.

  Thomas knelt before her, tried to grasp her gently, but his hands shook too violently.

  'Sh-shush, sweetie…' he hissed.

  'Where's Frankie, Daddy? Where'd he go?'

  Thomas stood, pressed both palms against his brows.

  This-isn't-happening-this-isn't-happening…

  'FRANKIE!' he howled.

  He couldn't stand. He fell to his knees.

  He could hear Ripley crying, feel Mia shake his shoulders, though he had difficulty recognizing his face. Frankie… Neil had his son.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The following days were a fog of horror. Nothing was real.

  Sam, Thomas could tell, was torn between consoling him and doing everything possible to find Frankie. The Evidence Response Team descended on his home once again, doing what Sam called a fingertip search of his backyard, combing the grass and the pup-tent for hairs, fibers, flakes of skin, anything, forensic or otherwise, that might constitute a 'clue'. It made Thomas nauseous just thinking of the word… Clue. How had something so silly, a trite Hollywood conceit, become the very hook from which, not today, not tomorrow, but hope itself now hung?

  This couldn't be happening.

  But it was. Thomas watched it from the den window, pacing back and forth, grabbing his hair and thumping his head against the wall. He even prayed—something he had never done even as a child. Please God and all that bullshit. Undo what you've wrought, motherfucker. He watched the technicians stump through the grass, laughing at unheard jokes, rubbing their backs when they got sore. And all the while, Bart just laid there, like an oil-stain in the heart of a tacky carpet. They didn't remove his body until late afternoon. Thomas had cried then, wept for his dog. It hollowed him out, gouged him so deeply he thought he might stop breathing, were it not for Frankie, and the…

  Possibility.

  Word wasn't long in coming. No clues, aside from a superficial match from what seemed to be several of Neil's hairs. DNA confirmation would come tomorrow. The family dog, some genius determined, had been killed at close range by a gunshot to the head.

  Case closed. Time for dinner and a handjob.

  Sam and Gerard, meanwhile, had canvassed the surrounding neighborhood, searching for potential witnesses. No one saw anything. Of three 'strange' vehicles reported—a black Toyota, a white van, and an aging Ford Explorer—two of them, the van and the Explorer, checked out. The Toyota was too generic to be of much use.

  Sam was almost in tears when she came to his door late that evening. 'Sorry, professor,' she said. 'Tom…'

  The FBI immediately released Nora from custody, knowing that cooperation would no longer be a problem. From what Sam said, she was even more of a basket case than he was. But she cooperated with a vengeance. Whatever hold Neil had over her, it could not compare with her love of her son. She was baying for Neil's blood, Sam told him.

  Her tone hesitantly suggested he should be too.

  But nothing was real. His son was gone and nothing was real.

  Except Ripley.

  Ripley had difficulty understanding what was happening. She missed Frankie, Thomas imagined, but the idea that something truly horrific had happened was something she had to borrow continually from adults. Thomas was tormented by the knowledge that for her the trauma lied in his manifestations of grief and bewilderment. But for those first three days seeing her filled him with a sense of desperation unlike anything he had experienced. He couldn't look at her without either seeing Frankie or the monstrous shadow of Neil—without seeing his loss or his demon. Even though going to work was out of the question, he still sent her over to Mia's for a few hours during the day.

  She didn't complain.

  Nora, Sam told him, was too much a wreck to look after herself, let alone her daughter. She blamed herself, Thomas knew.

  And perhaps she should.

  Using the investigation as a pretext, Thomas found himself interrogating Sam on the details of Nora's statement. As Thomas suspected, Nora had started her affair with Neil before, not after, their marriage. Apparently it had been an impulsive, drunken thing, which they had immediately regretted and swore they would never do again because of their love for Thomas.

  Thomas wept at this point, and Sam stopped, promising to bring him a copy of the transcript—even though it could mean her job. The important thing was finding Frankie, she said.

  It was both easier and more difficult, for some reason, reading Nora's actual words. The intimacy of the transcribed discussion seemed at once shocking, and yet strangely appropriate to a conversation between strangers. What could strangers do with such small and catastrophic honesty?

  After a hiatus of years, Nora and Neil had resumed their relationship around the same time her marriage had started to seriously stumble. Nora chalked it up to coincidence, but Thomas knew better. Shared secrets fostered intimacy, while lies deadened it. The spouse being cheated on literally had no chance, outside inertia and the fear of financial ruin. He or she was bound to seem pathetic or judgmental or insensitive or what have you. People always justified their crimes.

  The affair was, if Nora's description could be believed, almost pathologically passionate. Neil, she said, became an addiction, and she'd assumed that he had felt the same for her. They met regularly, if infrequently, and though they were strangely reckless in their choice of sexual venues—parks, movie theatres, even a couple of restaurant rest rooms—they were exceedingly careful when it came to Thomas. Poor Tommy.

  When the interviewers asked Nora about her feelings for him during this time, Thomas felt his heart slow to what seemed a beat a minute.

  sINT 1: How would you describe them?

  Nora Bible: My feelings for Tommy? He's a good man. I loved him.

  sINT 2: But
if—

  Nora Bible: But if I loved him how could I… betray him? What do you want me to say? That he beat me? He didn't. That he continually psychoanalyzed me, attempting to undermine my self-esteem? No. Not unless we were fighting—but who plays fair in fights? Tommy just couldn't…

  sINT 2: Couldn't what, Ms Bible?

  Nora Bible: Couldn't fuck me the way Neil could. Hm? Was that what you wanted to hear?

  sINT 1: Are you saying your husband was impotent?

  Nora Bible: Tommy? No. Hell no… He just wasn't… He wasn't Neil.

  sINT 2: You know, Ms Bible, your answers seem, well…

  sINT 1: Imprecise.

  Nora Bible: Look. I married Tommy because he knew me, he really knew me. But… I think I started resenting him for it. For Tommy weaknesses are supposed to be accepted. We're not supposed to punish ourselves every time we screw up, just forgive… that, and try to cultivate better habits. But with Neil…

  sINT 2: Neil didn't know you?

  Nora Bible: Oh, Neil knew me.

  sINT 2: But then what are you trying to say?

  Nora Bible: I was always just a project for Tommy, I think…

  Tears had tapped onto the transcript page as he read this. Of course, Nora would try to find reasons for what she did; that much didn't surprise him. Owning up was expensive, reasons were cheap. The causes were quite clear: women, like men, were pre-programmed for infidelity. The murky alchemy of attraction, from flirt to tingle to climax, was simply a patsy for the biology of reproduction. Given the onerous child-rearing demands of homo sapiens, human females were often forced to make pair-bonding compromises. One guy to pay the bills, another guy to ring the bells.

  Nora was simply acting out a script inked in DNA, and authored by millions of years of heartbreak and adaptive advantages, unconsciously following an eon-old biological imperative. She had no reason for breaking his trust, his heart. No reason whatsoever.