The Void Protocol

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Thank you, Ellis,” Montero said.

  Laura decided it wouldn’t hurt to echo him. “Yes, thank you. Very impressive.”

  He bowed. “I’m here all week.”

  That young man had just moved an object with his mind—just by thinking about it. How could brain waves—weak electrical impulses generated by neuronal activity—impact a physical object? She didn’t care what kind of waves, gamma, or zeta or whatever, how could they do that?

  “I don’t know what to say,” she told Montero. “You see this stuff in movies, but …”

  “I know.” Montero’s eyes sparkled. “Isn’t it wonderful?”

  She sensed him imagining the papers he was going to write.

  “Are you going to be able to publish?”

  He nodded. “Eventually. We’re just gathering data for now. But this is going to blow the doors off, well, everything. Not just the biosciences, but physics and chemistry as well.”

  “I can see that.”

  Great vistas were opening before her.

  He took her arm and led her toward one of the curtained-off areas. “But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

  She motioned for Rick to follow and he quickly caught up.

  “Where’re we going?” he said.

  Montero said, “To visit a fellow who’s the complete opposite of Ellis.”

  From behind, Stahlman called to them. “Marie and I will be in the office. Stop back when you’re done.”

  Leo

  Montero pulled aside the curtain and Laura gasped.

  Beside her, Rick said, “Hey, that’s the guy I saw last spring!”

  A slim Hispanic man in his early twenties sat—so to speak—in a cross-legged position as he hovered above a brown leather hassock. He too wore ambulatory EEG headgear and was doing something with a yardstick behind his back but Laura wasn’t sure exactly what.

  “Leo?” Montero said. “I’d like you to meet—”

  “Up to twenty-two inches!” he said, grinning.

  “Great,” Montero said, moving ahead of them.

  He introduced him as Leonardo Flores. He took the yardstick from Leo and swung it back and forth below the young man’s suspended butt—to show nothing was holding him up, she supposed.

  “As you can see, Leo levitates.”

  Yes, she could see. Very clearly.

  Leo pointed to the EEG display on the television screen. “This technique seems to be working.”

  Laura noticed the distinct pattern of zeta waves among the others.

  “I’m experimenting with feedback training,” Montero said. “Leo doesn’t simply float. He has to will himself to float—i.e., create zeta waves to …” Montero frowned. “Did I just say ‘i.e.’?”

  “You did indeed,” Laura said.

  “Sorry. Rick, if I do that again, please shoot me.”

  Rick deadpanned, “With pleasure.”

  “Not fatally, of course.”

  “Of course. What about ‘e.g.’?”

  “That would deserve two wounds.”

  “Got it.”

  Laura looked between the two of them. “Have you two known each other long?”

  “This is maybe the third time we’ve met,” Rick said. “But multiple near-death-by-auto experiences with Doctor Earnhardt Junior here tend to accelerate the bonding process.”

  “I drive just fine,” Montero said. “Anyway, I set up the EEG display so that Leo can watch his zeta waves while he levitates. The idea is to increase their amplitude. He could levitate only sixteen inches tops when he arrived. Now he’s up to—”

  Leo grinned. “Twenty-two!”

  That’s it? Laura thought. Just twenty-two inches?

  Wait. What am I thinking? Even an inch is amazing.

  “So maybe that means it’s a learnable skill?” Rick said.

  Montero nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly what I’m hoping.” He patted Leo on the back. “Keep working on it.”

  “Can I ask you something, Leo?” Rick said. “This is an incredible talent, gift, whatever. And I do mean ‘incredible’ because I’m seeing it and still not believing it. Why aren’t you world-famous?”

  “I don’t want to be,” Leo said. “I want to keep this to myself.”

  “You mean, nobody knows about this?”

  “My parents do. My mother caught me one day in high school when she came home from work early.”

  Rick grinned. “Most teenage boys get caught doing something else.”

  “This is almost as much fun!” Leo said through a laugh. “She caught me a couple of times and wanted me to do it for our neighbors, but I never would. She’d call them in but I’d pretend I didn’t know what she was talking about. You know, like that singing-dancing frog in the cartoon?”

  “One Froggy Evening, sure.”

  Leo’s eyes widened. “You know the title?”

  “It’s sort of his thing,” Laura said. She looked at Montero. “What next?”

  “We have only one other nadaný here this morning, but Ruth is truly amazing. She teleports.”

  Laura stopped in midstride. “You’re serious?”

  “Very. But she’s … difficult.”

  Rick said, “Stahlman mentioned her last night. Said she hates her gift and doesn’t want to use it.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say she ‘hates’ it, exactly, but she’s less than enthusiastic about using it.” He lowered his voice. “Add to that her noncompliant personality and her general downer mood—”

  “Downer?”

  “Sort of makes Sylvia Plath look like Miley Cyrus.”

  “Okaaaaay.”

  “One thing all the nadaný have in common is a deep inhibition about going public with their gift. They want to keep it to themselves.”

  “Leo doesn’t look too shy,” Rick said.

  “Here they let loose. They’re among others with gifts, so they relax. Except Ruthie.”

  “Doesn’t she like the way it feels?” Laura said.

  “It’s not that. She says there’s no pain, no vertigo, not even a sense of movement.”

  “But she can really do it? Disappear here and appear there?”

  “Only if ‘there’ is a place she’s been before.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “She can only teleport herself.”

  “So?”

  “All clothing and jewelry she’s wearing gets left behind. Which means she arrives nude as a jaybird. And since she’s only nineteen, with body issues, and more than a little shy … well, you get the picture.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Right. Oh, my.”

  Ruth

  Montero stopped outside a curtained area. “Ruthie?” he called. “Coming in with company.”

  “Reeeally?”

  Laura could almost hear an eye roll.

  Montero parted the curtain to reveal two young women, one a chunky African American, one a slim Hispanic, both in gray sweat suits. The latter was seated, eating pink cotton candy—which Laura had never liked because it looked like attic insulation on a stick—while the former stood behind her, braiding her hair into two long pigtails.

  “Iggy,” Montero said to the Hispanic girl. “I wasn’t expecting you here.”

  “Just hanging out. I spent the night.” Slim and kind of pretty, she’d bleached her hair to a bright orange.

  He introduced the braider as Ruth Jones and the braidee as Igdalia Ortiz, whom everyone called Iggy.

  “I’ve brought Doctor Fanning so you can show her your gift.”

  “Ain’t in the mood.”

  “One of those days?” Laura said, trying to sound understanding. “I get them too. More than usual lately.”

  Now why had she said that, true though it might be?

  Ruth looked at Laura. “Where you get those eyes?”

  Laura was used to the question. Her pale blue eyes didn’t go with her dark skin and black hair. They seemed to pop right out of her face.

  “My dad helpe
d.”

  “But you’re like, what—Mexican?”

  “Mayan. Well, half.”

  Ruth’s dark eyes widened. “You mean like those people with the calendar that was supposed to end the world?”

  “We did the Long Count calendar, yes.” A nice, noncommittal response. She wasn’t going to get into that end-of-the-world nonsense. “We were there before it was Mexico.”

  “And you a doctor too?” she said, as if the two were mutually exclusive.

  Laura nodded. “For some time now.”

  “What kind? You a real doctor, like an M.D., or a phud like him?” She jerked her head toward Montero.

  Laura said, “I’m a medical examiner.” Wrong! She hadn’t meant to say that, it just slipped out.

  Ruth made a face. “You mean you cut up dead people? You think I’m gonna die or something?”

  Everybody’s going to die sooner or later sprang to her lips but she bit it back.

  “No-no-no. I’m quitting that and I’m going to be studying the human brain.”

  “Yeah? You think you can tell me why my brain does crazy stuff? Because he can’t.” Another head jerk.

  Apparently she had issues with Dr. Montero.

  “Show me this crazy stuff,” Laura said. “Please?”

  “Told you already. Ain’t in the mood.”

  Laura tried another tack. “Okay. Fair enough. How about you tell me when you discovered your gift? Can you do that?”

  “Why you wanna know?”

  “Well, if I can figure out how you do it, maybe I can learn how to do it myself. I’d love to be able to leave one place and instantly wind up in another.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” she said, shaking her head. “Not when you always wind up in your birthday suit.”

  Iggy apparently thought this was funny. She laughed and slapped Ruth on the leg.

  Laura smiled. “Yeah, I can see how that would be a drawback. But when did you first do it?”

  “About three years ago. I was a soph and this senior guy asked me if I wanted to go see the new Star Wars and I said sure.” She plucked at her sweat suit. “I wasn’t a tub of lard back then. I was hot, know what I mean? So anyway, after the movie we stop at this party at his friend’s house and they all drinking and smoking and suddenly he and his friend pull me into this bedroom and they’re both all over me and I can’t get away and they start pulling off my clothes and I scream and nobody hears me and I’m looking for some way to get outta there when alla sudden I’m back in my bedroom. I ain’t got a stitch of clothes on, but I’m safe in my bedroom.”

  Stress trigger, Laura thought.

  “So after that, you found out you could do it whenever you wanted?”

  “Yeah. I checked it out from the girls’ locker room at school and the dressing room at the Y pool. I had to pick places where a pile of clothes wasn’t gonna freak nobody out.”

  “Clever girl,” Laura said, meaning it. “And I’m guessing you always headed back to your bedroom?”

  Her eyes widened. “I wasn’t gonna show up nowheres else buck naked!”

  Iggy laughed again and Laura joined her.

  “Won’t you show me? Just once?”

  Ruth rolled her eyes. “Oh, okay. Just once.”

  “Ooh, yes!” Iggy said, bouncing up and down and clapping her hands like a little kid. “But put on the makeup!”

  “No.”

  “Y’gotta put on the makeup! I love when you have makeup!”

  What was this all about?

  Another eye roll. “A’ight.”

  Iggy pulled some blush from a bag on the floor and brushed a thick coat onto Ruth’s cheeks and forehead. It looked hideous.

  Weirder and weirder.

  “Where are you going?” Montero said.

  “My place.”

  “Ruth lives in one of the upstairs apartments,” Montero explained.

  Ruth looked at Laura. “Ready?”

  Iggy was bouncing and clapping again. “Oh, this is so cool!”

  And then with a shoop of air rushing into a vacuum, Ruth was gone, leaving a mist of blush swirling in the air where her face had been, as her empty sweat suit, bra, and panties dropped onto her equally empty sneakers.

  “Holy crap!” Rick said.

  Laura gaped at the pile of clothing. My sentiments exactly.

  “Isn’t that cool?” Iggy was grinning and pointing to the settling mist of blush. “Look at the makeup! I love how she leaves the makeup!”

  Laura said, “That. Is. Amazing. She’s upstairs now?”

  Montero nodded. “She should be down in a minute after she gets dressed.”

  Laura stared again at the pile of clothing, trying to process it all. Apparently Ruth had gained considerable weight since the first time. A defense against predatory boys? Or maybe an attempt to weigh too much to teleport—if that were even possible.

  “She prefers to live here?”

  Montero said, “Issues with her stepdad, I think.”

  “Yeah, he’s a beast,” Iggy said as she started bundling up Ruth’s fallen clothes.

  Rick said, “What’s your gift, Iggy?”

  Iggy shrugged her slim shoulders. “Ain’t got one.”

  “Not that you know of,” Montero said. “Marie says you’re a nadaný and she hasn’t been wrong yet.” He turned to Laura. “Iggy’s EEG shows steady, low-amplitude zeta waves. Something is going on in there, we just don’t know what.”

  Iggy smiled. “When you find out, you let me know, okay?”

  Ruth reappeared, this time in a black sweat suit. She looked around with a sour smile. “Happy?”

  “Impressed as all hell,” Rick said.

  “Absolutely amazed,” Laura said. “You can do that any time you want?”

  She nodded. “Uh-huh. Although I usually don’t want. I mean, think about it: How many times a day you wanna get dressed? And I especially don’t wanna when I’m on the rag.”

  Behind her, Rick made a little choking noise.

  Laura said, “What’s different then?”

  “Embarrassing enough I gotta leave all my clothes behind, but a bloody tampon too? Uh-uh!”

  “TMI,” Rick muttered. “TMI.”

  Ruth must have heard him because she burst out laughing. “I like this guy! You two got a thing goin’?”

  “Used to.”

  “What happened?”

  She glanced at Rick, who looked acutely uncomfortable. “I guess you could say we drifted apart.”

  “But you still like him though, right?”

  “Like him? I love him.”

  Silence as the words hung in the air.

  Why did I say that?

  No, why wasn’t the right question. How? How had that come out? She’d intended to say, Like him? Of course I like him. And that would have been true. But not the whole truth.

  Rick’s expression showed shock and disbelief, like he didn’t believe what he’d heard.

  “You mean that?”

  She realized she did. She hadn’t truly known how she’d felt—or maybe hadn’t admitted it to herself—until she’d blurted it out.

  “Of course I mean it. That doesn’t mean I can live with you.”

  He frowned. “Well, there’s that.”

  “Maybe we should continue this another time?”

  “Yes,” Montero said with a bemused expression. “Let’s head back to the office.”

  “Great idea,” Laura said.

  She led the way, feeling as if everyone’s eyes were on her. And maybe they were.

  2

  “How many nadaný have you found?” Laura said.

  She’d regained her composure during the brief walk back to the office. She remained flummoxed at the way her mouth had run off on its own, but she’d managed to put all that aside until later. She needed to stay in the moment here.

  Someone had brought in extra chairs while she and Rick were taking the tour, so now Rick, Montero, and Marie sat before Stahlman’s rickety desk, wit
h the boss himself behind it.

  “Ellis makes ten,” Stahlman said. “Ten so far.”

  “They all seem so young,” Rick said. “Is anyone over thirty?”

  Marie raised her hand. “I am thirty-one.”

  “Marie is our oldest,” Montero said. “We had a sixteen-year-old turn up with her mother. She can ‘read’ things.”

  “Meaning?” Rick said.

  “You can hand her a shoe or an earring or a pen and she can tell you where it’s been for the past day or two and even a vague idea of who it belongs to. She can tell things about people too.”

  “Wow.” Rick’s tone dripped sarcasm.

  “I can see a definite forensic use for that,” Laura said.

  She wished he’d stop staring at her.

  “I suppose so,” he said with a shrug, then turned to Stahlman. “But somehow I don’t see a mutant crime-fighting team in your future, Professor X.”

  Stahlman made a sour face. “More like Professor Z. And you know damn well I’m not that civic-minded. Besides, we have NYPD to fight crime around here.”

  “Granted. But I hope you and Luis here won’t get offended when I say that, except for Ruth, if there’s one thing these nadaný have in common it’s how puny their gifts are.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Montero said.

  “Come on, let’s face it. They look more like magic tricks than mutant powers. I mean, Leo can levitate, but only twenty inches. Ellis can manipulate pool and roulette balls and not much else. What about that kid you told me about—the one who can generate heat from his hands?”

  “Sam, yeah.”

  “Let me guess: not exactly the Human Torch, right?”

  Stahlman gave a chagrined sigh. “He can brown toast.”

  “I rest my case.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Laura said. “It’s not the extent of their powers, it’s the existence of those powers. And judging from what Doctor Montero showed me—”

  “Luis, please.”

  “Okay. Based on what you showed me, their gifts are definitely linked to the brain. And that means I want in.” She tapped the desktop with each word. “I. Want. In.”

  Stahlman raised a victory fist. “Great. I was hoping you’d come on board. You’re my good luck charm.”

  “Let’s not get carried away.”