Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 (6 page)

Jimmy silenced himself and opened the pores of his sensations. Once you established the fullness of context, you could slice away at what you did not need. He shut his eyes. First to be eliminated from his awareness: the room in which he sat— chairs, table, machines—and Methusaleh's cell—bed, toilet. The lit space around the prisoner darkened, not as if the lights were dimming, but as if nearer walls were being set in place. The passageway. Everything inessential eradicated. To move along the passageway, to cross the brief yet impossible distance, Jimmy required key words, ideas, insights; whatever he knew about a subject advanced the two of them toward each other. Where they would meet in the middle was where Jimmy, who had built the space, could speak to the subject's deepest self.

There sat an image of the prisoner, an image built not only of Jimmy's perceptions but, if he had done his work well, of the other person's own sense of self. In that way, the other was drawn forward, sharing space with the conception Jimmy had built. Jimmy could linger with that other, listen to the mutterings of another self. If the process worked, these stages moved more quickly with each iteration, and the other person, unconscious yet aware, could more readily slip into that virtual homunculus.

Jimmy peered down a black corridor, the prisoner faintly visible at the other end. Jimmy maintained the distance, studying the figure, keeping it steady and coherent.

He drifted forward along the passageway; he compelled the prisoner to move forward as well—all he wanted was to see some potential for movement on this initial attempt. He employed his keywords like charms.
In control. You're always in control. No one tells you when to speak. Powerful. You can make people do what you wish. The strength of your arms and the strength of your intellect motivate people. You toss your enemies away. Hidden. In the tower room. In the Arctic ice. No one knows who you truly are.

Jimmy went through the monologue again, as he'd rehearsed, summoning the old man forward, open to response.

Nothing. The passageway smelled ancient, disused. He opened his eyes, and the details of the world returned, so sudden in their actuality.

He was drenched, and he stank. He chugged down water.

The image of the prisoner at the tunnel's end didn't leave him. He turned from the viewscreen and saw him still, upright and steady on the chair, hands at the chair's edge. Was the man not as relaxed as he appeared?

Jimmy approached the viewscreen and saw what he hadn't seen before.

Five of the BrightLine employees sat in the weapons room, heavy black uniform shirts and protective vests off, all wearing the same gray tank tops, breaking down weapons. "Mr. Quarles," Jimmy began.

The other men gave Quarles a look; he licked his lips. "Just Quarles."

"Quarles. Would you take a look at something with me?"

"Need some other men, LT?" asked Covey, turning from a locker.

"I just need Quarles." Quarles stood. "It's about the screen." Covey gave Quarles the nod.

Jimmy had left in place the viewscreen's image: looking down from a ceiling corner, focused on the bed, skewed forty-five degrees from true.

"I take it that's not what you wanted," Quarles said.

"I took a stab."

Quarles tapped the center of the screen several times, and the standard image appeared. The old man sat cross-legged before them.

"What do you need?"

"I need to magnify down where his feet are."

"You draw a box," said Quarles. He put his finger to the screen and, a lime-green line following his finger's path, drew a rectangle enclosing the prisoner's feet. The box remained when he withdrew his hand; when he tapped the box, the image within expanded to fill the screen, black bars along the top and bottom. The image initially appeared hazy. "Give it a—" Quarles said, and the picture sharpened.

"Do you see that?" Jimmy touched the screen and jerked his hand away, leaving a green smudge by the prisoner's left foot.

Quarles moved his face closer. "I'm not—what are you seeing?"

"What's this look like from the side?"

Quarles restored the original image. "What side?"

"His left."

Open palm on the screen, Quarles pulled to his left, and the image rolled away to be replaced by a side angle. "Same spot?"

"From the foot on back. Can we get lower?"

"I think there's a camera down there."

Quarles made a two-fingered gesture that brought up a menu. After some manipulation, the image shifted so the view was at floor level, from one of the front corners. Again Quarles constructed a box and again he made it huge.

"His butt's not on the floor. Is it?"

Quarles stepped back. "What, you think he's
floating?"

Lt. Col. Oblonski had said a man with mental powers could float. He could phase through a wall. He could summon rain. Though Jimmy's own abilities defied standard scientific descriptions, even he felt such scenarios were not credible.

"No. Look. He's pushing with his... I guess his calves? His ankles? The sides of his feet are touching, but nothing else is."

"What's that mean?"

"It means walking to the toilet isn't his only exercise."

Never a coffee drinker, Jimmy witnessed with some envy the obvious pleasure it provided to the other patrons of the cafe. He had stayed overnight in an upstairs room overlooking the sinkhole—he was pretty sure he heard a cat fall in at one point, pretty much the only sound after businesses closed along the impassable street—and now was seated at the scene of yesterday's interview, wondering whether he could discern a next step.

After her rescue, stunned and soaked, the teacher had sat on the sidewalk with other people until the EMTs arrived. "It's possible I exaggerated," she conceded. "Maybe the door was already off before he got to it. There was a wrenching metal sound. You know the sound.
Grrronnnk.
And then this tremendous
SNAP!
like something breaking. And,
zoop!,
he pulled me up out of there. When you encounter something unexpected, your mind tries to construct a meaningful narrative—even if the narrative seems crazy."

He knew what she meant. He had paid for her dessert.

Inch-thick bread for the two slices of French toast soaked up the syrup quickly. He poured more and observed a man at another table, jaw sunk below his shirt collar, delicately sip his coffee, plump thumb and index finger pincering the mug's handle. The man peered with great intensity at the television mounted high in the diner's front corner. Jimmy cut another chunk with his fork's edge.

"That's weird." The man sipping coffee had spoken. Jimmy followed his attention to the television. He saw heavy fog—evidently the end of a weather report—followed by the image of a human-high white boulder. The reporter called it a "hailstone."

"Very
weird," the other man said.

"What was that about?"

Without turning his head, the man said, "Those folks got hailstones the size of
cars".

"And fog?"

"Those were
clouds.
The weather woman said the clouds came down
to the ground.
And then they turned to water. That's as crazy as what happened here!"

Someone had left the morning's newspaper on the counter. Ferrisburg, Maryland, had had a spectacularly unstable day. Lives were lost. But a rescuer no one knew had moved among them. And, reportedly, he had not been alone.

Jimmy rushed through his breakfast, regretting at the last bite that he hadn't asked for coffee after all. He felt himself moving toward a precipice from which he might never return to recover what was, in haste, set aside.

Back by the bathrooms, duffel between his feet, he used the payphone. He hadn't brought the phone number of Bekka's friends, but perhaps she had headed home.

An overly subdued version of her voice said, "I'm not here. Please leave a message."

"I'm not coming back yet," he said. "I found out... there's another..." He could not formulate an explanation. "I'm sorry. Please don't give up on me. Not yet, anyway."

He had re-parked his car last night in a proper parking spot, under an electrical wire that ran between buildings. Birds had, evidently, spent their morning above his car roof. Berries must have been for breakfast.

He pulled the slender atlas from under the passenger seat. Ferrisburg was so close to the Pennsylvania border, he didn't have to flip pages. Two hours, and he'd be there.

Jimmy slowed to exit as the highway curled between the rooftops of Ferrisburg, a city of red brick and narrow streets. Fresh black stripes on the Jersey barriers showed where cars had veered in the sudden obscurity, and taillight and plastic bumper bits littered the pavement. Jimmy took the exit marked and dipped toward town.

The breadth of the disturbance came immediately into view, with detour signs routing traffic from the ramp around a four-story building whose façade had collapsed. Bricks lay across a street marked off with yellow police tape. He saw other damaged buildings and cars, though he judged that some of the debris had been removed. Where the traffic turned back toward the town's uninspiring, sooty midsection, a narrow boulevard with banks on two corners, Potomac Edison trucks lined the curbs. Jimmy pulled into a combination gas station and supermarket.

He immediately felt unwell when he opened the car door. Dense with humidity, the sky rendered the sun futile, bearable to look at. He undid one more button on his shirt, the same shirt he'd worn to dinner two nights ago. It clung to his back.

Rather than heading directly toward the scene where yesterday's chaos seemed to have been concentrated, he entered the gas station's shop. A cardboard sheet took the place of one large window.

The damp young man behind the counter said hello and scratched at his spotty brown beard. The store was cool enough, but the clerk's forehead dripped, and dark stains swelled on his T-shirt.

"That happen yesterday?" Jimmy asked.

"I's standing right here." The man leaned across the counter and aimed one arm.

"A hailstone the size of my
head
bounced off the hood of a car and came crashing
right
in." With his hand, he traced the projectile's trajectory.

"Wow."

"Someone coulda been killed. I heard someone was, downtown."

A mother with two pre-schoolers approached the counter, pausing to see whether Jimmy was finished talking. The girl looked to be a year older than the boy; the two held hands, swung their arms in unison, and stared at the backs of their mother's legs.

"You go ahead," said Jimmy.

He thought to collect some provisions, and saw peanuts behind him on a rack. At the far end of the store, he took a tall can of iced tea from the cooler. When the mother and children left, the opening door chimed.

Jimmy set his purchases on the counter. "I wonder if you can help me out. I'm following up on reports of... strangers who came to the rescue during all the action yesterday."

"You a reporter?"

He hesitated. "I'm not. I'm just interested in events like this." He put on a look of sincere disappointment. "I can't go into it," he said, hoping the elusive answer suggested significance.

The young man said, " 'kay," and typed at the register.

"Did you see any of these unfamiliar people? Especially an old man, a very old man. He might have been with a group, helping out?"

"No one I didn't know came through here." He stopped typing. "That'll be four forty-seven." Jimmy thumbed through his wad of loose bills for a five. "My uncle's restaurant took a beating. A car plowed right into it. I don't get not at least slowing down when you can't see the hood of your own car. And those hail... boulders or whatever, it's like they went after that block in particular. Pretty bad deal."

Reasoning that any connection would at least lead him to a person with a story to tell, Jimmy got directions to the uncle's restaurant. He left the car behind and set off in the shimmery heat, his dark arms instantly slick.

A man and a woman stood outside the building in question, a brick building with two entrances on the street, one of which had been left doorless and demolished. He could see a bar beyond the ragged hole. The couple, both with close-cropped white hair, both of the same height and roundly built, stood in the paltry shade alongside bulging white trash bags piled against the wall.

"We're closed," the man said, making the woman cackle with laughter and slap his pale arm. He remained straight-faced. "Try back at dinner." She stomped her foot this time to accompany her laughter.

"Sorry, honey," she said to Jimmy.

"You've got a good attitude."

"I," said the man, "have no attitude at all."

"Pff!" objected the woman. "All you got is attitude."

"Building inspectors are checking to see if we can even go back in," the man told Jimmy. "It didn't fall on us while we were hauling out this lot." He indicated the trash bags.

"Only so much can go wrong all at once," said the woman, and set her mouth in a line. Neither questioned Jimmy's curiosity about the previous day's events. As it turned out, they had seen the man himself.

"We all saw 'im," said the man.

"Who's 'all'?"

He waved a hand about vaguely. "All of us standing here when the clouds all a sudden turned to water. And there were two other fellas with 'im. One guy had these funny eyeglasses. So thick you could see from twenty yards away that it made his eyes huge."

"The other one was missing a ear."

The man turned with exaggerated slowness and regarded the woman. "Where do you get this stuff?"

"I'm telling you. You weren't standing where I was standing."

"I was practically wearing your blouse."

Face squinted shut in a silent paroxysm of laughter, the woman slugged her companion's shoulder.

A tremendously large beetle emerged from among the trash bags, but when it reached the sunlit portion of the sidewalk, it veered back toward the wall.

"Other people helped," said the man. "We helped. We helped the man who drove into our front door. That was quite a surprise!"