Collective Mind (3 page)

The
hobo suddenly jumped up, grabbing everyone’s attention, pulled out a crucifix
and proclaimed in a thunderous voice.

”May
the Lord be with us!”

One
of his plastic bags went flying into the center of the hall, and another flew
over the reception desk. A moment later there was the loud bang of an
explosion, then a second, and a third, then more. Smoke abruptly billowed up.

Isaac
instinctively covered his head. But in fact, there weren’t any flames or
shrapnel from the explosions. The space quickly filled up with thick smoke. He
didn’t feel any pain or any shock wave either. The bangs had simply been loud,
and the acrid suspension turned out not really to be smoke – it was a rather
foul-smelling white gas. Isaac recognized that smell from his childhood – a gas
heavily used by farmers for killing insects in their fields.

Isaac
sneezed once, then again. The downloaders all sneezed one after another. A face
contorted in terror, belonging to a girl who worked at the reception, flashed
by in front of his face.

The
old woman screamed. More squealing voices joined in. Turning his head, he saw
Pierre, apparently unharmed, gazing in shock at the smoke-filled hall and back
at Isaac There was a stupefied question in his eyes: “Is all this for real?”

Another
explosion rang out. The fire-extinguishing system kicked in, water sprinkled
down from above and a siren howled. A fit of fear seized Isaac – irrational,
hideous fear. He realized it wasn’t over yet and anything could still happen.
Panic set in. There was only the gas, still no shrapnel or shockwave. Isaac
wasn’t injured, he wasn’t hurting anywhere. But the fear that something else
would happen hit him again, harder than ever. He couldn’t see anything. Induced
by the acrid gas tears streamed out of his eyes. Water was pouring down from
above. He couldn’t think calmly and coolly any longer.

“Where’s
your main computer? Where do you keep the devil’s heart?” the hobo asked in a
booming voice, donning a respirator.

That
brought Isaac back down to earth and forced him to focus. He cautiously slid
off his chair and set off on his knees in the direction of the door.

 “Move
it, or I’ll kill her!”

A
woman squealed again. Isaac could hear the old man breathing heavily. The water
had dampened down the gas a bit, and the air was gradually clearing. Afraid
that the terrorist would see him, Isaac looked round anxiously and moved on
quickly towards the exit on his knees.

“I’m
asking you for the last time! And don’t anybody move!” The terrorist cast a
vicious glance at Isaac.

Isaac
froze not knowing what to do. Did the terrorist have any accomplices? Was the
door open?

In
the center of the hall, immediately behind the wooden counter, he saw the man
he had taken for a hobo, clutching the receptionist by the throat with one hand
and holding something against her back with the other.

The
security guard, still on his feet, was clearly hesitant to move any closer. On
the one hand, it seemed like there was nowhere the hobo could have got a gun
from; the metal detector frame at the door would have sounded the alarm. But on
the other hand the security man couldn’t see what the terrorist was holding in
his hand and pressing against the woman’s back, and he wasn’t taking any risks.
But then, Isaac’s train of thought didn’t necessarily reflect what the security
guard was really thinking.

“Let
her go,” the old man suddenly said, “She’s a woman, an office worker, not
likely to know anything.”

That
experience comes with age is well-known, momentarily reflected Isaac although
he had never seen this notion in action before.

“I’m
a retired army officer,” - the old man was trying to speak in a firm, calm
voice, although breathing heavily because of the gas. “What is it you want?”

“What
I want is to destroy this diabolical machine. I want to tear its diabolical
heart out!” the Hobo screamed.

“Hmmm,”
thought Isaac. “Yet another religious fanatic and it looks like he’s genuinely
insane to boot.” He was gradually recovering his wits, the panic was receding.
The TV sometimes reported attacks on the Agency. But only rarely, and besides,
when you watch something on TV it doesn’t occur to you that the same thing
could actually happen for real.

The
old man got up off his chair and asked the woman in a commanding voice:
“Where’s your central computer?”

 “Th-th-there,”
the woman gasped out, stammering through her tears, and waved her hand in the
direction of a white computer standing in a separate room, separated from the
reception hall by a glass wall.

The
hobo pushed the woman aside and in two rapid strides reached the back office
door and kicked it open. He lifted the computer above his head and slammed it
down hard onto the floor. The security man was still standing there, glued to
the ground.

 “Everyone
down on the floor, cover your heads!” – roared the old man. The ferocious power
in his order sent everyone tumbling unquestioningly to the floor, even the
security man obeyed.

The
hobo carried on smashing the computer in the office, frenziedly ripping out
wires and various attachments. Isaac could hear something grating and plastic
splintering and through this racket came the howling of a siren out in the
street and brusque voices. The police! He remembered that the station was just
a hundred meters away.

Intending
to calm the terrified woman, he got halfway up, and at that instant the
policemen burst into the hall. A blow to the head knocked Isaac off his feet
and he lost consciousness.

It
took a while before Isaac tuned back. His head was buzzing and spinning and he
felt slightly nauseous. They were dragging him somewhere, with his arms twisted
hard behind his back. He was handcuffed. A van, a police station, iron bars
slamming loudly. His consciousness fully recovered only in the cell that they
had manhandled him into. “Never mind, they’ll figure things out” he thought
wearily and lumped on the metal bed. Still feeling a bit sick, he closed his
eyes and instantly blanked out.

He
dreamt of a war…. a big war. He didn’t know who was fighting whom or why, but
he saw a nuclear explosion with entire cities ablaze. Like in the Hollywood
movie of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. He saw lots of different cities without
names and all he knew was that one of them was Paris. In the bright
orange-yellow light, Isaac observed the immense, towering conflagration from a
hill about thirty kilometers away, he couldn’t make anything out clearly, but
he knew for certain that it was Paris. He was gazing, spellbound at the
appalling spectacle, when suddenly some soldiers drove up, six or maybe eight
of them. They didn’t see him.

There
was no fear, he calmly emptied his cartridge clip into the first two, grabbed
his automatic and killed the others. He did it absolutely dispassionately,
quickly and without a single hitch, feeling slightly frustrated that the
bullets – they were bright blue, he could see them quite clearly – flew through
the air with a strange slowness. Darkness. The picture had disappeared. Isaac
was somewhere between sleep and waking, and he even started trying to analyze
his dream, still without waking up.

In
real life I could never even come close to killing someone, but this isn’t the
first time I’ve killed in a dream. What can you say about the life of a man in
whose dreams cities burn, wars are fought and planes crash? Why do I kill in
cold blood in my dreams? I often have dreams… I could be at a party in my first
apartment with my old classmates, or flying in a balloon and a helicopter, or
crashing in a plane, walking across ice or running away from the police or a
psycho… What’s the meaning in all this? Someone who lives in Kenya probably
doesn’t dream about Paris or ice, about things that he’s never seen. Maybe
dreams are a parallel life, or what I dream is a warped version of my thoughts,
memories, emotions, or something else? Or is it really a parallel life? We
don’t know a damn thing about the man or the universe, we only have our
guesses. A Neanderthal’s guesses about the Northern Lights

Someone
was prodding Isaac insistently in the side and he finally woke up. His head was
filled with some kind of soft goo, weariness had eaten its way into his
thoughts and settled there. He felt like saying: “Leave me alone, get off me,
I’m tired and I want to sleep”, but his meddlesome neighbor won’t let up. The
drowsiness in Isaac’s eyes gradually dispersed and he recognized who it was.
The man had been there, in the agency; it was the hobo….fanatical terrorist.

Isaac
remembered him smashing the computer. It was such a vivid impression that even
after the blow to his head he hadn’t forgotten a single detail of that picture.
After he was certain he had woken Isaac up, the hobo looked intently into his
eyes.

 “Hey,
how are you doing?” he inquired.

“Fine.”

“That’s
good, good. You sure?”

“Fine,”
Isaac repeated angrily.

The
stranger gave him another searching look.

“What’s
your name, lad?”

“Fine,”
hissed Isaac again and closed his eyes.

“My
name’s Mr. Elvis. I’m the Messiah, I fight the devil. We’ve got to…”

Isaac
heard the stranger speaking on and on. He opened and closed his eyes
repeatedly, without attempting to understand what this madman was driveling
about. His head hurt badly enough already.

 Suddenly
he felt something on his palm, something hard and prickly. Tried to turn away,
but Elvis jerked him rather sharply by the shoulder.

“Hey
you? Don’t you understand? I’ve been going all out for half an hour and you
still don’t understand?”

“What?
Yes, I understand, I do,” Isaac gasped out. Anything to get this guy off his
back.

What
does he want from me? Hell, I’m in here because of him as it is. Someone
clubbed me over the head because of this asshole I wish those thickheads would
get on with figuring this out. Maybe I need to go to hospital. – Isaac’s
thoughts flowed sluggishly through his head. He closed his eyes. He felt the
hobo shake him by the shoulder with crude determination.

 “Hell
spawn! Heart of the devil! Cursed machine!”

Isaac
started feeling thirsty. Water. He was suddenly desperately thirsty! He
couldn’t open his eyes. Sleepiness was still stronger than the thirst. However
the need of water was indeed ferocious.

“It
will bring disaster, it’s the devil….”

It
was some kind of hideous dream! A waking nightmare! Isaac tried to stand up and
call a policeman, but the attempt to get up gave him such a sharp pain in his
head that he groaned out loud.

“God
has no need of soulless bodies, and then the end will come…” Elvis went on
raving, as if nothing had happened. “Are you listening to me?”

The
hobo didn’t look like he was going to give up. He seemed blinded by his own
insanity.

“Orange
energy is people’s souls, don’t you understand? He’s taking away our souls.”

“Screwball
talk. Roaring. Roaring in my head. Everything’s weird, and I do need water.”

“Well
then?” – Mr. Elvis was certain what he’d said was convincing, even though Isaac
hadn’t grasped a single thing.

A
sharp pain in Isaac’s shoulder woke him up completely and he concentrated.

“And
only by tearing out the devil’s heart and destroying it, can I complete my
mission. What you have in your hands is absolute evil, destroy it.”

Only
now did Isaac finally realize that everything happening was real and he was
holding an object that looked like a piece of a microcircuit. Of course! It was
from that computer, a piece of the board with some kind of circuits and chips
on it.

“Henri
Cavalier, get out here.”

“My
name’s Mr. Elvis!” the crazy messiah growled, then he turned to Isaac and added
in a whisper: “Remember what I told you. Destroy the heart of the devil.
Promise me. And then the victory will come.”

Isaac
nodded and his thoughts immediately flew to Vicky. “Oh God! The surgery, the
money for the surgery. Oh God! I’ll be too late. Where am I? Oh, God! Vicky!”

It
was a nightmare: the jail cell, the policemen running around, Elvis. Isaac
hammered desperately on the bars several times with his hands, but no one took
any notice of him. Only once a doctor came, examined Isaac’s head, shone a
little torch into his eyes and said indifferently that it was no big deal, Isaac
would live, and then he left, leaving some kind of prescription behind. A
nightmare, only it wasn’t a dream.

“Isaac
Leroy!”

Isaac
opened his eyes and stared at the policeman who was shining a little torch in
his face. Isaac took an instant dislike to him, firstly because the torch was
shining in his eyes, and secondly, because shining a torch in someone’s eyes
was quite abusive. Especially since he was innocent.

“Out
you come!”

The
attempt to stand up gave him a dull, aching pain. Isaac sat back down again.
Something pricked his hand. The computer board! He stuck the hand holding the
piece of board in his pocket. “What a jerk I am,” he thought. “What did I take
it for? If they find it, I’ll never beat the rap”. The words of Mr. Elvis came to
his mind.

“Come
on, move it, you little shit,” Isaac heard the same malicious voice say. “I’m
not going to hang out here all night because of you.”

The
policeman walked into the cell and put handcuffs on Isaac. More and more of the
details around him were assuming clear forms. They walked down a long corridor
and turned into an office.

“Patrice,
take the handcuffs off him and bring him something to drink,” the officer
sitting in the office told the policeman who had woken Isaac up so crudely.

“Good
evening,” Isaac heard the dry voice say, this time speaking to him.

“Evening,”
Isaac mumbled, kneading his hands, which had instantly turned numb, and putting
them in his pockets.

Feeling
the piece of computer board in his hand and realizing how dangerous his position
was, Isaac clutched it tightly and thrust it down deep into his pocket.

The
pocket was strangely empty. Although, why was that strange? They’d probably
taken everything he had as a safety measure. Yes, exactly, his belt was missing
too, now he understood why his trousers kept slipping down during the short
walk. He wondered where Mr. Elvis had been hiding the board. They must have
searched him. But that was a fanatic for you, he would give his life for the
cause, so hiding a microcircuit was no big deal.

“In
fact, I’ve already got to the bottom of everything, but we need to run through
a few formalities, so let’s get started quickly and then you can go home.”

Isaac
nodded again. He didn’t understand what these formalities were, he wanted to
find out as soon as possible how Vicky was, and dump the dangerous object that
was in his pocket.

“So,
first name?”

“Isaac.”

“Surname?”

“Leroy.”

“Age
and date of birth.”

“Twenty-seven,
28th of December.”

“Parents’
names?”

“Alexander
Leroy and Anna Kramer.”

Isaac
kept on and on answering questions. It was ok, but he wanted to sit down. He
kept shifting from one foot to the other.

The
officer looked up from the report.

“I’m
sorry, have a seat! I don’t usually stand on ceremony during an interrogation.
A habit – pardon me, sit on the chair.”

Altogether
the questioning and drawing up the report took about twenty minutes. Isaac
explained that he got up to help the woman; he didn’t know they were going to
storm the agency.

Captain
Nero – the officer turned out to be a captain – explained to Isaac that he had
been stunned when the office was stormed because he got up, and only two people
were standing – the terrorist and Isaac. The security guard in the agency had
switched on his walkie-talkie, so when they stormed the place the assault team
knew that all the hostages were lying down. That was why they had taken Isaac
for an accomplice.

However,
the testimony of the other victims, employees and especially of Pierre Canton
had completely convinced Nero that Isaac wasn’t involved in the terrorist
attack. Incidentally, Pierre had been the only one hurt and he was in hospital.
Nero had checked that Isaac was there to download his energy, having first
drawn up a provisional insurance contract. Nero had read it and he had discovered
that Isaac’s only relative, Victoria Frank, was in the hospital, waiting for
surgery, and the contract stipulated that the cost of the surgery should be
paid out of the UNICOMA money, and thus his final doubts about Isaac had
evaporated.

“You
can collect your things now.” Nero added calmly. “By the way, what’s this
gismo?” he asked, holding out the V-Rain. “I can tell you quite frankly that I
deleted it from the inventory of your things, otherwise we would have had to
hold you for another week, until we’ve figured out that this little thing
wasn’t connected with the attack in any way. I’m really sorry, we dealt with
Cavalier first and sent him to Marseilles, and then a whole horde of people
descended on us; our bosses, prosecutors, the deputy prefect, journalists. It
took us a long time to get round to you. And then, your sister’s surname isn’t
the same as yours. I didn’t know she was your stepsister. But I checked all the
information on you today, so that you could get back home, even if it is late.
Off you go, it’s already ten o’clock.”

“It’s
my invention. Harmless. It’s just to keep the rain off.”

Isaac
raked up his things, and the V-Rain squeaked plaintively. All this amiability
from Nero made him feel uneasy

“Isaac,
I’m very sorry,” the captain suddenly added in a quiet, fatherly voice. “The
news I have from the hospital isn’t too cheerful. Your sister has been in a
coma since this afternoon.”

The
ground suddenly crumbled under Isaac’s feet. He started crying. His mouth still
felt dry, but tears the size of large hailstones rolled down his cheeks. He
couldn’t say a single word, small change scattered onto the floor and his
hands, full of various little bits and pieces, shook so badly that he simply
couldn’t find his pocket.

It
wasn’t fair! Bastards! Isaac loathed them all.

“I
spoke to the doctor, don’t despair, of course it’s bad, but her life isn’t in
any danger. You’ll definitely find the money for the surgery. And you should
also see a doctor yourself, our medic said you have a slight concussion.”

No
one was waiting for Isaac in the dark street, even the journalists who were
usually sneaking around in cases like this had all gone home, or were finishing
things off in the newspaper offices to make the morning edition. Isaac couldn’t
have added anything new, and the opinion or recollections of yet another person
who hadn’t been harmed didn’t interest anyone any longer. Time hadn’t stopped,
time was inexorably racing on. For reasons of privacy, his name hadn’t been
released, and no one he knew came to collect him. There was no one to come in
any case. It wasn’t raining any more, but the air was dank. All taxi drivers
had been asleep at home for a long time, it was quiet and the busy season was
only just beginning on the Côte d’Azur.

A
voice shouted out to him from the street, “Get in, I’ll take you to the
hospital or back home, you decide.” Isaac turned his head. In the rolled down
window of a grey Peugeot he recognized the captain.