The Hollow Man

by Dan Simmons

  And the other secret also has to do with their childlessness. Only his other secret is a time bomb, ticking away between them and beneath them, ready to destroy everything they have had or ever hope to have together.

  But Gail dies before the second secret is discovered … before he can share and defuse it.

  Jeremy dreams of it still.

  In This Hollow Valley

  Soul Dad got Bremen out.

  The police had a description of the Sixteenth Street Mall assailant and were combing the shack cities under the Platte River overpasses. Word was out that the assailant’s victim had not been hurt seriously, but the Sixteenth Street merchants had been complaining for months about the proliferation of panhandlers and the homeless on the mall during business hours. This attack had been the final straw and metro cops were tearing apart … literally tearing apart … all the temporary shacks and lean-tos from Market Street downtown all the way west to the barrio around Stonecutters Row on the hill above I-25, hunting for the young wino with blond hair, scraggly beard, and glasses.

  Soul Dad got him out. Bremen had run back to his shack near the Platte and crawled into his tarp tent, pawing through the rags in the corner for his bottle of screw-top Night Train. He found it and drank deeply, trying to settle back into the fuzzy-edged murk of indifference and neurobabble that had been his life. But the adrenaline continued to pump through his system, acting like a strong wind blowing away months of fog.

  I attacked that man! was his first coherent thought. And then, What the hell am I doing here? Suddenly Bremen wanted to quit playacting whatever farce he had found himself in, call Gail to come pick him up, and go home for dinner. He could see the long lane opening off the county road with the white frame farmhouse at the end, the peach trees he had planted along each side, some still held up by stakes and wires, the long line of shadows from the trees along the stream creeping toward the house as summer evening fell, the smell of new-mown grass through the open windows of the Volvo …

  Bremen moaned, drank more of the filthy wine, cursed, and flung the bottle out through the opening of his crude tent. It smashed on concrete and someone farther out under the overpass shouted something unintelligible.

  Gail! Oh, Christ, Gail! Bremen’s longing at that moment was a physical ache that hit him like some tsunami that had come curling over the edge of the world without warning. He felt himself battered, lifted, dropped, and tossed around by tidal forces far beyond his control. Ah, Gail … God, I need you, kiddo.

  For the first time since his wife had died Jeremy Bremen lowered his forehead to his clenched fists and wept. He sobbed, surrendering to the terrible constrictions of grief that now rose in him like great and painful shards of glass that had been swallowed long ago. Oblivious to the terrible heat under the makeshift tent of plastic and canvas, oblivious to the sounds of traffic on the highway above and to the wail of sirens in the streets up the hill, oblivious to everything but his loss and grief, Bremen wept.

  “You got to move your ass or lose it, boy,” came Soul Dad’s slow, mellifluous voice through the thickened air.

  Bremen waved him away and curled into his rags, face to the shade-cooled concrete. He continued to weep.

  “No time for that now,” Soul Dad said. “Be plenty of time later.” He grasped Bremen under the arm and lifted. Bremen struggled to free himself, to stay in his tent, but the old man was surprisingly strong, his grip irresistible, and Bremen found himself out in the sunlight, blinking away tears and shouting something loud and obscene, while Soul Dad moved him along into the deeper shadows under the viaduct as easily as a parent moves a surly child.

  There was a car idling there, a ’78 or ’79 Pontiac with a scabrous vinyl roof. “I don’t know how to hotwire the newer ones,” said Soul Dad, setting Bremen behind the wheel and closing the door. The old man leaned low, his forearm on the lowered driver’s-side window and his Old Testament prophet’s beard brushing against Bremen’s shoulder. He reached in and pressed a wad of paper into Bremen’s shirt pocket. “Anyway, this one will do you for the immediate future … such as it is. You drive it out of town now, hear? Find some place to stay where crazy white boys who cry in their sleep are welcomed. At least find some place to stay until they get tired of looking for you here. Understand?”

  Bremen nodded, rubbing harshly at his eyes. The interior of the car smelled like heat-baked beer and cigarette ashes. The torn upholstery smelled of urine. But the engine idled well, as if all the owner’s efforts and attention had gone under the hood. This is a stolen car! Bremen thought. And then. So what?

  He turned to thank Soul Dad, to say good-bye, but the old man had already moved back into the shadows and Bremen caught only a glimpse of a raincoat moving back toward the shacks. Sirens growled somewhere close above the weedy ditch where the Platte trickled past, shallow and brown.

  Bremen set his grime-caked fingers on the steering wheel. It was hot from the sun and he jerked his hands away, flexing fingers as if burned. What if I don’t remember how to drive? An instant later the answer. It doesn’t matter.

  Bremen slammed the thing into gear and almost floored the accelerator, throwing gravel far out over the Platte River and having to spin the wheel lock to lock twice before gaining control and bouncing across a dirt access road and a grassy median to find the access ramp to I-25.

  At the top of the on-ramp he swept into traffic and glanced right at the tops of factory buildings, warehouses, the distant gray of the train station, and even the modest skyline of steel and glass that was Denver. There were police cars down among the tent city, police cars along the tracks and river walks, and police cars along the east-west streets running back toward the bus terminus, but no cop cars up here on the Interstate. Bremen looked at the waggling red speedometer needle, realized that he was doing almost eighty in the light midday traffic, and eased up on the accelerator pedal, dropping to a legal fifty and settling in behind an Allied moving van. He realized with a start that he was approaching an intersection with I-70. The signs gave him his choice: I-70 EAST—LIMON, I-70 WEST—GRAND JUNCTION.

  He had come from the east. Bremen followed the cloverleaf up and around, settling back into traffic on the busy I-70 West. Brown foothills loomed ahead, and beyond them—the glimpse of snow-covered mountains.

  Bremen did not know where he was going. He glanced at the gas gauge and noticed that there was three-quarters of a tank left. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out the paper Soul Dad had stuffed there: a twenty-dollar bill. He had no other money—not a cent. The three-quarters of a tank and the twenty dollars would have to get him wherever in the world he was going to go by car.

  Bremen shrugged. The hot air roiling in through the open window and dusty vents cooled him as much as anything had in the past month or so. He did not know where he was headed or what he would do. But he was moving. At long last he was moving.

  In This Valley of Dying Stars

  Bremen was walking along the edge of the desert when the police car pulled up alongside him on the county road. There was no other traffic, so the brown-and-white vehicle moved at his walking pace for a moment. Bremen glanced once at the lone officer in the car—a square, sun-leathered face, oversized mirrored sunglasses—and then he looked back at his feet, careful not to step on any of the yucca plants or small cacti on the desert floor.

  The police car pulled ahead fifty feet, turned onto the shoulder of the asphalt road with a small cloud of dust, and braked to a stop. The officer stepped out, unbuckled a strap over his revolver, and stood by the driver’s side of the car, his mirrored glasses reflecting Bremen’s slow approach. Bremen decided that the man was not a state highway patrolman, but some sort of county mountie.

  “Come here,” ordered the officer.

  Bremen stopped, still six feet out into the desert. “Why?”

  “Get your ass over here,” said the cop, his voice still flat and low. His hand was on the grip of the revolver now.

  Bremen held his own
hands out, palms visible in a gesture of both acquiescence and conciliation. Also, he wanted the cop to see that his hands were empty. Bremen’s oversized Salvation Army sneakers made small sounds on the soft asphalt as he came around the rear of the patrol car. A mile ahead on the empty road, heat waves rippled and broiled above a mirage of water on tarmac.

  “Assume the position,” said the officer, standing back now and gesturing toward the car’s trunk.

  Bremen stood and blinked a moment, not willing to show the cop that he understood the term too readily. The cop took another step back, gestured impatiently toward the lid of the trunk, and removed his revolver from the holster.

  Bremen leaned forward, moved his legs a bit farther apart, and rested his palms on the trunk. The metal was hot and he had to lift his fingers like a pianist poised to begin.

  The cop stepped forward and, using only his left hand, quickly patted down Bremen’s left side. “Don’t move,” said the officer. He shifted position slightly and used the same hand to pat Bremen’s right side. Bremen could feel the presence of the loaded revolver behind him and the tension in the cop’s body, ready to spring back if Bremen whirled. Instead Bremen continued leaning on the car while the officer stepped back four paces.

  “Turn around.”

  The policeman still held the pistol, but it was no longer aimed directly at Bremen. “That your car back at the Interstate rest stop?”

  Bremen shook his head.

  “Seventy-nine Plymouth?” continued the officer. “Colorado tags MHW 751?”

  Bremen shook his head again.

  The officer’s thin lips twitched ever so slightly. “You don’t seem to have a billfold,” he said. “Any ID? Driver’s license?”

  Thinking that another shake of the head might be considered a provocation, Bremen said, “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Bremen shrugged. He could see his own image in the mirrored glasses—his reed-thin form in the filthy and baggy clothes, khaki shirt torn and unbuttoned now in the heat, his chest pale and shrunken, his face as pale as his chest except for the sunburned nose, cheeks, and forehead. He had paused at that first Colorado gas station minimart to buy a razor and shaving cream, but he’d left both in the trunk of the car. His bare face looked strange to him now, like an old photograph suddenly come upon in an unlikely place.

  “Where are you headed?” asked the cop.

  “West,” said Bremen, taking care not to shrug again. His voice was very raw.

  “Where you coming from?”

  Bremen squinted against the glare. A pickup passed them in a roar and cloud of grit, giving him a second. “Salt Lake was the last place I stayed awhile.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jeremy Goldmann,” Bremen said without a pause.

  “How’d you get way out here on this county road without a car?”

  Bremen made a motion with his hands. “I hitched a ride on an eighteen-wheeler last night. I was sleeping this morning when the guy woke me up and said I had to get out. That was back up the road a ways.”

  The officer holstered his pistol, but did not come closer. “Uh-huh. And I bet you don’t even know what county you’re in, do you, Jeremy Goldstein?”

  “Goldmann,” said Bremen. He shook his head.

  “And you don’t know anything about a stolen car with Colorado plates back at the Interstate rest stop, do you?”

  Bremen did not bother shaking his head again.

  “Well, this state has laws against vagrancy, Mr. Goldstein.”

  Bremen nodded. “I’m not a vagrant, officer. I’m looking for work.”

  The officer nodded slightly. “Get in the back seat.”

  Through his headache and two-day hangover Bremen had been catching glimmers of the man’s thoughts. Flat certainty that this wimpy-looking beanpole was the car thief who had dumped the Colorado Plymouth back at the rest stop. Probably caught a lift to Exit 239 and hiked down this road in the dark, not knowing that the nearest town along it was another thirty-four miles. “In the back,” he said again.

  Bremen sighed and got in the back. There were no door handles back there. The windows had wire mesh rather than glass in them and there was a double-mesh partition between the front seat and back. The gaps in the mesh were so small that Bremen didn’t think that he could get a finger through. It was very hot and the vinyl flooring smelled as if someone had vomited there recently.

  The police officer had gotten in the front and was talking on a radio when a Toyota 4×4 that had been headed east pulled to a stop next to them. A woman leaned out her window. “Howdy, Deputy Collins. Got a live one back there?”

  “How do, Miz Morgan. He’s not too lively right now.”

  The woman peered at Bremen. She had a long thin face with sharp bones angling against skin more sun-beaten than the deputy’s. Her eyes were a color of gray so light as to be almost transparent. Her hair was tied back and seemed to be a dark, not-very-natural red. Bremen guessed her to be in her late forties or early fifties.

  But it was not just her appearance that struck him. Bremen had allowed himself to focus on mindtouch, but there was none. The deputy’s thoughts were there … stolid, half-angry, impatient … and Bremen could even sense the neurobabble from far down the highway and even from the interstate eight miles back, but from the woman, nothing. Or, rather, where there should have been the tumbled mélange of impressions, words, and memories, there was only a loud rasping … a sort of neural white noise, as loud as an old electric fan in a small room. Bremen sensed something within or behind that curtain of mindnoise, but the thoughts were as indistinct as shifting figures on a television screen filled with electronic snow.

  “Couldn’t be you’re arrestin’ the fellow come to answer my hired-man ad, now are you, Howard?” The woman’s voice was surprisingly deep and very self-assured. There was only a hint of banter in her tone.

  The deputy looked up. Bremen saw the sunlight glinting on his glasses as he stared at the woman. The Toyota was higher than the patrol car and the deputy had to lift his head to look at her. “I doubt it, Miz Morgan. This’n is probably the fellow who left a stolen car out to the Interstate late last night. We’ll take him down to the station and send his prints out on the wire.”

  Miz Morgan never looked at the deputy. She continued to squint at Bremen. “What’d you say his name was?”

  “Goldmann,” said Bremen. “Jeremy Goldmann.”

  “Shut up, goddamn you,” snapped the deputy, turning in his seat.

  “By God,” said the woman, “that was the name of the man who wrote answering my ad.” Then, to Bremen: “Where’d you say you saw it? In the Denver paper?”

  “Salt Lake,” said Bremen. He had not eaten in almost twenty-four hours and his head felt very light after the long walk through the darkness and desert sunrise.

  “That’s right. Salt Lake.” She finally looked at the cop. “By God, Howard, you do have my hired man back there. He wrote me last week sayin’ the wages was agreeable to him and sayin’ he was coming out for an interview. Salt Lake. Jeremy Goldmann.”

  The deputy swiveled in the front seat, his gunbelt creaking. The radio rasped and crackled while he thought. “You sure the man’s name was Goldmann, Miz Morgan?”

  “Sure was. How could I forget a Jew name like that? It sorta tickled me, thinking of a Jewish fella working livestock.”

  The deputy tapped the wire mesh. “Well, he’s still probably the one who abandoned the stolen car with Colorado plates.”

  The woman edged the Toyota forward a foot so she could stare down at Bremen. “You drive a stolen car here?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Bremen, wondering when he’d last called someone “ma’am.” “I hitched a ride and the fellow let me out at the last exit.”

  “You tell him you were headed for the Two-M Ranch?” she asked.

  Bremen hesitated only a second. “Yes’m.”

  She backed the Toyota up a few feet. “Deputy, you got my hired h
and back there. He was supposed to be here three days ago. Ask Sheriff Williams if I didn’t say I was waiting for a city fellow to come down to help me with the gelding.”

  Howard hesitated. “I don’t doubt you told Garry, Miz Morgan. I just don’t remember nobody mentioning anybody named Goldmann coming.”

  “I don’t recollect tellin’ Garry his name,” said the woman. She glanced ahead down the highway as if expecting traffic at any second. There was none. “I don’t recollect it being anybody’s business, to tell you the truth, Howard. Now why don’t you let Mr. Goldmann get in with me so I can interview him properly. Or is there a law against walkin’ along county roads these days?”

  Bremen felt Howard’s resolve shifting on uncertain sands. Miz Fayette Morgan was one of the biggest landowners and taxpayers in the county, and Garry—Sheriff Williams—had been out to court her a few times. “I just don’t have a good feeling about this guy,” said Howard, removing his mirrored glasses as if in a tardy gesture of respect toward the lady staring down at him. “I’d feel better if we cleared his name and prints.”

  Miz Fayette Morgan’s lips compressed with impatience. “You do that, Howard. In the meantime you’re detaining a citizen who … as far as I can tell … has done nothing more illegal than admit to hitching a ride. If you keep this attitude up, Mr. Goldmann will think that we act like the fat-slob frontier hillbilly hick cops that we see in the movies. Isn’t that right, Mr. Goldmann?”

  Bremen said nothing. From somewhere down the county road behind them a truck ground up through gears.

  “Make up your mind, Howard,” said Miz Morgan. “I need to get back to the ranch and Mr. Goldmann probably wants to get in touch with his attorney.”

  Howard jumped out, released the door from the outside, and was back behind the wheel before the truck came into view a quarter of a mile behind them. The deputy drove off without an apology.

  “Get in,” said Miz Fayette Morgan.

  Bremen hesitated only a second before going around and climbing up into the Toyota. It was air-conditioned. Miz Morgan cranked up her window and looked at him. This close, Bremen realized how tall she was—at least six-two or six-three unless she was sitting on a stack of phone directories. The truck passed them with a blast of its air horn. Miz Morgan waved at the driver without moving her gaze from Bremen. “You want to know why I told that cargo of cobblers to Howard?” she asked.