Skinner

by Charlie Huston

  “Away from Skinner.”

  “Soonest possible. Yes.”

  “Terrence was involved.”

  “Money. Pipeline services. Innate instability, finally manifest. He couldn’t leave well enough alone. It wasn’t sufficient that Kestrel has become a dominant influence in national security. He needed, I think, to see his own ideas about international security validated. His whole a safer world for a safer nation thing. As much as I learned from the man, he was never wholly stable. Deeply influential on my thinking, but far too radical in his own. He was trying to manipulate events. Create an outcome that would prove some of his theories. Create a market for himself. He wanted to be indispensable. Build a new Kestrel, perhaps. Very tangled. When you come back, I’d love for you to take a look. See if you can sort out how he managed it all. As it is, we’ll be years discovering all the breaches he created.”

  “Terrence wanted money.”

  “That. Yes. And, I fancy, to be right. His Cassandra credentials fully established.”

  “So he created the attack.”

  “I think it will emerge that he enabled certain aspects. Not that his involvement will ever come to public light. In some ways he achieved his goal. He’ll be remembered by many people as one of the few men who saw the future of security with any degree of clarity. For all his imagination he was always a great realist. Unromantic. It’s what I appreciated about him from our first meeting. Clear eyed. Cold blooded. But just too perverse in the long run.”

  Something beeps at the other end of the line.

  Jae squints.

  “Are you taping this?”

  Clicks, mouse clicks.

  “No. The other conversation I mentioned. Which has ended. We should get off the phone.”

  “Who was Skinner talking to?”

  “Haven.”

  “Haven.”

  “He’s on the train. Keeping an eye on things. Has been. Watching.”

  “Skinner knows when people are watching him.”

  “People other than Haven. In any case. Prepare yourself. Tell him the contract is resolved. You don’t need him. Physically separate from him. As soon as travel allows. In Lund if possible. Copenhagen otherwise. But avoid the boat train.”

  “Boat train?”

  “Don’t cross water with him, Jae. That will be too far. We need to shut this operation down. I’m off now. I’ve already got a backlog of calls from congresspeople wanting to be briefed. Someone has to tell them what to say when the camera light turns red.”

  Click. Dead line. Jae puts the phone down, looks at the gun. Thinks about picking it up but chooses her pants instead. She has her pants on, and her tank top, when she hears the door latch. By the time the door has opened and Skinner has begun to step into the room, she is holding the gun, at her side, pointed at the floor.

  “Cross called.”

  She put herself very close to the wall. No room to move, run.

  “He said the job is over.”

  Skinner nods.

  “I’ve been told the same thing.”

  He steps in and closes the door.

  “I’ll get my things.”

  His eyes go to the floor, find one of his socks. He squats to pick it up, looking up when Jae speaks again.

  “Am I safe?”

  He holds the black sock, and looks down to find the its mate.

  “Once I leave. Probably.”

  She can see the sock, shifts her foot so that her toes point at it.

  “There.”

  He finds it, picks it up, drops to his bottom on the floor, and begins unlacing his boots.

  “Thanks.”

  Jae has always wondered at the heaviness of guns. This one feels like it might pull her arm from her shoulder.

  “They were following us from Nevada.”

  Skinner has his boots off, rucking one of the socks before slipping it on his foot.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s going to fall on the anarchists.”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “By Haven?”

  He snugs the first sock past his ankle, picks up the other.

  “Yes.”

  Haven on this train. While she was having sex with Skinner. Her hand tightens on the gun.

  “Terrence was helping them. Improving his position. Cross says.”

  Skinner puts on a boot, jerks the laces.

  “Does Cross know about the Montmartre coordinates?”

  “He seems to know we were going to Paris. I don’t know if he knows specifically about Montmartre.”

  He double-knots his laces. It took a while, she remembers, for him to undo the knots in the dark. Two hours ago, three. Ages ago.

  “So?”

  He has the second boot in his hand, looks at it.

  “I have no contract. No asset. They want me to go away.”

  He puts on the boot, laces it up, another double knot.

  “You?”

  “Cross has other things for me to do.”

  Skinner brings his knees up, loops his arms around them.

  “Good.”

  Jae raises the gun, holding it on her hand, looking at it.

  “But I don’t want to work for Cross.”

  She steps toward him.

  “I want to hire you to protect me.”

  She offers him the gun.

  “I want to be your asset.”

  He’s looking at the gun.

  “Haven says they want me to go away. And everything will be fine.”

  The gun is getting heavier in her hand.

  “Cross told me to get away from you. Soonest. Said I shouldn’t cross water with you.”

  He touches his lower lip with a thumbnail.

  “Yes. Well, Haven was lying to me. He has other concerns. But the people with him, they’re going to try to kill me no matter what I do. I think they’re probably good at it. And really, it’s the only reason Cross agreed to let me protect you. To get me into the open.”

  “Skinner.”

  Brown eyes leave the gun, look up at her.

  “Jae.”

  “Do you accept the contract?”

  “I’m expensive.”

  “We’ll deal with that later.”

  “I don’t really care about the money.”

  He takes the gun from her hand.

  “Where are we going?”

  She scrunches her toes, standing right in front of him, looking down, as he inspects the gun, checks the safety, feels the weight, opens the breech to be certain she hasn’t chambered a round in his absence.

  “We’re going to Montmartre to find out what the fuck Terrence wanted us to see. Find out who really attacked West-Tebrum. Find what the fuck is going on and why the old man couldn’t just tell us about it and ask for our help.”

  Skinner leans forward, shifting his weight to rise.

  “Good.”

  Jae places a hand on his shoulder, leans into him, pushing him back onto the floor, lowering herself.

  “Don’t get up.”

  In a hurry this time. There’s a station ahead somewhere, a change of trains. She tells him not to bother with his laces, so he does little more than put the gun down and push some bits of clothing out of the way.

  Pulling into Lund, her gear stowed in her backpack, all clothing back in place, something like dawn hovering below the horizon, she watches him tuck the pistol away at the small of his back, sees how his jacket and trench coat drape to hide it, a subtlety of stitching, expensive, she imagines. And, that thing still pressing from inside her mind, she asks a question that got lost while they were tangled on the floor.

  “How come you don’t know when Haven is watching you?”

  The train is slowing, they can hear people in the corridor. The shade is up, and as they come abreast of the platform they can see that it is more densely packed than Central Station was. It looks dangerous, a few more bodies might be just enough to force people over the edge and onto the tracks. Their conne
ction is scheduled to leave in twenty minutes. They will struggle to make it.

  “Skinner?”

  He turns from the window, crosses to the door, undoes the safety bolt, hand on the latch.

  “He’s always been able to watch me. I’m not sure why.”

  He turns the latch.

  “But he’s my brother.”

  He opens the door, line of people shuffling past, long wait for the exit at the end of the car, and he looks at her.

  “So that might have something to do with it.”

  implications of the gun

  IN EVERY EXPERIMENT there is a control.

  Skinner is still not certain which he was. Experiment or control. Skinner in the basement, pure environment that his parents could manipulate and filter. Haven upstairs, living a normal life. Kids. Friends. School. Somehow each arrived at the same result. Not that their parents were intent on creating killers. They just wanted to know what would happen. They were scientists, mentally myopic, singularly curious about how behavior was created. Autistic.

  The first pregnancy had been unexpected. They’d always used rigorous birth control. Diagnosed in an era that predated subtleties like Asperger’s syndrome, neither had experienced an easy childhood. For their father, it was a minefield of social disasters and educational mismanagement typical to such cases, while, for their mother, it served as a pretext for savage physical abuse from her own mother. Knowing there was some chance they could pass their autism on to any children they might have, they chose not to have any children. Besides, even if that risk had not existed, they lacked any desire to reproduce. They had discovered an odd overlap in their stunted empathies that allowed them a mysterious degree of intimacy, but that didn’t necessarily mean they could find a similar range of affection for a child. Also they enjoyed their work. Clinical radical behaviorism was a lens that focused the world. Helped them to understand why people did what they did, and equipped them to mimic some of those behaviors. A child would be a distraction. But there was a failure in the system and she became pregnant, and, as they thought about it, they began to see ways a child could fit quite seamlessly into the body of their work. Though, in a perfect world, two children would be necessary. Born in rapid succession, and of the same gender. That was the ideal scenario. Fortune favored them, to that extent.

  There were details Skinner’s mother was unwilling to share when he spoke with her many years later. He knows that one of the pregnancies took place in secret. His father had been pre-med, an envisioned career as a brain surgeon undermined by an inherent clumsiness. The idea of tending a pregnancy and managing a birth didn’t intimidate either of them in the least. The other pregnancy was quite public, Skinner’s mother suffering through the intimacies of touch and inquisition that come with bearing a child in the open. But she would not reveal which child came first.

  One above. One below. One with access to playgrounds, kids from around the corner, dogs, bicycles, skinned knees, climbing trees, girls at the next desk, swimming lessons, libraries, Disney movies, the beach, after school cartoons, Keds, and whatever else his parents could divine as being essential to a normal upbringing. The other raised with sunlamps, vitamin supplements, climbing obstacles, pictures of children and animals, shins barked on the many sharp corners of the box, books, more books, educational films and documentaries screened on his VCR, morning calisthenics, meditation, constant introduction and removal of stimulus to encourage or discourage behaviors in a precise measure meant to result in a child as observably normal as his brother upstairs.

  It made perfect sense to them. Neither child was abused in any manner that their mother would have recognized from her own brutal upbringing. Both enjoyed nutritious and varied diets. Both had exercise, mental and imaginative stimulation. Their educations were, for the one, the best the public schools system could provide, and, for the other, far exceeding in variety and depth anything that could have been made available through any public resource. Though entirely different, both of their boys were afforded safe and nurturing environments in which to grow. Though, by necessity, one received more attention than the other. Much more. By orders of magnitude.

  They missed it, of course, the neglect inherent in the experiment. Their autism-blunted empathy caused them to equate societal normalcy with attention. There was a physical wall between themselves and Skinner, while no such wall existed for Haven. How could they possibly be favoring the one in the box? But it was the wall, Skinner’s mother told him, that created that increased attention, and, if she was to be honest, affection. He required more of their time, that much was obvious. But the wall of scratched and smudged Plexiglas was such an excellent emotional buffer, placing him at an enforced distance; it made it easier for them to be with him. When it came time to go upstairs, where they had banned for themselves use of the tools of radical behaviorism that they employed with Skinner, they found Haven’s storms of utterly typical childhood emotions devastating. They were with him in immediate physical proximity, but far from present, withdrawing into the behavior shells neither of them had been able to shed in adulthood. The greatest shock of becoming parents turned out to be the extent to which it revealed themselves to themselves. How little their understanding of human behavior had actually changed them as humans.

  The experiment devolved.

  Putting Haven up for adoption was a difficult process. Technically difficult. Proving that they were unworthy parents was unexpectedly trying. They assumed, logically, that the simple fact that they no longer felt competent or capable of raising the boy and were willing to make him a ward of the state was sufficient evidence to prove their lack of fitness. Not so. It required months of interviews, intrusions, counseling that abraded both their symptomatic sensitivities and professional sensibilities. Had these people no understanding of why human beings act the way they do? But, in the end, they took Haven away. Surely there would be a good home for a healthy, handsome, personable boy, preadolescent or not. In any case, he’d manage. They had managed, after all. And Skinner was still there, in the box, thriving. So much left to learn. But no time left in which to learn it. A side effect of the prying into their lives, someone had detected an oddness that extended beyond the parents’ autism-ascribed behavior. Possibly there had been some cues picked up from their own behavior, or, more probably, something seen when all those people were tramping through the house to inspect the conditions in which Haven was being raised; too many dishes in the sink, laundry, the overstuffed pantry, an unusually placed exhaust fan rising from the blacked-out basement window. In any case, someone had discovered, or at least theorized, the existence of Skinner. And they came back for him. Pulled him out from under his pink sky and hauled him out into the infinite blue.

  Heartbreak, Skinner’s mother said when they met again, is a term I’m not comfortable with. Real heartbreak is a mortal condition, isn’t it? So why apply it to something as ephemeral as emotion. Emotions are biological, chemical, and nothing to do with the heart. I understand why people say heartbreak, but it makes me squirm in my seat. Literally squirm. To say your father and I were heartbroken when you were taken away would be inaccurate. But we were at a great loss. I was confused for some time. Listless. I barely remember the criminal proceedings. I recall filling a paper with your names, writing it, Joel, over and over again. And, even though we’d given both of you the same name, I knew it was yours I was writing. But I can’t say that I was heartbroken. When your father died, that was heartbreak. Myocardial infarction. A genuine broken heart. But just because it happened the day they told us we’d never be allowed to see you again, I don’t think that means he was heartbroken because of you. He just had a flawed heart. You can inherit such a thing. You should have yours examined.

  It had been a difficult meeting.

  “Your parents experimented on you.”

  The connecting train from Lund to Copenhagen is overfull. Seat assignments are no longer relevant. Boarding, after forcing themselves through the scrum on t
he platform, Skinner and Jae had been unable to determine if their reserved first-class seats existed at all. They stand close, in an aisle between the facing rows of seats along each wall of the packed commuter rail car. The mood, remarkably, is not murderous.

  Skinner is looking at his shoes. A position that has not altered since he began giving an abbreviated account of his childhood to Jae.

  “I was an experiment. Part of an experiment. Haven was the other part.”

  Jae has had to hunch forward to be able to hear him. They do not stand out in the car, there is a great deal of hushed conversation, attempts at privacy.

  “Skinner.”

  He’s still looking at his shoes.

  She jabs him with her fingers.

  “Skinner.”

  He looks at her, and she nods her head, slowly, acknowledging something he has not said aloud.

  “That is some very fucked up shit.”

  He starts to nod, but it changes to a slight shake, eyes floating sideways, remembering.

  “Yes, I suppose. But it just feels like normal to me.”

  She extends a forefinger, taps his wrist.

  “Are you autistic?”

  He squints, purses his lips.

  “I have several symptoms that appear on the autism spectrum. But it’s hard to say which of my symptoms might be genetic and which are from the box. I have trouble with affect, interpreting emotion. Understanding my own. I have intense focus. Ability to isolate interests, obsessively. My prosody, when I don’t concentrate, becomes odd, flat, inflectionless. Non sequiturs slip out.”

  He rubs the side of his nose with his thumb.

  “I also have very high visual and aural acuity. Low empathy. Helpful. With my work.”

  “Low empathy. I guess that would be helpful.”

  Her fingertip is still on his wrist, and Skinner places one of his own on top of it, brings his eyes back to her face. It’s getting harder to look at her face. This is the danger of protecting things. A maxim in its own right. The more you invest in protecting an asset, the greater its value becomes.

  He presses down on her fingertip.