Alexander Jablokov - Brain Thief

by Alexander Jablokov

  NOTE; If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  BRAIN THIEF

  Copyright © 2009 by Alexander Jablokov All rights reserved.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC 175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-6172-1

  First Edition: January 2010

  First Mass Market Edition: November 2012

  Printed in the United States of America

  0987654321

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the subset of the Cambridge Science Fiction Writers Workshop who sat down with me to hammer this out: James Cambias, Brett Cox, James Patrick Kelly, Steve Popkes, and Sarah Smith.

  Thanks also to David Hartwell, who took more than the usual amount of time with this, to Martha Millard for her patience, to Stacy Hague-Hill for keeping things on track, and to Ellen Asher for doing her best to fix what still did not work smoothly.

  1

  For Bernal, the message in the cowboy boot finally confirmed that something was wrong. Muriel liked to make her communications to her single employee works of art. The one standing on the windowsill at the end of the hall was an elaborately decorated cowboy boot, complete with spur. In it were three foil-wrapped chocolates, bittersweet, and a 3x5 index card on which was written, in Muriel’s slanted handwriting, “Bernal. What I learned today changes everything. Head over to Ungaro’s lab if you crave an explanation.” Of course he craved an explanation. Muriel was supposed to be at the opening of an exhibit of Renaissance silver at the Cheriton Art Gallery that night, not hanging around the lab of her pet AI researcher.

  Impromptu visits to Muriel-funded research programs were what Bernal got paid for. He’d just gotten back from one, a road trip to South Dakota to deal with some bad feelings about the mammoth project, with a few side visits on the way. Bernal rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day’s drive from the campground at Seneca Lake, and he’d been looking forward to a hot shower and quick sleep in a back bedroom, with business left for the next day.

  But something had seemed off as soon as he had made it into the house, a quality of deliberate silence. He’d run up the curving staircase to the sconce-lit hallway upstairs and said hello to the tailor’s dummy in the military dress jacket that guarded the low bureau with the turned wood bowl on it. A glance into Muriel’s bedroom had increased his unease.

  Clothing lay piled against a radiator. An old wooden soft-drink box, smelling of damp cellar, had been dumped . out, and the toys that had once been stored in it, things like stuffed tigers with green eyes and long-obsolete video games, lay scattered across the dark-red Oriental carpet at the foot of the bed. A doll’s head had rolled under a highboy. It stared demurely at Bernal from beneath long lashes, one eye half closed.

  Found objects, like a wooden shoe form, the numerals 6½ bold black on its side, and a row of glass eyeballs of , various colors, rested on top of door moldings, safe above the mess. Her bedside lamp was an Art Deco Atlas nobly holding up a frosted glass circle with a 40-watt bulb behind it. What looked like the contents of her jewelry box had been poured over his patinaed bronze feet.

  The yellow silk-upholstered daybed was piled with shoe boxes. Dozens of them. He knew that Muriel loved shoes, but this was ridiculous. The entire top layer was new purchases from some store called DEEP. A receipt showed that they had been purchased just that afternoon, and the figure made Bernal’s male eyes bug out.

  He’d worked for Muriel for two years now, and he knew how to judge her mood from the disorder in her private space. This was worse than he’d ever seen it. Something was definitely up with her.

  A suit bag, unzipped and empty, lay on the bed.

  He’d made fun of her for that bag. It usually contained what he called her ninja outfit: fitted black micro-fiber and Kevlar, which she always insisted would come in handy some day if she had to commit a crime. Muriel was somewhere beyond sixty but fit enough to carry the suit off. Accessorized by some usually over-the-top diamonds, the thing actually looked like a real outfit. He understood that she sometimes wore it to the gym. But not to a gallery opening.

  Hanging by the mirror was the gown she’d been prepared to wear, a bronze knee-length. If she’d decided to switch outfits, she’d done it recently.

  When he saw the cowboy boot on the windowsill, he figured he’d have his answer. But all he got were more questions. He ran his fingers through his hair as he reread the card, wondering what she was up to.

  A door slam downstairs made Bernal jump. Just as he was turning from the window to head down there, a flicker of motion outside caught his eye. He pressed his forehead against the glass and peered through the tree branches to the ground.

  A figure in a pink nightgown ran across the lawn, heading toward the garage.

  He recognized Muriel.

  2

  Bernal ran down the stairs and along the hallway toward the kitchen. This hallway was dark, and he didn’t take the time to turn on the light. The rear door was right—

  He tripped over something heavy, windmilled arms, and landed with a crash amid outdoor boots and umbrellas. The pain was shocking. He’d smashed the side of his head and his upper body. He rolled and pushed himself up, favoring his right side. He felt up the wall and found the light switch.

  The light revealed what he had tripped over: a large flowered bag, something he would have thought was much too old-ladyish for Muriel. It was lying right outside the closed hall closet door. Muriel was messy, but she kept her messes private. It was unlike her to leave things like that out in the more visible parts of the house.

  The back door hung open. A cool breeze blew in.

  He ran out through it and up the rear driveway.

  _______

  Muriel’s Audi was inside the dark garage with its door open and keys dangling in the ignition. Its dome light lit up rusty shelves packed with oil cans and cleaning rags.

  He stopped himself from throwing himself into the car, peering behind the seats, under the seats, in the trunk. She wasn’t there. She’d abandoned the car, even though she’d clearly been heading for it.

  The key was turned, but nothing glowed on the dashboard. The thing was dead.

  He swung himself back out of the garage and stopped there. He let the night wash over him. Stop, he told himself. Let it come. A few houses down some teenager played music, nothing but the thumping bass notes making it out. The air had that sweetish smell of long-frozen things rotting at last, making way for new life. Cool breeze shouldered past him on its endless errand. Glowing cirrus revealed the otherwise invisible moon. Dry leaves crackled, and a branch snapped.

  Down the yard, by the fence. Where the hell was Muriel heading?

  It didn’t matter. That was a blocked corner. Her yard was a worse mess than her bedroom, overgrown and savage, hidden behind stockade fences so it did not affront the neighborhood. She probably had forgotten what was back there.

  Bernal was still sucking breath. He could shout or run but not both.

  He ran.

  But there was no one there. Had he imagined it?

  No. There were dark streaks in the gray of the decaying leaves covering the beds. Bernal pushed past the sharp p
oints of gigantic rhododendrons, right up to the smooth boards of the fence. Muriel was pretty old, but maybe, in her panic, she had managed to climb ... he pushed, and found a loose board. How long had she been planning this? He flipped it up and squeezed under.

  He found himself in the opposite of Muriel’s overgrown yard: an expanse of trimmed lawn and mulched flower beds glowing with daffodils. A Tudor mansion loomed overhead.

  Muriel disappeared around the corner of the house, her robe pale in the darkness. He sprinted across the grass after her.

  Tires shrieked on pavement. Bernal came around the corner to catch a glimpse of a car, a Mercedes sedan by the looks of it. The left taillight had a piece of orange tape across a crack. It fishtailed onto the street and vanished. If there was a stop sign or something at the end of the block, maybe he would be able to catch up with her when she .. . no, that was ridiculous. She was gone

  _______

  In the stunning quiet, Bernal heard the breeze blow a branch against a window with a faint click.

  “Hey!” A man ran off the porch and stood next to Bernal. “My car! I didn’t even . . He put down a cast-iron borzoi and felt at his pockets. “He took my keys!”! He looked up at the house. “How the hell am I supposed to get in?”

  “No one’s home?”

  “Nah, they’re all down in Hilton Head. Coming back tomorrow.” He checked his watch. “Today, I guess. Do you know who the hell took my car?”

  He was being remarkably calm about it, Bernal thought. He was a kind of young-old guy, with graying hair but a slim build. He wore white running shoes, gray wool pants, and a sweatshirt from a music school with a picture of a harpsichord on it. The man picked the metal dog back up and cradled it in his arms.

  “Friend of mine,” Bernal said. He decided not to identify Muriel as this guy’s neighbor. No need to cause trouble before he knew what was going on.

  The guy eyed him. “Not a fugitive from, ah, justice, I hope.”

  “She was just in a hurry.”

  To Bernal’s surprise, the guy laughed. “I’ve been there. But it looks to me like you and your friend got my car stolen. Can you help me get it back?”

  “I’d love to. What was the license number?” Bernal let his mind clear. After a moment, he saw a couple of letters, DA. That memory hadn’t had time to get associated with anything, but it had to belong to the car.

  “Come on. You got a phone?”

  “Only in my car.”

  “I really need to use it. This is really annoying.”

  The two of them walked down the street. Damn it, Bernal thought. He had to get rid of this guy and figure out what Muriel was up to.

  His Dodge Ram came into view. The beat-up old red van with the scratch on its side wasn’t a sexy ride, but it carried his gear without attracting attention. He unlocked the door.

  Then what he had seen finally came clear to him. When Muriel had stolen the man’s car, he had run down the stairs, as if interrupted while opening the door. But his keys had been in the car, motor running. And he had come down with a cast-iron dog. He’d carried it so naturally it had seemed like an accessory.

  He’d stolen it. Bernal was suddenly sure. This guy had broken into the house, stolen some stuff, the dog among it, and been finishing up, ready to load the car, when Muriel took off with it.

  “Look,” Bernal said, trying to be reasonable. “I don’t care what the hell you’re up to out here—”

  “ Step away from the car.”

  “What?”

  The guy was all of a sudden sweating and desperate. “I need to go. I need to get out of here. Give me your keys and there’s nothing else that has to happen.”

  “Look, I’d like—”

  Bernal never saw the swing of the iron dog, but pain flared in the side of his head.

  3

  Something slapped his side and he regained consciousness. He lay on his back on someone’s front lawn, staring up at a sky that showed the first hints of morning. He felt around himself in the grass and found what had hit him: a Cheriton Telegraph-Examiner in a clear plastic bag. People still read paper newspapers out here. By the time he managed to sit up, the delivery car was gone.

  He steeled himself for a moment and prodded above his ear with his fingertips. Not much blood, and that had dried. It felt like a surface wound, with no damage to the underlying bone. It could have been worse.

  A timer tripped and the sprinklers came on.

  _______

  He made It back into the house and up to the bathroom before he threw up. His head, which had not felt too bad when he woke up, now swelled and pulsed.

  He felt light, almost weightless. He turned the water in the sink to its hottest, and then scrubbed himself. The bathroom was beautifully tiled, decorated with leaping dolphins. There was a row of giant candles on the windowsill above the tub, a couple, melted deeply enough, with votives frugally inserted.

  He met his own bloodshot brown eyes in the mirror. He hadn’t shaved the previous day, but his beard tended to be so fine that it didn’t really matter.

  He was alive. Once again, he was alive.

  Blood had gotten on the collar of his teal windbreaker. The damn thing was new, a gift from his mother. He shrugged it off, tried to clean it, but quickly gave up. He found his bag and pulled out his old bomber jacket, this one from a girlfriend, and put that on instead. He looked longingly at the shower he had been heading toward so many hours before, but that would have to wait.

  What had Muriel said in her note? “Head over to Ungaro’s lab if you crave an explanation.”

  He’d have to . .. damn it. His van. That lunatic with the iron borzoi had stolen it. He walked to the front of the house, still dabbing his wet hair with a towel, to look out at the street.

  The red Dodge Ram stood exactly where he had left it.

  _______

  He walked around it slowly. Had he really missed it on his way back to Muriel’s house?

  He didn’t think so. He thought the space had been empty, but he couldn’t be sure. The unimpeachable redness and vanness in front of him right now polluted his knowledge of himself.

  He had a spare key in his wallet, but the driver’s door wasn’t even locked. And his keys hung in the ignition. He swung himself up into the seat.

  Sitting in the passenger seat next to him, neatly belted in, was a cast-iron borzoi doorstop, with a yellow Post-1 it sticking up from its tail. On it was one word, “Sorry,” in dark cursive. It did not look like a man’s handwriting.

  Real borzois rarely look intelligent, but this one gave him a look of sly complicity. Bernal supposed a paint chip had been knocked off by the impact with his head.

  _______

  Bernal had started going to South Dakota after the citizens of Evanston burned Muriel in effigy.

  He and Muriel had watched the video of the proceedings in her living room. He’d gotten it from a station in Billings, and it was much higher resolution than the tiny one available online. People gathered along a stretch of highway and hoisted a manikin dressed in a ball gown on a cherry picker. They doused it with the gasoline/ ethanol mixture that helped support the local economy, and set fire to it. The clothing burned quickly, but the smooth plastic didn’t catch, finally leaving a naked manikin dangling on its gibbet, black streaks of melted eyelashes on its face, plastic hair smoldering. First one shoe fell off, then the other. Eventually, the crowd got back in their cars and drove home. The cherry picker swung and deposited Muriel’s effigy in the back of a pickup.

  “Someone went through the trouble to make it recognizably me.” Muriel scanned back and went through the scene frame by frame. “That’s a Balenciaga ball gown, vintage, maybe twenty-five years old. They must have a hell of a consignment shop in Evanston. I’d definitely wear it, given the right occasion. But, Jesus, not with those shoes. I mean, they aren’t bad shoes, can’t focus close enough to be sure, but they look like Charles Davids. Decent for an afternoon get-together, maybe a trip to the mall, b
ut not for evening wear. And don’t get me started on those Wal-Mart hose.. .

  She crossed her legs with an expensive whisper and pouted.

  “They really don’t like my mammoth idea.”

  “Nope. If possible, they like it even less than having their lands turned over to bison in that Buffalo Commons proposal a few years back.”

  “Bison.” Muriel snorted. “Those ruminants-come-lately? Please. Some of the most boring mammals ever evolved. Mammoths or nothing.”

  Muriel had been financing a program to use bootleg mammoth DNA from a defunct South Korean lab, implanted into African elephant ova, to recreate mammoths and release them on the depopulated Great Plains. She’d expected some local resistance but not an actual riot.

  So Bernal had repeatedly visited the small towns along the strips of asphalt to work things out. Bernal was naturally better at ideas and things than at people, but he had learned a few simple heuristics from Muriel—mirroring people’s postures, flattering them, doing them small favors so that they felt obliged to you—and found that they worked for him. Muriel had originally hired him for logistics and operations, but had found that he was good at getting people to understand and agree to her grandiose plans. Over the past year he’d spent a lot of time shivering on bleachers above floodlit high school football fields, packing in hot dishes in church basements, hunting prairie dogs on the rez with angry young Oglala Sioux, handing down tools while politically significant people ranted at him from under pickup trucks with transmission problems.

  But the place was emptying out, and no one could really deny that. A vast region in the center of the country had dropped below the six-people-per-square-miie standard that the 19th century had defined as “frontier.” And a frontier required tenacity, imagination, and a willingness to take risks, or so Bernal portrayed it. He reconstructed Muriel’s vision as he talked with people. African elephants were under extreme environmental pressure on their native continent, but their genes might run free on the northern plains of North America. He worked out pricing schemes to give them water, migration routes that would silhouette them against the sky for compelling images, roles for American Indians, whites, and more recent Hispanic and Orthodox Jewish immigrants as hunters, herders, trainers, and nomads. Every time a light went on in someone’s eyes, or two seemingly unrelated incentives came into alignment, Bernal felt joy. He was a man with a job suited to talents he hadn’t known he possessed.