Alexander Jablokov - Brain Thief

by Alexander Jablokov

  There was the shoe form with the black 6V2, and a row of glass eyeballs, this time on the windowsill.

  And a coffee cup, Muriel’s favorite china, stood next to the daybed. He could see the steam coming off it. Once she had made her decision, Naomi had poured Muriel a cup and brought it in here.

  It took a surprising amount of effort to move, as if he were stuck there, as motionless and still as the rest of the room. Even the traffic sounds from outside were muffled.

  This was Muriel’s desk. Maybe that could actually be made to mean something. Bernal bent and pulled open a drawer. Crammed with papers, opened but unemptied envelopes, paperweights. Nothing else. Muriel had always hated him poking around in her papers. He figured it was because she was embarrassed by how much undealt-with crap she kept.

  The warbling bleert of an old dial-up modem jerked Bernal out of his seat. It switched to its hiss as something on the other end connected.

  Naomi had really made the Connoisseur lower his standards. Bernal could see a phone handset in carnal congress with a 300 baud Hayes modem, a DECWriter

  II printer with fanfold paper spilling from it, what looked like a convenience store surveillance camera, and a field-phone setup, with a Weber-grill-sized antenna held up by a folding aluminum lawn chair with dangling webbing.

  The print head rattled its way across the classic green-and-white fanfold paper, paused and made an oddly hesitant noise, then hummed back, coming to a stop with a little bump. The tractor pulled the paper up a line.

  STAY OUT OP MY DESK

  Someone had had trouble finding a ribbon with enough ink left in it. The letters were pale and fuzzy. But he could read them.

  SIT DOWN SO I CAN SEE YOU

  fie hesitated.

  PLEASE

  Charis would have told him to get the hell out of there, and she would have been right. It was stupid. He was alone in here with .. . something. That was no guarantee that it was anything like Muriel.

  THEYRE TRYING TO REMOVE ME NO TIME

  He stepped back to the chair and sat. The surveillance camera stared at him.

  I CAN HEAR YOU

  TELL ME WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

  MOST IMPORTANT FIRST YOU KNOW THE DRILL

  “Where are you?” he said. “What happened to you?”

  I DONT KNOW WEIRD ALIVE SPILLVAGENS A LOON BUT TOONING SEEMS TO WORK MY MIND SURVIVED BEING

  The typing stopped.

  Even after a few moments, he’d starting thinking of that archaic pounding as having the tones of Muriel’s voice, so the silence was piercing. He couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he sat, barely able to breathe.

  Someone had picked up on the other phone or something. He heard the mournful song of the audio code handshaking again, the hiss, and then she was back.

  PAIN IN THE

  ASS SORRY

  PRETEND I EXIST PLEASE

  IT WILL MAKE THINGS A WHOLE LOT EASIER

  For an instant it really was as if she was there, lying back on the daybed, asking him for an explanation while he fumbled through his notes about ICBM silos or basalt obelisks being raised in a dry Nevada playa or whatever extravagantly arbitrary project had most recently captured her attention. In a minute she would ask him to—

  COULD YOU REFILL MY COFFEE fOR ME

  “Sure.” He was already getting up.

  ASK A QUESTION ILL ANSWER WHILE YOU REFRESH

  “Ah . . .” He didn’t know if it was his question that had made her vanish. She had been discussing how she had survived decapitation. Perhaps he should focus on more immediately practical topics. “Do you know where Hesketh is now and what its plans are?”

  GOOD QUESTION

  ASK NAOMI WHAT MADELINE DID AFTER PAULS FUNERAL

  He picked up the still-full cup and carried it carefully out of the room. If she wanted to pretend she had actually drunk it, he’d play along. He heard the rattle of the printer behind him.

  Naomi moved about the kitchen, pushing things in and out of alignment, running a kitchen towel over a drain board as dry as that Nevada playa. She moved silently, and he realized she had taken off her jangling bracelets and put on soft slippers.

  “She says she would like another cup of coffee,” Bernal said.

  “She must have been waiting for you,” Naomi whispered. “That big stupid thing, it’s been hooked up for a day but hasn’t done a thing. She needed to talk to you. I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

  “No need. She told me to ask what happened to Madeline after Paul’s funeral.”

  “Oh. Oh my. Give me that cup. I have some fresh here.”

  She emptied Muriel’s cup into the sink and refilled it from a carafe, as if Muriel would notice that the coffee wasn’t fresh.

  “Madeline really was beautiful at the funeral. And seemed completely calm, as if she had come down from some higher place to comfort us in our affliction. I remember her walking out into the sun, not looking back.

  “Her mother had had roof work done at their house, and it seems there was some flashing left over. When Madeline got home from the funeral, she took a file and sharpened that flashing to a razor edge. Then she took a bunch of spackle buckets, filled them with sand, and hung them from the garage door. She disabled the interlock that caused the door to go back up when it hit something and attached her little razor to the bottom of the door. Then she pushed the automatic garage door opener and lay face down on the driveway. The door came down and didn’t stop. The heavy buckets pushed the sharp edge of the flashing against her neck.

  “But her mother came home unexpectedly. She managed to get a car jack under the door and pry it up. Madeline was all bloody and cut up, but the flashing had not worked its way between her vertebrae. She was in the hospital for some time, but there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage.”

  “She came back, all right,” Bernal said. He took the cup. “How did Muriel get you to set up that room in there? Not just what you said, the dress.”

  “I got a note from her on a snow globe someone left on my front steps. It took me and Rennie to a bunch of old computer stuff someone had dumped into a drainage ditch. He hauled it out, complaining the whole time about thorns, mud, all sorts of stuff. But it was all good, wherever it came from, and we brought it here and hooked it up and it worked. But it took you to get her to communicate through it. It’s always a fragile channel. No guarantees.”

  The Teletype was still printing when he returned to the bedroom. He set the coffee cup down next to the daybed and pulled off the dangling section of printout.

  HESKETH PROCESSING IS HEADS FROM LONG VOYAGE YOU KNOW THIS

  HUNTED MORE HEADS GOT ONE YOU KNOW THIS TOO SOMEONE HAS BEEN HELPING IT A HUMAN ACOLYTE HESKETH COMMUNICATES WITH ACOLYTE I INTERFERE ADD COMMENTS AND COMMANDS ACOLYTE CANNOT DISTINGUISH

  THATS HOW I CAN SEND MESSAGES AND AFFECT ACTIVITIES

  THATS HOW I ORDERED THESE DEVICES TO BE PLACED HERE

  HESKETH SEES ME AS AN ABERRANT MENTAL STATE AND WANTS TO ELIMINATE

  MY PERCEPTION IS LIMITED

  I DO NOT KNOW IDENTITY OE ACOLYTE

  I DO NOT KNOW MY CURRENT LOCATION

  HESKETHS PERCEPTIONS ARE SHUT DOWN AND WE ARE CONCEALED

  HESKETH WANTS TO ESCAPE THE EARTH

  I HAVE NO INTEREST IN GOING TO SPACE

  I DONT BELIEVE ANYONE REALLY DOES

  ARE YOU THERE

  “I’m here.” Bernal set the coffee down, making sure it made a clink that she could hear, and sat back down in the chair. “Do you think Madeline is the acolyte? Is she behind this?”

  I WANTED TO TALK TO HER THAT NIGHT I THOUGHT SHE WAS GOING TO BECOME PART OE HESKETH VOLUNTARY INVOLUNTARY I DIDNT KNOW

  BUT INSTEAD I ENDED UP IN HESKETH

  “Did Madeline kill you?”

  I DONT REMEMBER HOW IT HAPPENED MEMORY WONT COME

  That actually made sense, Bernal thought. The hippocampus took some time to consolidate short-term memory. He supposed getting beheaded and having your brain flash
-frozen might disrupt the process.

  DID I LIKE FLAN

  “What?”

  BEEORE DID I LIKE IT BEEORE WHEN I WAS

  “I ... I don’t remember.” He spoke quickly. It seemed important to keep her from admitting to herself that she was no longer alive. “Why?”

  YOU NEVER PAY ENOUGH ATTENTION BERNAL

  SOMETIMES I DISAPPEAR

  I THINK ABOUT IT NOW EGG YOLKS CREAM VANILLA I DISAPPEAR THINKING ABOUT IT

  WHO WILL KNOW IF I DISAPPEAR

  PAY ATTENTION SO I DONT DISAPPEAR

  I THINK THE FLAN COMES EROM SOMEONE ELSE

  SOMEONE ELSE IN

  A long pause.

  The door opened behind him, and Naomi stepped in. The room filled with the scent of perfume.

  It was the scent Muriel had always worn. He’d never known the name of it, but it was subtle and distinct.

  For an instant he really did almost see her, in that dress, those shoes, ready to reach for her coffee and take another sip before telling him what she wanted him to do next.

  Naomi put the scent-soaked cloth away. “I’m sorry. I just wanted her to feel real. Is she still talking?”

  “I don’t know.” He was annoyed at Naomi’s presence but knew that was unfair. She had as much right to feel Muriel’s presence as he did.

  He’d seen her headless body stuffed into the trunk of a car, and here he was, wishing and believing she was still alive.

  He knew what happened to people in stories who succeeded in getting that particular wish granted.

  PAUL I

  A pause.

  BERNAL IM SORRY BERNAL

  “There’s no time,” Bernal said gently. “We can talk about it later.”

  THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING

  BERNAL

  I DO KNOW THE NEXT PLAN

  PLAN IS TO REMOVE ME PROM HESKETH

  I AM NOTHING BUT A PROBLEM POR HESKETH

  “How?” Bernal said. “Has Hesketh thought about how . . . ?”

  PHYSICALLY

  HESKETH WILL BE OPENED UP AND

  Pause.

  THERE HAVE BEEN DIFFICULTIES

  I OWE MY SURVIVAL TO DIFFICULTIES HOW TO KEEP HESKETH FUNCTIONING WHILE REMOVING ME

  AN INTERESTING TECHNICAL PROBLEM

  UMBRELLA

  Bernal stared at the printer, wondering if she had finally vanished. Or perhaps images from another mind were infecting hers beyond repair. Eventually, he supposed, it was inevitable that she disappear. Hesketh would have its way with her in the end.

  LOOK FOR THE UMBRELLA MY UMBRELLA I DISGUISED THE HERF GUN NO ONE WILL RECOGNIZE IT

  LOOK FOR IT AND YOU WILL FIND HESKETH

  AND BE ABLE TO DESTROY IT

  I DONT REMEMBER BUT KNOW I HAD IT WITH ME THAT NIGHT

  DESTROY US

  DESTROY US ALL

  PUT AN END TO IT

  This time the pause stretched. One minute. Two. He found himself looking at his cell phone, watching the numbers change.

  Three minutes.

  ILL HAVE TO REACH YOU SOME OTHER

  The phone rang in his hands.

  He fumbled to answer it, almost dropping it. “Hello?”

  “Bernal.” It was Patricia. She was sobbing so hard that it took him a few minutes to even begin to figure out what she was talking about.

  “I need ... your help,” Patricia said. “Ignaz has locked me in here. He’s going to come back and then ... I don’t know what he’s going to do.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the yard. Ignacio’s yard. Is there any way for you to get in?”

  “I think there is. I’ll be right there.”

  Bernal grabbed the printout, folded it up, and put it in his pocket. Then, with a vague idea forming in his head, he knelt and picked up the sardonic doll’s head under the highboy.

  “Take it,” Naomi said. “If you need it.” She sat down where Bernal had been. “If anything happens with Muriel, anything at all, you call me. I’ll be right here. If she communicates again, I will know it.”

  “I’ll call,” he said. “No matter what happens, bad or good. I’ll call because you’re the only person who could possibly understand what I’m talking about.”

  34

  Bernal’s hand slipped out from under him, and he almost bashed his chin against a chunk of concrete. He paused, sucked air, and then felt at what should have been a secure handhold. It was slick. Blood?

  He was impressed by how black it looked in the light of the sky. But where was it coming from? He felt at the slab of concrete that he’d slipped on. Not blood. The slab was covered with oil. Looked like Ignacio’s had a toxic-waste problem. If he lived through this, he’d have to report them to DEP. . .

  The gully he’d seen the other day proved a more difficult route up into the yard than it looked from below. Bernal pulled himself up past the shattered remains of a concrete pipe. Two concrete-and-gravel footings flanked the gully, half out of the ground. There was just enough room under the fence for Bernal to crawl through.

  Ignacio stood at the edge of the hole, staring down at him.

  Bernal gasped and jerked. Sharp wire ends jabbed his back.

  Boots. Just a pair of yellow wellies with one broken loop, standing along the fence. The things wouldn’t have fit a ten-year-old. Now he saw a bunch of other boots, from battered leather work boots to a pair of bright red thigh-high stilettos abandoned by some dominatrix, standing in a row along the fence next to some jacks, left at various heights when the cars they were intended to lift had been abandoned. No Ignacio. But the wellies stood firm, as if their former wearer had been assumed bodily into heaven.

  The lot itself was silent. And dark. Bernal stood and blinked, willing his eyes to see better. He had brought an LED headlamp, but it was too risky to turn it on. The lamp’s glow would be visible down in the parking lot and out on the highway. He could imagine some sleepless businessman on the red-eye from LA pressing his forehead against the window as they dropped toward Logan, seeing the light, and wondering “Hey, I wonder who that is, breaking into Ignacio’s junkyard?” The sky glowed above, and that would have to be enough.

  Racks of car parts bulked dark above him. As he walked, they slowly resolved themselves, developing edges of protruding bumpers and door panels, alternators with cables braided together like decorative garlands of onions, crankshafts, wheel rims. He started to orient himself and figure out how to move through the yard. Pretty soon he was striding quickly along.

  He bumped his head painfully against a metal edge. LEDs in a chrome wheel cover blinked merrily, brought back to life by the impact, then went dark.

  Following the instructions Patricia had choked out to him, he counted aisles and turns. There it was: Ignacio’s mobile home. It rested on high cinder-block footings. Maybe the yard flooded in the spring. He’d welded some kind of decorations on the corners, and cables led up into the surrounding racks. The footings weren’t that stable, then. Ignacio had seen the need for bracing. Staying here was probably the only way he felt he could maintain the security of his yard and his drug trade.

  The door spilled light and Ignacio strode down the stairs and into the yard. Bernal crouched down behind what he recognized as Patricia’s own tow rig. Ignacio did not see him. He got into his black SUV and drove off.

  _______

  A light was on in the trailer. And he heard someone sobbing.

  “Patricia?” Bernal said. “Is that you?”

  A pause. “Who the hell is that?”

  “Bernal.”

  “Who?”

  He hadn’t been expecting that. “Bernal Haydon-Rumi. You called me—”

  “Go away.”

  “But you—”

  “Go away!”

  Bernal grabbed the door handle. The door was locked. He rattled it, but nothing gave. Damn it! What was she pulling?

  “Patricia. You need help.”

  Now she didn’t say anything.

  He searched the area around th
e trailer but found nothing useful. He forced himself back into the dark alleyways and examined the shelving. He thought he heard sounds, things moving deep in the shelves. Rats? Just weight shifting? Or actual active machinery? He listened harder but now heard nothing.

  There. A door. An old car door with chrome trim. He grabbed the chrome, pulled. The door looked beat, but the chrome hung on. Objects in movies were always so much more cooperative than they actually turned out to be in reality. He got his fingernails under the chrome and braced himself against the shelves. Finally it came loose, not all at once, but slowly and infuriatingly, refusing to give him any emotional satisfaction.

  Bernal ran back to the trailer with his jimmy. This time it did work the way it was supposed to. He’d spent a few weeks at a boring job reorganizing phone information at a mail-order call center in Wichita and learning about lock picking from a series of animations an MIT student working for the summer had put together the previous year. He didn’t really manage to pull much out of the call information, but he did learn about how to feel the binding in various types of locks.

  The trailer door resisted for only a few seconds, then popped open.

  35

  Inside, the trailer was larger than he had expected. The living room was dominated by a sectional sofa at a finicky orientation thirty degrees off from the walls. A TV screen dominated one wall.

  The walls were hung with landscapes. Watercolors, Bernal thought. He brought his nose up to one, a scene of a brook and a curved stone bridge. “Kuepner” it said. “Hopelessly sentimental,” Bernal murmured to himself. Hitler had started out as a watercolorist, so he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.

  What looked like a samurai sword hung above a gas fireplace.

  Salvage from abandoned cars was piled on the sofa. Golf clubs, with graphite shafts and titanium heads as complex as the heads of late-medieval maces. Garment bags spilling suits and shoes. Umbrellas. Wrapped presents with the bows still on them.

  . . . Umbrellas. What had Muriel said? Look for an umbrella.

  Was he truly insane for paying attention to what that DECWriter had told Him?