Dead Space: Catalyst

by Evenson, Brian

  But for Istvan, whatever he did would never be enough. There would always be something more to do, something left to be done.

  “What was that?” asked Henry beside him.

  “What?” he asked listlessly, hardly bothering to look around.

  “I thought I saw something,” said Henry. “There, behind us.” He shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, “I’m jumpy.”

  They kept going, past the colony’s headquarters, and down Luna Avenue toward their neighborhood. Jensi felt like his connection to his brother was a thread stretching all the way back to his old apartment, his old neighborhood, a thread growing thinner and thinner and now in danger of snapping. They passed at last into their neighborhood.

  Before they knew it they were at Jensi’s house. The two boys stopped on the porch and just stood looking at one another.

  “Are you going to go back?” Henry finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Jensi.

  “You probably shouldn’t,” said Henry.

  “I know,” said Jensi. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.”

  Henry nodded once and then raised his hand to say good-bye. He had just stepped off the porch when Istvan appeared.

  “So this is our new home,” said Istvan. He was panting, and out of breath.

  “How did you find us?” asked Jensi.

  “I have a right to be here,” said Istvan. “It’s my home, too.” He gave a flat, dead smile. He slowly lumbered forward and onto the porch. He opened his arms and made a move as if to hug Jensi, but when his brother stayed where he was, he let his arms fall. “Aren’t you happy to see me?” he asked.

  “Istvan, go home,” said Jensi.

  “But this is home,” said Istvan. “I’m hungry. What do we have to eat?” He reached out and opened the front door and pushed his way in.

  * * *

  Jensi’s foster mother was standing near the stairway, a shocked look on her face. Istvan was in the kitchen. He sounded more like a bear than a human. He was rattling pots and dumping cans, slamming cupboards, searching for something.

  “Jensi?” said his foster mother, her voice rising. “Who is this man and why is he wearing so many shirts? Can you tell me what’s going on?”

  Not knowing what to say, Jensi pushed past her, Henry following. Istvan had dropped most of the cans into a heap on the floor. Now his arms were full of food from the fridge, some of it dropping and falling. He carried it out into the hallway, past Jensi’s foster mother, and into the living room, where he dumped it on the floor. He sat down cross-legged in front of it and began indiscriminately to eat, his eyes flitting from item to item, trying to construct a pattern.

  “I’m calling the authorities,” his mother said.

  “No,” said Jensi. “He’s not a threat. I’ll get him out.”

  “No,” said Henry. “You should call them.”

  Jensi heard the sound of his foster mother’s heels snapping against the floor as she made for the vid to place the call. He went to his brother, desperately dragged at his arm.

  “Come on, Istvan,” he hissed. “Stop it.”

  “I’m hungry,” Istvan said. “A man’s got to eat.”

  “She’s calling the police,” he said. “You’ve got to go.”

  “The police?” Istvan said, as if astonished. “But why would she call them? This is our home.”

  “It’s not your home,” said Jensi. “It’s my home. Please, Istvan.”

  Istvan sighed and stood up and for a moment Jensi thought he had won the battle. But then his face went purple. Instead of heading for the door, he went deeper in the house. This is my home! he was yelling, This is my home! Jensi turned the corner and saw his foster mother crouched in the corner, arms flung up to protect her head, weeping. Istvan was over her, almost snarling, spittle flecked on his lips. He watched, horrified, as his brother struck her. When Jensi tried to pull him away, he shook him off.

  Help is on the way, flashed the vid screen. Help is on the way.

  “Istvan,” said Jensi. “You have to leave. Now!”

  “It’s my home!” he said. “You go!”

  “The police are coming,” said Jensi, shaking him. “They’re going to take you away.”

  Istvan suddenly stopped, his face growing weirdly slack. “The police,” he said. “You called the police?”

  “No, I didn’t call the—”

  “Why would you call them?” he asked, his voice filled with a certain confused wonder. He turned and looked at Jensi. Or didn’t look at him exactly but rather seemed to look through him. The look reminded Jensi of that earlier time, when Istvan had tried to kill him.

  “You’re with them,” said Istvan, his voice a hissing whisper. “You’re one of them!”

  “No,” said Jensi. “What are you talking about?”

  “Get away from me!” said Istvan, and, reaching out, pushed Jensi hard in the chest. Jensi stumbled back, crashed into the wall, then slid the rest of the way down. “You’re one of them,” Istvan said again. “You’re just as bad as they are because you’re one of them.”

  “No,” he said weakly, not completely believing it, “I’m not one of them.” But he didn’t get up. He did nothing to stop Istvan when, hearing the sound of a siren coming closer, his brother stumbled past him and out into the hall, and from there into the kitchen and out the back door.

  * * *

  There were a few days when he couldn’t do much. First there was his foster mother to comfort and help off the ground, then Henry to calm down and straighten out his story with, and then, shortly after, the police. They questioned him—more of an interrogation, really—about the man who had invaded the house and assaulted them. Who was he? He claimed not to know. How then, had he known what his name was?

  “But I didn’t know what name to call him. I didn’t call him a name.”

  The officer shook his head. “You called him a name. Your mother told us,” he said.

  “She’s not my mother,” he said. “She’s my foster mother.”

  The officer shrugged. “I don’t care,” he said. “That’s not important. How did you know his name?”

  Jensi kept talking, kept lying, feeding them little bits and pieces, half-truths, until they had poked enough holes in his story that he felt he had no choice but to fall silent, to not say anything at all. But he held out, he felt. He didn’t reveal that the intruder had been his brother, didn’t give the police a name. And that was, he felt, an act of loyalty on his part, and should be considered by Istvan a redeeming gesture. He hadn’t exactly stood by his brother, but then again he hadn’t betrayed him, either.

  But four or five hours into the questioning, the officer had smiled and placed his hands flat on the table.

  “Istvan the name was,” he said.

  Jensi felt his heart begin to beat harder. “Are you sure?” he said. “Maybe my foster mother heard it wrong.”

  “Oh, we didn’t get it from her,” said the officer. “We got it elsewhere. From your friend Henry. Maybe he’s not as much of a friend to you as you want him to be. Istvan Sato,” he said. He pretended to read from a piece of paper in front of him. “Hey,” he said, “isn’t Sato your last name, too?”

  He kept his mouth closed.

  “Not talking, eh?” said the officer. “Doesn’t matter. We’ve already gotten everything we need to know to identify him from your friend. Shall I read off what I know?”

  Jensi shook his head.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said the officer. “But before I do, there’s just one question I want to ask.” He leaned forward. “How could you have ever hoped to hide from us the fact that the so-called home invader was your brother?”

  * * *

  He wanted to hate Henry for telling. At first he thought he did, but then gradually he began to take stock of all that Henry hadn’t said as well. It became clear as the officer continued to talk that Henry hadn’t told them where Istvan had been living or that they’d been seeing him reg
ularly. Henry, as he discovered later, after the interrogation was over, had given very little away beyond the fact of Istvan being his brother. And Jensi had to admit they probably would have come across that fact on their own eventually.

  Later, once the police were gone and Jensi was left to have to sort out things with his foster mother, Henry stood by him, told her that yes, Istvan had approached them, that they had met him, but that they had had no idea either how disturbed he was or that he had followed them. It was largely Henry and his arguments that calmed her, that kept her from sending him back to the agency to be placed in another family. He had Henry to thank for being able to continue on with his new life.

  As for Istvan, it was as if he had disappeared. It would be a mistake, Henry convinced him, to try to make contact again. Istvan was unstable. If he came back, then that would be the end of Jensi’s new life—he’d be sent to a new family, maybe even sent off planet where Henry would never see him again. Henry was right, but still Jensi felt guilty. He felt he was abandoning his brother, and who did his brother have but him? He couldn’t stand the thought of his brother entirely and completely alone, living more in the warped world within his head than in the real world.

  And so even though he knew it was the wrong thing, he found himself one day after parting from Henry after school, walking not toward his home but back toward the valve that led to the Mariner Valley compound.

  * * *

  The valve operator recognized him as the boy who had visited earlier, nodded once, and let him through without question. The compound looked the same as it had looked the last time he’d been there: same crumbling buildings, same dirty streets.

  This time, the door was locked. The slit police tape was still there, but had been covered over with more police tape, this set intact.

  He knocked and then waited, but heard nothing from inside. He knocked again and waited. Still nothing.

  After a while he went out and walked around the building, trying to figure out which windows were the ones to his apartment. Once he thought he knew, he was disappointed: the windows seemed firmly closed and there was no sign of light or movement behind them.

  What now? he wondered. For a while he just stayed staring at the building, waiting for something significant to happen. Nothing did. Down the street, he could see a group of four scruffy children playing, one of the same futile games he and Istvan had played as kids. Otherwise the street was empty.

  * * *

  Eventually, he went back inside. He stripped the police tape away. He wondered if he had the strength to break the door open. He hurled himself against it a few times until his shoulder began to hurt, without any apparent effect on the door. He stood staring at it. In the end, he went down to the super’s apartment and rang the bell there.

  The super seemed surprised to see him. “You’re that kid,” he said. “The one with the mother who went crazy.”

  “I used to live upstairs,” Jensi said.

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” said the super. “That’s you. What do you want?”

  “The key to the apartment,” he said.

  The super shook his head. “It’s a crime scene,” he said. “The police have taped it off.”

  “Not anymore,” said Jensi. “They came and stripped the tape away.”

  “Yeah?” said the super suspiciously. “When did they do that?”

  Jensi shrugged. “How should I know?” he asked. “It was already done when I got here.” He held out his hand. “Give me the key.”

  “Why should I give you the key?” asked the super. “There’s still back rent owed on the place. Who’s going to cover that? Whoever covers that gets the key.”

  “My foster father’s a lawyer,” lied Jensi. “I am going to go up and take a look at the place, make sure the police didn’t steal anything. If they did, we’re going to sue their ass, and yours, too.”

  The super stared at him, a little stunned. And then he smiled and shook his head. “Naw,” he said. “Can’t be true.”

  Jensi crossed his arms and stood there, waiting.

  After a while the super began to get nervous. He scratched the top of his head. He reached out and began to shut the door, but, when Jensi didn’t react, stopped.

  “A lawyer, you say,” he said.

  “A lawyer,” said Jensi, holding his gaze steady and unblinking. “And very litigious.”

  The super sighed. “Five minutes,” he said. “In and out.” He went to fetch the key.

  * * *

  He opened the door not quite sure what to expect. Maybe his brother’s body hanging from a rope, its tongue swollen and purple and pushing through the lips. Or on the floor with a bullet through his head, a spray of blood and brain on the wall behind him. Or simply dead from lack of food and water, a heap of skin and bones lying on the floor.

  Or maybe he would still be alive but naked and shivering, crouched in the corner, and when Jensi took him by the shoulder and turned him to face back into the room, he would simply look through him without seeing him, without, indeed, seeing anything around him. Alive, but for all intents and purposes, not really there.

  Or maybe he would be crouched behind the door with a knife and would immediately come at Jensi, slitting his throat before realizing who he was. Or even slitting his throat because he realized who it was.

  But none of this happened. Instead, the door opened onto an empty room. Behind it, through the door to the bedroom, was another empty room. The bathroom and his mother’s former room were empty as well. There was nobody there and no sign that anybody had been there in a long time.

  5

  Jensi grew. He was admitted to a university off world, back on Earth, but couldn’t afford to go. Instead he studied at the technical college in the colony there on Vindauga. He studied computers, learning some solid programming skills and, on the side, improved on the hacking his brother had taught him. He might have gone into computers if he hadn’t become interested in piloting. Henry, whose grades weren’t quite as good but whose parents had more money, did go off world and Jensi figured that was the last of him, that he probably wouldn’t hear from him again. But in a year Henry had flunked out and was back on Vindauga, at the technical college as well. “I’m the family failure,” he claimed to Jensi. “They can hardly stand to look at me.” Which made Jensi wonder if he was at fault for whatever had gone wrong with Henry. Perhaps he had ruined him by distracting him, giving him hints of a different, stranger life.

  Jensi never went back to the house, but he still walked sometimes through the Mariner Valley compound, hoping to catch a glimpse of his brother, gaining some reassurance from the familiar griminess of the streets. Then one day that was gone, too, carried away in a public works effort to clean up the compound. For a few days the streets stayed clean, the smell of disinfectant replacing the stench of trash, but quickly they began to revert to what they were before.

  Several times, while walking through one part of the city or another, Jensi thought he caught a glimpse of his brother—hair crazed and overgrown, shambling—but he rarely managed to catch up with these apparitions, and the few times he did, they turned out not to be his brother after all.

  And so, three or four years went by with Jensi moving forward with his life. At first he thought often of Istvan, but as time went on he thought of him less and less. He could go for days without thinking of him at all. He managed to finish his associate’s degree in flight and cargo manipulation, and would have gone on to complete his bachelor’s if the planetary government hadn’t cut school funding. When that happened, he moved out of his foster family’s home, took a small apartment near Vindauga’s space hub, and began to work.

  He was a picker, working every time a ship bearing supplies came in. His job was to help crew a surface-to-atmosphere ship that would meet the huge cargo ships that came into orbit, transferring a fraction of the load from one ship to the other over and over again until the cargo was on the surface. It was a simple job, but he didn’
t mind it. They were busy building an orbital docking station and he wondered if this wouldn’t eventually make his job obsolete. For a while Henry did the job as well, but the moments of near-weightlessness proved too much for him. He went back into training on his family’s money, preparing for first one surface-based job and then another.

  Picking either was very busy or very slack, never simply steady. He was either working sixteen-hour shifts or lying idle in his apartment, scrolling through something on the vid screen. Was it the life he had dreamed of? No, but it was better than any life he probably would have had if he’d ended up staying in the Mariner Valley compound.

  He met a woman, a little shorter than him and slightly plump, and somewhat neurotic. He saw her for a while and then broke it off. Then he met another, long-legged and a little taller than him, generous and kind, whom he liked much better. But he managed to sabotage the relationship despite that. He was leery of getting involved, leery of establishing new ties, remembering the hell that had been his family growing up. He wondered if he should see someone, a psychiatrist, a specialist, maybe they could help him, but he didn’t know who to see or where to start looking.

  It could have gone on a long time, maybe even for a whole life, but it didn’t, for one simple reason. The reason was Istvan.

  * * *

  Nearly four years after his brother had suddenly disappeared, Jensi was on a long pick, thirty-six hours solid clearing out a freighter on overtime. He would catch a little sleep here and there on the trip up and down, but not enough not to be exhausted by the time the pick was finally over.

  When he went home, he found his apartment unlocked. Weird, he thought, but shook it off, figured he’d been called away on the pick on short enough notice that he’d simply made a mistake and forgotten to lock the door. Inside, nothing seemed to be out of place or missing, either in the living room or the bedroom. But when he went into the bathroom, turned on the light, shucked off his clothes, and pulled back the shower curtain to climb in, there was Istvan.