Dead Space: Catalyst

by Evenson, Brian

  “Hello, brother,” Istvan said, and offered his flat, dead smile.

  At first Jensi thought he was much more tired than he’d realized, that he was hallucinating. But no, after screaming and stumbling back into the wall he found Istvan reaching out and steadying him, stepping out of the tub, undeniably real.

  “What are you doing here?” Jensi asked, heart still thudding.

  “I came to see you,” claimed Istvan.

  He had cut his hair short, in a crew cut, and was clean-shaven. His right cheek was marred by an angry red scar, puffy and relatively fresh. Jensi could feel something strange about one of the hands steadying him, but it was only when Istvan let go that he realized it was missing two fingers.

  “How did you find me?” asked Jensi.

  “I always knew where you were,” said Istvan. “I’ve been watching over you.”

  Watching over me, Jensi thought, and shivered. He pushed Istvan gently away and slipped back into his clothes.

  “Why were you hiding in the bathroom?” he asked once they were in the living room.

  “How did I know it was you?” Istvan asked. “It could have been someone else. It could have been them.”

  Jensi nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say or what to do. Did he really want to see his brother at all? But already the weird mixture of guilt and affection that he thought he’d managed to eradicate years ago was beginning to well up within him. The unhealthy bond with his brother was already starting to form again.

  “You can’t stay here,” he managed to say.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Istvan said. “I have a purpose now.”

  “What do you mean, a purpose?”

  Istvan smiled and shook his head. “It’s my purpose, not yours,” he said. “It’s for me to know.”

  Jensi ran his fingers through his hair. “Why are you here?” he asked.

  “I wanted to see you again,” said Istvan. “One more time before fulfilling my purpose.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘fulfilling my purpose’? What are you on about?”

  But Istvan just smiled flatly again.

  “You look well,” said Jensi.

  “You look tired,” claimed Istvan.

  “I am tired,” said Jensi. “I’m exhausted.” He tried again. “What do you mean by your purpose?”

  “They told me not to tell.”

  “Who told you?”

  “They.”

  “Who’s they?”

  Suddenly Istvan giggled. He pressed his hand over his mouth to stop himself, but couldn’t help giggling through it.

  “What’s wrong, Istvan?” Jensi asked, trying to keep his voice as calm as he possibly could.

  Istvan giggled again, then closed his eyes. He sat there on the couch, trying to breathe slowly until finally the giggles stopped entirely. Then he slowly moved his hand away and opened his eyes.

  “There,” he said. “See? Everything is all right. There is nothing wrong with me.”

  “I don’t know what you’re planning,” said Jensi, “but whatever it is, don’t do it.”

  “There is nothing wrong with me,” said Istvan again, but this time it sounded more like a question.

  “Istvan…” Jensi said.

  But Istvan was already standing. “I have to go,” he said. “I just wanted to see you first.”

  “Before your purpose,” said Jensi.

  “Before my purpose,” he said, and smiled. He walked almost drunkenly to the door, turning around just as he got there. “I’ll be on the vids tomorrow,” he said. “All the vids. Watch for me. I’ll be famous.” And then he was gone.

  * * *

  He’s crazy, thought Jensi. Certifiable. Just like mother. His brother had been going on about some imagined encounter he had, some delusion of glory and fame that he’d invented for himself, which would amount to nothing. His brother had reentered his life for a brief, somewhat painful moment, and now he was gone again, maybe for good this time. I should be thankful he’s gone, Jensi told himself. He’s nothing but trouble.

  But he wasn’t thankful, couldn’t feel thankful. Instead, despite being exhausted, he found himself having difficulty sleeping. What had his brother been talking about? His purpose? What if it did mean something?

  He turned over and tried to ignore the thoughts. He closed his eyes and lay there watching little bursts of imagined light flicker over his eyelids. He tried all the tricks he could think of to coax himself to sleep: counting sheep (even though he had never seen an actual sheep), thinking through a math problem mentally, repeating to himself the same rhythmic phrase over and over again, trying to imagine the weight of his body growing heavier and heavier and falling asleep limb by limb. But nothing worked. There, beneath the exhaustion he was feeling, like an inhuman, baleful eye, was his worry about his brother, staring at him, staring into him, keeping him from sleeping.

  * * *

  He kept trying to fall asleep, until finally he felt like he was going mad. Then he got up, vidded Henry.

  “Do you know what time it is?” Henry asked, his face and hair scruffy through the vid.

  “All too well,” said Jensi. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “So you thought you’d wake me up and make it so neither of us could sleep.” He yawned.

  “Istvan was here.”

  “What?” said Henry. “Really. You mean you dreamt about him?”

  Jensi shook his head. “He was really here. In the flesh.”

  “I thought by this time he was probably dead,” said Henry. “What did he want?”

  “He wanted to see me one last time.”

  “One last time before what?”

  Jensi explained the little he knew. “He’s crazy, right?” he asked once he was finished.

  “Maybe,” said Henry slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s planning to do something.”

  “What?”

  Henry shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Something drastic maybe.”

  “Like what?”

  “What’s he capable of?” asked Henry. “I know you love him and that he’s your brother, but you remember how he was when we first found him? He might have killed us. If he’s in the right mood—or the wrong one, I guess—I think he’s capable of anything. A bomb, maybe?”

  “A bomb?” said Jensi. “You’ve got to be kidding. It could break one of the domes, put everyone at risk.”

  “Doesn’t have to be a bomb,” said Henry. “Anything happening tomorrow?”

  “Like what?”

  “A speech, a rally, some sort of protest march, a meeting of two officials. Something along those lines?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jensi. “I’ve been picking. I haven’t been following the vids. Have you noticed anything?”

  Henry shook his head. “I don’t think so. If there is, maybe he’s planning to disrupt it. He claimed he was going to be on the vids?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Henry shrugged. “Look through the vid notices, see what’s happening tomorrow. We can try to figure it out, stake a place out if it sounds right. Otherwise, we just wait, watch the vids for something that seems likely and then, if we find it, try to make it there before he does.”

  Jensi cut the link and tried to sleep, again without success. He lay there staring up into the dark until, slowly, the room began to brighten. Then he got up and began scrolling through vid notices. A school was being opened, someone from the colonial authority coming to cut the ribbon. There was a press conference on the steps of the municipal hall, run by a politician named Tim Fischer, about a methane leak in one of the outlier domes and to what degree if any, the government was responsible. A political rally for the opposition candidate, David Vernaglia, held not far from the municipal hall. An ambassador from EarthGov named Jedrow Berry landing at the spaceport. There were other things mentioned but they seemed less likely: the revamping of a new low-income housing project, the demolition of a now-deserted microdome, etc. If it
was anything, it was probably one of those four events.

  But which one? Henry would help him, but that still meant they could only cover two. School-ribbon cutting, press conference, political rally, ambassador … Any of them might be what he was looking for: a place for Istvan to be visible, to be seen on vid while he did whatever it was he planned to do. Was he likely to be violent? Crazy? Yes, Jensi had to admit, either of those things were possible, even likely. Would he try to hurt someone? Kill someone? Would he try to kill himself? All possible. But it was equally possible that his purpose, whatever he meant by that, might be something else entirely, something relatively benign. Maybe he would throw a pie at the ambassador. Or maybe he would take his pants down at the press conference and moon the crowd. He tried to tell himself that Istvan was doubtless capable of those sorts of things, too.

  Though Jensi knew he was fooling himself, that violence was most likely.

  And what, suddenly worried Jensi, still exhausted, his eyes throbbing in his sockets, a migraine just beginning to create an aura in front of one eye that he knew would travel across his vision until it filled both eyes and then dissolved into pain, what if Istvan, in saying he was on the vids, was not referring to some event or occurrence that he was going to hijack, but to the fact that whatever he did, wherever he did it, it would be featured on the news after the fact, that he would be made famous by having fulfilled his ‘purpose’? What if it wasn’t that he was going to borrow the celebrity of an event, but that he was going to make his own fame, by doing something rash?

  If that was his plan, he could do that anywhere.

  If that was the case, there was no way to find him until it was done, until it was too late.

  * * *

  The next six hours were the worst Jensi had ever lived, the most anxious, the most exhausting. Until close to the time of the events themselves, there was nothing he could do. He just had to wait, all the while trying to guess which might be the most likely place to find his brother, trying to ignore the fact that his brother might not be at any of the events he’d keyed on. He kept imagining Istvan strapping himself into a jacket with sticks of explosives sewn on the inside of it. Or his brother suddenly appearing out of the crowd, running toward the steps or the platform or the security guards, brandishing a knife. He was worried both that his brother would kill someone and that, trying to do something foolhardy, his brother would be killed. He didn’t know for certain which was more likely.

  In the middle of the morning Henry showed up and together they talked things through.

  “Does he care about politics?” asked Henry.

  “He didn’t use to,” said Jensi. “Now, who can say? I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “His ‘purpose,’ he said? Was there a way he said it? A particular way he phrased it? Did it sound political to you? Religious?”

  Jensi shook his head. “It didn’t sound like anything. It just confused me.”

  “Let’s try to think,” said Henry. “There are only two of us. We can only cover two things. We have to narrow it down.”

  Jensi nodded.

  “Or we could call the police,” said Henry. “Tell them there’s been a threat on the two that we can’t cover.”

  “That might make things worse.”

  “For who? For Istvan? Certainly it won’t make things worse for whoever he might hurt.”

  Jensi shook his head. “No,” he said. “He’d see it as a betrayal. I can’t do it.”

  “You may have to do it,” said Henry. “You don’t want anybody’s death on your conscience.”

  “It could lead to his death. To Istvan’s. I don’t want his death on my conscience, either. I don’t want to do it.”

  Henry just looked at him with a steady eye.

  “Only as a last result,” Jensi finally said.

  “All right,” said Henry, and sighed. “Only as a last result.”

  * * *

  “Political rally seems likely,” said Henry. “How about that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jensi. “I’d think so, but since it’s for the opposition candidate, I’m not so sure. He always supported the underdog. But maybe he’s changed.”

  “So, possible, but maybe not likely. What about the school ceremony? Does he have anything against education?”

  “He didn’t want me to join my foster family,” said Jensi. “School might be tied into that for him, something that he feels separated us.”

  “But it’s a new school opening,” said Henry. “Not a school that you went to. I know his mind is broken, but as a symbolic gesture it doesn’t amount to much.”

  His mind is broken? thought Jensi. And then thought, Yes, Henry’s right.

  “Someone on the colonial authority is cutting the ribbon,” continued Henry. “Is it anybody he knows?”

  “Who is it?”

  They looked at the vid notice. “It doesn’t say,” said Jensi. “No way to tell without going.”

  “Even then, we probably won’t know,” said Henry. “Who knows what he’s been up to or who he’s met over the last several years. Still, not likely. What about the ambassador from EarthGov? What’s his name?” He scrolled through the vid until he found it. “Jedrow Berry. Name ring a bell?”

  Jensi shook his head.

  “All right,” said Henry. “That’s okay. Doesn’t mean anything. He’s a representative of EarthGov authority. That might be enough.” He sighed. “Basically nobody seems all that likely. Nobody is jumping to the top.”

  They sat across from one another in silence until, finally, Jensi said “So what do we do?”

  “Do? We draw straws.”

  * * *

  Jensi felt like he was going mad, his mind straining to see a connection that either wasn’t visible or simply wasn’t there. He felt like Istvan, always searching for a pattern, trying to see something that nobody else could see.

  How would Istvan think? he wondered, his head throbbing. He tried to put himself in the place of his brother, tried to remember the erratic way he had responded to those situations that had seemed clear and straightforward to Jensi, but they were all moments from childhood, and even thinking back on them he could neither understand them nor extrapolate them into something relevant to the present situation. He had long understood that something was seriously wrong with the way Istvan viewed the world, as if he were seeing everything through a different lens than everyone else, a dark and smoky lens that distorted everything and made it false. But how could Jensi, more or less normal, simulate that way of seeing the world?

  Solemnly, Henry took four scraps of paper and wrote a word on each one: rally, press, school, port. Then he folded each into a smaller square and jumbled them in one hand.

  “Do you want to choose first, or shall I?” he asked.

  Jensi reached out, took a piece of paper from Henry’s hand.

  “Open it,” Henry said.

  “You go first,” said Jensi.

  Henry closed his eyes, felt around among the pieces of paper, chose one. Together they opened them. School, said Henry’s. Port, said Jensi’s. Henry reached out, placed his hand on Jensi’s shoulder. “Good luck,” he said, and they both left.

  6

  Commander Grottor stood at the helm, hands clasped behind his broad back. There was nothing about his stance to suggest that he was anything but relaxed, but within his head the thoughts spun back and forth. He knew altogether too little about the project to be comfortable. He was not sure exactly what he was getting into.

  He turned and looked behind him. There on the bridge to one side was a technician named Jane Haley. She was young, fairly fresh out of the academy, but smart and ambitious. He had seen her scores—off the charts—and read the reports on her and chosen her. Indeed, the whole crew was handpicked by Grottor, excellent crew, notable as well for being willing to follow commands to the letter and for their unquestioning loyalty. Though he had chosen Ensign Haley precisely because she was not like that, because she might sta
nd up to him when the others would not.

  On the other side of Grottor was Ensign Erik Orthor, a thin and tubercular man who was the only person that Grottor hadn’t chosen as part of his crew. Blackwell had insisted on him, which made Grottor wonder if Blackwell trusted him. He’d done what Blackwell and the two somewhat odd men he’d introduced him to had asked of him, but perhaps Blackwell still had his doubts as to his loyalty. Grottor was a good commander, inflexible in his own way, but smart enough to get out of scrapes when he needed to. And working for Blackwell, he often needed to.

  Orthor too was a Unitologist. That was fine—Grottor technically was, too, but in name only. It had been one way up the promotion ladder and he had joined because it was expedient at the time. He didn’t believe in it exactly, but he’d seen enough of the footage and records from Michael Altman’s time to know that there had been power to the Marker. Blackwell, too, he imagined, wasn’t much of a believer, maybe wasn’t even a Unitologist at all, but he saw the potential for power as well. And those others, the ones who went unnamed but seemed really to be the ones in charge—he’d met them only once, but once had been enough.

  Yes, he knew too much about the project to be comfortable. He was to locate a planet for a secret facility that would allow for the continuation of the Marker project. What all the specifics of that continuation would be, he didn’t know, but the fact that they wanted to make sure the planet was uncharted, away from the usual trade routes, and far from civilization, told him it wasn’t good. With Blackwell he had chosen several likely planets, but had rejected them one after another. The last on the list they were approaching now. It was one Blackwell had hesitated over for some reason, but had finally said yes, go ahead.

  It was listed as uninhabited. No breathable atmosphere, but Earthlike gravity. They had approached it and circled around it, and had been surprised to find signs of life, a small colony of some sort, completely enclosed. It was small enough that he’d almost missed it, but Haley, with her sharp eyes, had caught it. Except for that the planet was perfect. He double-checked—it wasn’t in any records; they were illegals.