by John Meaney
Yes.
The ruby.
"... to hold..."
Shining.
So...
"...the jewel."
...wonderful.
I had a distant sense of movement, of someone walking silently away.
Slowly, slowly, my hand descended to the...
Radio trigger.
...beautiful ruby.
The jewel – no – I just had to hold.
Hold back.
Or hold it, the jewel.
Hold...
I'd practised several deep trance techniques with Braun. While Manny watched, I got Braun to visualize a glass of beer, to see the shifting colours, to smell the brew. Eyes closed, his expression was dreamy.
But when I got him to open his eyes, the vision was transparent, quite unsatisfying.
Afterwards, when he got me to hallucinate a cappuccino, it was as tangible as anything, even with my eyes open. Though I smelled it rather than tasted it, that virtual cappuccino was the best – perhaps the most real – I had ever had.
My hand lowered, by itself.
To the—
Trigger.
—ruby.
In the centre of a chest filled with bright gold coins, jewel-encrusted boxes, medallions and brooches.
Dancing.
Lowering.
Hand.
Think of... dancing.
Soon, I would touch the... ruby.
A dream, yet I had dreamed of so many wonders. A lifetime of reading sci-fi, studying physics, seeing the universe as miraculous. Some people live in the tawdry dreams of soap opera and the stifling pseudo-reality of the mundane. They ignore the wonders, the treasures that surround us, for hydrogen is throughout the cosmos, and all other atoms are created in the heart of stars, and we are the sun's children, formed of stardust, part of the wonder we should revel in and not ignore.
Treasure chest.
Because they dance.
Still lowering, my hand.
Electrons dance, remember.
Shining, the treasure chest. The ruby...
No.
... that I had to grasp.
Dreamy poets switch on an electric light without wondering how it works. (And I remembered Uncle Isaak's voice, saying this.) People use a phone or a television while accepting it as magic, as inexplicable.
Lowering.
Soon, I would touch the thing.
The...
Illusion.
...ruby.
Painters who master light and colour yet think nothing of the nuclear reactions at the heart of the sun. Who think nothing of the way light criss-crosses a room, so everyone can see, without those uncounted trillions of photons interfering with each other. Not thinking about the magic.
Always magic.
Real magic, where theories are discarded and new approximations to the truth are formed. Anyone can challenge a theory, that's the point.
Disproven models.
Lowering.
Discard false models of the world.
To the ruby. So very...
Radio.
...attractive to my lowering...
Trigger.
...hand.
Dancing.
Now I heard Uncle Isaak's voice, or perhaps it was my own, asking: How does TV or radio work? Somewhere, shifting magnetic fields force electrons to dance in a length of a metal. And here's the miracle: across the nation, in other lengths of metal, billions of electrons dance in time, keeping the rhythm of...
No ruby.
...reality.
Of magic.
In front of me was a simple metal device, with a prominent red button. Or a ruby, inviting my finger to...
"NO!"
I snapped back to reality.
You're probably too sensible to ever have been knocked out in a boxing ring and then come round, but you can imagine what it's like to stagger afterwards, with cognition trying its best to return in your brain as your feet appear to move by themselves without any of the normal coordination we take for granted. Or you could say I was in an altered state as I walked in a swerving line to the outer office, where the grey-haired secretary sat slumped at her desk, head on the desktop like a napping schoolchild, and Moskowitz was curled up in a visitor's chair, chin on chest, and so deep in trance you might as well call it coma.
Bastard's... gone.
Tracking Strang was dangerous because if he realized I was free then he would do something else to trigger the bomb – use Moskowitz or someone else, or even me again, because I could not resist him a second time. If you come out of trance and go back in, the second time is deeper. Psychologists call it fractionation but the truth is it feels like falling, as if the entire Earth is pulling you back down into trance with inexorable force.
Still, fighting dizziness, I made it out into the corridor, and then I stopped because I'd expected it to be empty, not like this.
Bodies slumped everywhere.
Strang.
There were eight, or ten, or... It was hard to count, and the corridor kept tilting, but men were on the floor, some curled up, others half-propped against the wall, some with guns in their limp hands. Jean-Paul was one of them, which meant he'd managed to get free or persuade the others he was innocent – which he was, because he hadn't been entranced earlier by Strang, he'd been fooled by Moskowitz pretending to be the therapist in residence.
But Jean-Paul was definitely spellbound now, as were the others. Perhaps I should stay and try to help them, to bring them round.
Bastard Strang.
He would have headed for the lifts, so that was the way I went.
Until I rounded the corner, where the force field stopped me.
Can't. Move.
Too much sci-fi revolved in my head, because invisible force barriers are a thing of fiction, but my limbs could not move, however much I told them to. You might as well call it a force field because it had the same effect: I could only stand and watch Strang, unable to move closer.
Several more bodies lay curled on the floor, but Strang himself was standing straight, staring at—
Why isn't he moving?
Staring at—
He should have got away.
Staring at nothing—
Or come back to deal with me.
At nothingness—
Or...
At a blur.
Or...
A fuzziness. A trembling.
Or...
A shifting in the air.
Or...
Like a mirage inside a blizzard.
Or...
A man who was not there.
Or...
Could not be there.
Or...
But he was.
My God!
The blizzard-mirage seemed to twist like a cyclone, but this wasn't a trick of the light, it was sabotage in my mind, an illusion unravelling. Because there was a good reason for Strang to be standing there, upright on the spot.
Manny Silverberg was facing him.
Sweet bleeding hell.
Manny, who'd been with me since I arrived at the building – been with me all the time – but unseen, because there's a thing called negative hallucination as I expect you'll remember, and he'd walked beside me earlier – except while I'd performed my climb.
My invisible companion.
But he was here and he was real, as Professor Edmund Strang was finding out. Manny had abilities founded on science that looked like magic.
So does Strang.
And it was only then that I realized what was truly happening. At the start of their confrontation, probably either one could have broken it off. Strang could have attempted to flee and it would have become physical, a matter of who could run faster or fight harder, though neither was a young man, neither an athlete.
What they could do was deadlier than fists.
I've mentioned that the way to induce trance quickly is to go first, to alter state while phase-locking the other perso
n's physiology so that they go in, too. Another way of putting it is this: every good hypnotist is a great hypnotic subject. Think of it as two men wrestling on quicksand, each hoping to drag the other under while somehow managing to crawl on top, but knowing the greatest danger was this: that they would both succumb and die.
If I could have moved to intervene, I would have, but however hard I tried, I could not stir my limbs into motion.
Manny.
Both men had eyes half-lidded, their breathing in exact and spooky unison, and at the same time they whispered: "That's right. Deep down."
Manny, break it off.
This was happening at a level so far beyond me that I could no longer tell what was actually occurring. This was deep resonance, a phase-locking of nervous systems, something that in the future you might see with EEGs, but for now was simply wizardry.
Get away from...
"NO!"
But it was Strang who staggered back.
"And sleep."
And Manny who passed his hand over the other man's eyes, and sent him deep into trance.
Oh, God.
I fell down to my knees, and it hurt.
For a while I stayed there, then Manny's hand fastened around my upper arm.
"Time to wake up, and stand up straight."
I did what he said.
"Bloody hell, Manny."
Strang was catatonic, a tailor's dummy staring into a void.
"I couldn't have done it," said Manny, "if you hadn't worked on him first."
"Thanks." I was breathing hard. "I don't believe you, but thanks."
And that was when the lift dinged, the doors slid open, and Brummie Greenmore stepped out, followed by Rob Fields. Their hands were empty, their weapons holstered.
"Have you been having fun?" he said.
"Like you wouldn't believe." I looked at Manny. "Jean-Paul and a bunch of Blackstone's guys are deep under. I mean in trance. Hypnosis, and I'll explain later. We need to wake them up, and disable that bloody trigger. Um, radio trigger, in an office marked Dr Steinberg. Red button."
Beautiful ruby.
The thought was a resonance of memory, nothing more. I was safe from Strang, with Manny here. We were all safe.
"Good." Manny touched Brummie's shoulder. "Draw your guns, keep them trained on that man" – he nodded towards the frozen Strang – "and if he moves, even a flicker of his eyelids, just shoot him."
"Are you—?"
"Do what he said, Brummie." I rubbed sweat from my face. "That bastard is called Strang, and he's the most dangerous man you've ever met. I swear it."
"If you say so."
He and Rob Fields drew their Brownings and trained them on Strang.
"We'll be back," I said, "in ten minutes."
"That's all right, lad. Take your time."
In the event, it took us – Manny and myself – twelve minutes by my watch to wake up Jean-Paul and the others, and tell two of the CIA guys to guard the radio trigger. Neither one felt competent enough to disable it properly, but that was all right: one phone call, and the experts were on their way.
"Strang," said Manny. "He's the weapon we need to fully disarm."
"You are so right."
But by the time we got back to the lobby, things had already changed.
"Jesus wept, Brummie," I couldn't help saying. "You were supposed to guard him."
Both SAS men looked puzzled.
"What do you mean?" asked Rob Fields.
"He hasn't move a muscle." Brummie gestured with his Browning. "See?"
But they were staring at empty space, at the place where Strang had been standing.
"Fuck me," I said.
THIRTY-SEVEN:
BERLIN, December 1963
I walked through darkness. Around me was wilderness with black iron shadows of trees and undergrowth, and moonlight-silver snow coating the grass. It might have been a night exercise with the SAS, and Moshe's ghost moving beside me. But only a few minutes away, I could find bright restaurants, cafés and bars still open. Not celebrating Christmas – this was the wrong country for Yuletide – yet warmth and convivial environments were there, if I could bear to enter.
For now, I moved on through the night, deeper into the Tiergarten. Time slowed, and I remembered the long wait back in New York until the BD guys took the trigger apart, and we went to UN Plaza to watch them dismantle the bomb, then take it away so the city was safe, unaware of the danger that had passed it by.
No sign of Strang.
Some people are scared of the dark, but I moved through its concealment, feeling safe, grateful for the cognitive gifts that Uncle Isaak gave me when I was young. Before leaving New York, I'd gone to visit, and he'd been pleased with the present of the Feynman proof, and surprised by the hug I'd given him. Later, at some point, I would visit Shana Boaz, Moshe's widow, along with their baby daughter. But not yet.
The night was very cold.
Finally, I moved into the open, and stared across empty space. Far ahead of me stood the strong, grand Brandenburg Gate. Nearer to me, on this side of the Wall, the big blue-on-white Star Of David flag shimmered in the spotlights. Somewhere in the East, bells were ringing, though the State has no official use for Christmas.
I stood there. Just stood.
Beneath an obsidian sky whose tiny starlight pinpoints were nuclear fires on a scale our primate brains cannot yet encompass, shining photons generated before I was born, some before humanity existed, great ongoing nuclear blazes that will survive beyond the Earth, even outlast our Sun. They are greater, so much vaster than entire planets, surely filled with complexity inside, and so perhaps more god-like than even primitive, worshipful cultures could ever appreciate. While our world is tiny and dim, it does produce light and heat and nowadays radio waves; so you have to wonder whether our emitted photons ever reach the distant stars.
And if they are watching us.
We're so primitive, with so much left to learn.
Watching, and hopefully not judging.
