One

by Nancy Kress

  Norwood said soothingly, “Let’s go on to what your scan does show. We expected to see greater integration among the sensory input areas, the motor areas, and a section of the brain associated with interpreting and responding to people and animals, including the fear centers. We saw that integration, which is what lets you so effectively work with the lions.”

  And with you, Zack didn’t say aloud. The signals coming from everyone practically shouted at him: Norwood’s excited interest, that he was trying and failing to mask; the blonde’s dazed fearfulness; Anne’s concern so strong it was almost despair. Christ, she should lighten up. But none of them were all that different from the big cats. Which was depressing to think about, so he didn’t.

  “Some of your neural profile matches that of highly creative people. Stronger—”

  “Creative? You mean like painters and writers and all them? I don’t create anything.”

  Norwood went on, “Stronger, and more surprising, are other results of the scan. Mr. Murphy, you present a neural profile remarkably like a person who is asleep and dreaming, with—”

  “What the hell! I wasn’t asleep inside that machine!”

  “I know you weren’t. But your connectome and functional data show the pattern of dreams: heightened activity in the oldest parts of the brain, in memory, and in emotion, along with decreased activity in areas governing reason and decision-making. The biggest surprise was how much the scan reflects a dreamlike state usually associated with dealing with internal situations, not external ones. In other words, whatever is going on, and it includes some very unusual neural pathways, you are connecting with something that is inside your mind, like dreams are. But not anything we can name.”

  Anne said, “The unconscious?”

  “In part. But much more than the usual patterns that tap subconscious responses. Somehow the areas of the brain that respond to other people are heavily involved, even when Mr. Murphy is reacting to imagery like trees or rocks or stars.”

  Anne said, “A … I almost can’t say this … a collective unconscious?”

  The blonde said primly, “That lies outside our purview, Ms. Murphy.”

  Zack demanded, “What is collective unconscious?”

  Norwood smiled. “That’s a good question, Mr. Murphy. But we don’t know the answer, any more than we know what consciousness is. We’re all conscious, we experience the world as ‘I, me,’ but nobody knows how the brain gives rise to that consciousness. It’s the great mystery of neuroscience: What are we experiencing when we think, ‘Cogito ergo sum’?”

  Think what? All at once Zack had enough of this. Talk, talk, talk, that’s all they could offer him. He glared at them, even Anne. “So what does it mean? Can you cure me?”

  Norwood said, “You’re not ill, Mr. Murphy.”

  Dr. Keller said, “The brain’s incredible plasticity—”

  Anne said, “Maybe meds to completely disrupt everything the—”

  “No drugs to completely disrupt everything!” Zack shouted. He didn’t even know why he was so furious. “I only wanted the voices to stop! You want to take away what I can do? How I make my living? What’s wrong with you people? We’re done here!”

  Anne grabbed his arm. Zack shook her off and stalked out of the room.

  On the plane back to Vegas, he paid for in-flight wi-fi. The flight attendant had already brought him two Scotches. He Googled “collective unconscious” and got “Psychology: in Jungian psychological theory, a part of the unconscious mind incorporating patterns of memories, instincts, and experiences common to all mankind. These patterns are inherited, may be arranged into archetypes, and are observable through their effects on dreams, behavior, etc.”

  Bullshit. If there was one thing his non-voices were not, it was “common to all mankind.” He was the only sap blessed, or cursed, with the Gift. Which even after two drinks and at thirty thousand feet, was growing stronger and stronger. It was like it was trying to take him over, like he could take over the lions. And the doctors had been no help at all.

  He ordered a double.

  * * *

  All the next day, the thing in his head grew. He had a show that night and didn’t want to risk drinking. He refused to see Jerry, ignored messages from Marissa and Anne, spent the day sitting on the huge terrace of his Las Vegas suite, holding Browne on his lap. The dog was the only thing that made sense to him. Browne didn’t even squirm, only giving one polite bark when he needed to use the poo-pad in the corner. Zack ate nothing all day. His head felt as if it could explode.

  No, not explode. Expand, to take in whatever else was in there. Expand as big as the universe. Almost it seemed to Zack that he could feel—what had Norwood called them?—“neural pathways” multiplying like rabbits in his brain. Ridiculous, but … Christ, his head hurt.

  It still ached when he went on stage at 8:00 p.m., but he gave the best show ever, effortlessly controlling even Goldie. He had Fuzzball and Lulu jump over each other, Fluffy fetch a spangled baton and drop it at his feet as if she were Browne. And all the while Zack felt that he was only partly there, or only partly himself. Power flowed through him—but from where? Whose?

  The consciousness of the universe itself.

  The words formed in his mind, scaring him so badly that he ended the show ten minutes early and walked out of the cage. The audience, on its feet and roaring his name, didn’t mind. Even Henryk, the least resentful of the Bajek brothers, glanced at Zack with something like awe. Zack didn’t answer whatever Henryk said to him. He had to get out of there, or his head would explode.

  He took a car right to the MGM Grand and bolted to his suite, locking the door behind him. He hardly knew what he was doing, or why. He put his hands to his head and groaned.

  Everything was there, in his head—everything that had ever existed, or would exist, and he was both its observer and a part of it: the entire universe laid bare in a second. He felt possessed, taken over, even though he knew he wasn’t. But it was too much, the pressure—the pressure!—of everything! It was going to crush him, to burst him apart like a balloon filled with too much air, a wine bottle left too long in the freezer until the wine expanded and shattered …

  Browne, bounding forward to greet him, stopped so short that his feet slid on the marble floor. The dog whimpered.

  “Hey, Brownie, good dog…”

  Browne backed away from Zack, tail between his legs.

  It was the last insult to his autonomy, to him, to Zack Murphy, his own person. He didn’t want to be everything, he didn’t want the consciousness of the universe woven through and into his mind. Norwood had said that Zack’s brain had the same cells in it as anybody else’s, just arranged differently and doing different things—did that mean that anybody could be what he was becoming? Well, let them have it! He didn’t want to be everything, he didn’t want to be anything but himself, alone and independent the way he’d always been .… Zack screamed in rage, in frustration, in fear. His gaze fell on the foyer table, marble and wrought iron.

  And he saw it. Saw the table so vividly it almost burned his eyeballs, every curve and line of it. He saw the pattern in the marble as if etched into his brain. He felt the flow of the arched iron legs. He saw the table as it was now, and as it had been when new, and as it would be in a few years’ time when someone had scratched it and someone else had stained the top and one leg was bent. He knew what the table would become, just as he knew when Goldie would raise a paw and bat at him. The table was part of him because the same force inhabited it as inhabited him, and in that force, time was an illusion. The past and present and future of the table were simultaneous and they were now, in Zack’s head.

  With the past and present and future of the floor.

  And the vase.

  And the stars in the sky above the terrace.

  And Browne, who cowered before Zack and who was a mewling puppy, a full-grown mutt, an old dog barely able to move his paralyzed hind legs, a small inert corpse, a fresh bit of so
il in a grave, even as he continued to romp and play in puppyhood. Time itself possessed Zack, and everything in his head, which was everything that existed, was one thing.

  Just One.

  He screamed and rushed onto the terrace. Above him the stars glittered and below the lights of Vegas glittered, and there was no difference, nor any difference between all that and himself. It was too much, it was intolerable, he would not have it .… He threw one leg over the railing.

  It’s a long way to fall, Zack.

  “No! No! No! Not me! You got the wrong guy! Go away!”

  Everything, with its past and present and future, filled his head. Zack clung to the railing. Behind him, on the wall of the terrace, a mirror exploded, sending shards of glass flying twenty feet. In that instant, Zack knew he could explode the terrace, explode the MGM Grand, explode Las Vegas. And what else? What else?

  “Mr. Murphy? Mr. Murphy!” Pounding on the locked door.

  “No,” Zack whispered. “Please, no. I don’t want it.”

  * * *

  He never remembered what happened next. Everything went black. When he came to, the hotel manager and Security were prying his fingers off the railing. Mirror glass had cut his chest, his arms. “A … accident,” he gasped. “Go … away.”

  They did, or maybe they didn’t. But when Zack woke again, in his bed, it wasn’t the hotel manager with him. It was Jerry, shaking his shoulder and saying, “Hey, champ. Wake up. That must have been some bender last night. You got any idea what time it is?”

  Zack looked at the clock beside the bed: 7:00 p.m. He had been asleep, or passed out, or dead, for twenty hours.

  “You got a show in an hour, kid.”

  “I—”

  “Come on, get dressed!”

  He was wearing clean pajamas. There were bandages over the cuts on his chest. He remembered almost nothing of the night before. There had been a mirror … hadn’t there? Moving heavily, feeling as if the air were damp cotton wool, Zack let Jerry get him dressed, get him downstairs, get him into the waiting car. In his dressing room, Jerry got him into costume, the Egyptian pharaoh headdress and the gladiator sandals and ridiculous white loincloth. Zack walked out during the announcer’s spiel, crossing the catwalk to the cage. Goldie roared.

  Anton, on duty, sullenly unlocked the cage door.

  Karoly stood inside, behind the barred shield, holding the CO2 canister.

  The crowd stopped screaming Zack’s name and quieted, waiting.

  Zack looked at the lions, Goldie and Lulu and Fluffy and Fuzzball. No: at Rex, Majesty, Artemis, Lilith. He looked at Anton, holding open the cage door. Zack had no idea what gesture or expression Anton would make next. Zack looked at Karoly, who stared back at him.

  Karoly is going to …

  Is going to …

  He didn’t know what Karoly was going to do.

  There were no non-voices, no presences in his head.

  Zack looked again at the big cats, at their huge teeth and sleek long muscles and claw tips like ice picks. He looked at Rex’s intent eyes and dark mane, at Artemis’s lashing tail, at Majesty’s poised stillness. He turned and walked back down the catwalk away from the cage, head tipped so far down that his headdress, sloppily fastened, fell off and lay in a heap of shining imitation gold.

  IV.

  Winter came swiftly in the mountains. At first snowfall, Zack looked for a shovel to dig out the car. Not that he was going anywhere; he hadn’t gone anywhere in the nearly two months he’d been here. But there ought to be a shovel. It irritated him, and he phoned Loffman.

  “Where’s the snow shovel kept?”

  “It should be in the laundry room, in the cupboard with the other maintenance stuff,” Loffman said.

  “It’s not.”

  “Well, maybe—”

  “Loffman, when I rent an entire mountain lodge, ten rooms, for three months right in the ski season, I expect there to be a goddamn snow shovel!”

  “I know, but—”

  “No buts, get one up here!”

  Loffman sighed. Zack could picture his whole, tall, stooping, incredibly thin figure shaking with the sigh. Loffman always looked insubstantial as fog.

  “Yes, Mr. Murphy. Oh, and somebody called looking for you. A woman.”

  “What did you say to her? Part of our agreement was that you tell nobody I’m here, that’s what I’m paying your bloodsucking rent for—”

  “I said nothing, I swear. I said I never even heard of you. And someone will bring a shovel today.”

  “They better.”

  The minute he broke the connection with Loffman, the stupidity of the entire exchange hit Zack. He didn’t want a snow shovel. He didn’t want anyone bringing him one. He didn’t want to see anybody, talk to anyone.

  Or had he called Loffman just to hear a human voice?

  That was stupid, too. He’d come up to not hear any voices—not on the TV or the radio or even his cell phone. This third-rate lodge, the same one where Jazzy had once taken her middle-school charges, had no cable, no DIRECTV, no Internet, and cell coverage only in the immediate vicinity of the lodge. Zack was alone, free of anything but himself and Browne, just as he wanted.

  Except for in his head.

  There was no presence, no non-voices. But every time he got out of bed, made a cup of coffee, put on his parka, and went out into the woods, Jazzy’s image was there. Was this, the biggest apartment in the lodge, the same one that the adults had used on that field trip three years ago? Had Jazzy slept in this bed? Opened this refrigerator door? Sat on this chair, staring at this gas fireplace?

  He hated it. He didn’t want to think about her. Certainly not think about her more than when they’d actually been sleeping together. Jazzy’s naked body, creamy chocolate and dark whorly hair .…

  He was horny, was all! But he wasn’t going down the mountain to find a hooker. No place he might be recognized, no act that required anyone else. Fuck that. Besides, he didn’t have a snow shovel.

  “Come on, Browne!”

  The dog leapt off the rug by the fireplace and trotted after Zack. Every morning they went for a walk in the woods together. Every afternoon Zack went again, alone. That’s all it was, a walk. Nothing else. No matter what he saw.

  * * *

  That afternoon, it was a deer. Zack had sat very still for a long time beside a deadfall at the edge of a clearing, cold eventually seeping through even his parka, waiting for whatever came along. The deer stepped hesitantly into the far edge of the clearing, downwind.

  It’s going to move left …

  The deer moved right, stepping daintily on delicate hooves.

  It’s going to push aside some snow and look for grass the way they do …

  The deer lifted its head and sniffed the air.

  It’s going to run away, I know it, it’s getting ready to run …

  The deer stayed in the clearing another three minutes, until Zack jumped up and cursed the stupid thing and it fled, silent and swift as thought.

  Zack stomped home, slammed the door, and got drunk.

  * * *

  He was acting crazy, and when he was sober he knew it, and when he was sober he got drunk so that he didn’t care that he was acting crazy.

  He built a wall of snow, using the shovel delivered by a sullen teenage boy driving an SUV, and lay down on top of the wall until he passed from shivering to drowsing. His lips were blue, he could barely walk on his frozen feet, and he understood that if he’d stayed there five more minutes, he might have died.

  He lured a chipmunk to the porch with stale Sara Lee and failed to predict when it would scamper off.

  He drew pictures of Jazzy, despite the fact that he couldn’t draw, and burned each one in the gas fireplace, first prying off its glass cover. That created acrid odors that made Browne move away indignantly.

  He boxed with a tree, an oak at least fifty years old, whose dry, sere leaves rattled with his blows while Zack’s knuckles ended up bloody and his left
thumb got broken.

  In the woods he came across an animal he couldn’t identify, something brown and furry the size of a large wastebasket. It rose on its hind legs and snarled at him. Zack took one step closer, knowing that it would attack. It didn’t, dropping to all fours and lumbering off over the snow.

  He buried his cell phone under a pile of snow-damp leaves, as deeply and carefully as if conducting a funeral for a beloved child.

  He woke at night from dreams he couldn’t remember, with tears that shamed him so much that he raged at himself and rammed his broken fist into the unforgiving wall.

  Then he found the wolves.

  * * *

  It was morning, which meant Browne was with him, which meant there should have been no animals around because Browne’s joyous barking usually scared them all away. Snow had just started to fall in cold, gray flakes. Zack, with a long thick oak branch as a walking stick, trudged behind the lodge. He turned the corner and there, just before the tree line and the bottom of the idle ski lift, a pack of wolves dotted bloody snow. They had brought down a fawn and were tearing it apart.

  One looked up and saw Zack and Browne.

  They stared at each other—was this the same wolf he’d seen years before? How long did wolves live? Zack began to back away. The fawn’s empty black eyes gazed at him. Its exposed entrails twisted like greasy ropes.

  Then a small wolf—young?—jumped forward and raced at Browne.

  The dog yelped and ran in circles, terrified. The rest of the wolf pack stayed motionless, watching its murderous whelp, watching Zack. The young wolf’s jaws closed on Browne’s tail.

  Browne’s cry of surprised pain galvanized Zack. He leapt at Browne, hitting out at the wolf with his oak branch. The branch connected, hard, and the wolf gave a single sharp yelp and fell on its side.

  The pack left the fawn and moved forward, snarling.

  Zack tried to grab Browne and failed. The little dog was too terrified. Two wolves slipped between Zack and the lodge.

  “Wolves don’t attack people,” Loffman had told Zack. “They’re scareder of you, boy, than you are of them.” But that wasn’t the way it looked now.