Lonnie sighs enormously, then grins. “Not gonna blow it up, are you?"
Randy takes a step forward. “Don't make the man give guarantees like that, right?"
Randy's sister brushes his arm with just her nails. “I should be worried, right?"
He catches her hand. “You know how long the big man's being doing this kind of thing? He'll be doing it forever. Pretty soon, we'll start calling him the old man."
The big man smiles. “Not just yet."
* * * *
5. Verge
The car feels close and smells worse than before. There's no banter now, and any voice sounds out of place, isolated. As we move through a warren of streets, the windows are open to the sizzling sound of the tires on the road, the inconstant growl of the engine and a rattling some loose metal piece makes.
"Next right,” says Tug. “That's the block."
Randy simply drives, both hands on the wheel. We ease over to the curb, and the car gives a glottal cough as it stops.
The big man touches my arm. “Anything?"
I put my face past the window's edge and eye the building in question, a brick nothing that takes up half the block. Barred windows ten feet up on one side show light. Past the former slaughterhouse there's a smaller white building missing a large chunk of its facade. It's dark, though the streetlamps along the block make it sharply visible.
"I heard a voice last night. In my head."
"You said you weren't hearing the voices."
"I wasn't. And I'm not sure . . . . I didn't remember until now. I couldn't tell you what was said."
"What did you say?"
That I remembered. “I said to leave me alone."
"This guy's an awful lot of help,” says Randy.
"I do think I recognize this place,” I say. “I've been here."
"What did you do? Was this where you operated?"
"Maybe."
The men check their weapons before they leave the car. “Do you expect to shoot someone?” I ask.
"The boss developed these,” says Tug, waving his gun. “Three types of discharge at the flick of a switch. Only one is lethal."
"We may not need them,” the big man says.
Unarmed and uneasy, I get out. Straight overhead, the moon is a smudge behind heavy, motionless clouds. My legs quiver.
"Feel that?” says Tug.
He indicates the ground. Now I notice the thrumming from below. Each man taking a predetermined role, they look in four directions as we cross the street. I stumble slightly at a momentary temblor, and the men all turn to me.
Scowling, Randy flattens his hand to his chest. “Made my heart skip."
"The machine's running,” says Tug.
The big man races for the building while the rest of us watch him move. “Time's up!” he shouts.
* * * *
The nearest door, double, steel and possibly maroon—it's hard to tell in this light—lacks a handle. The lock appears to be painted over, never used. When the big man puts out his hand, Randy, who's been digging into his pack, passes into his palm what appears to be the same penlight with which he looked at the innards of my eyes. At a snap, some wad of material spits from the pen to his other palm, and he flings it at the wall. A black web, perhaps three feet across, slaps against the bricks and stays.
Hand a few inches from the door, he aims the pen. A spot near the door's lock sparks, the metal runs, and the air around us grows even darker as every streetlight dims.
"That web . . .” I say.
"Lasers require energy,” says the big man. Steadily as a surgeon, he moves his hand in a smooth circle. Within seconds, he's done. He pounds the incised disk of metal with his palm and I hear it clatter inside. He shoves two fingers into the hole, removes the bolt, I suppose, and wrenches open the door.
Now, whatever is inside is audible, a rapid pumping accompanied by other sounds. “Stay behind me,” he says, and I move close to his back, making myself small. We enter a corridor with concrete floor and brick walls. It's dark, but I'm aware of some light ahead that's spilled this far. All along, the mechanical racket grows louder and more complex, several distinct sounds competing with each other. There's an insistent whine, the subterranean murmur we'd felt outside, and a rushing sound like air sucked and expelled. Then I turn as the big man turns and we're in an open area of the building.
I hear Birdy say, “Whoa."
"Oh hell,” says Randy.
The big man twists about. I try to stay at his back, but he grabs my arm and pulls me in front of him. “There's your contrivance,” he says, and, taking up fully a third of an enormous room, it looks like something assembled out of several machines never meant to go together, a child's idea formed of taking every toy in his room and finding ways to make them fit. There's no exterior to the thing; it's all exposed. I recognize pieces of car engines, twisted sheets of aluminum or tin high up on a lattice of interlocking steel bars, elements from hydraulic systems furiously working. There's something like a whirligig, opposed metal balls spinning rapidly as if moved by a violent, localized wind. And in the middle . . .
"What the hell are they doing?” asks Randy.
Perhaps twenty people lie piled together in a flattened ball, their heads toward one another. They might be dead.
"The victims,” says the big man.
Now I see food scattered about the floor. Human feces and urine mark the room's corners.
Weapon aimed with one hand, Tug approaches the group. “Hey!” he shouts over the din. “Hey!” He pokes at them with his foot; one man pitches to the side, then slowly reclaims his position. “They're alive!"
"Did you hear that?” Birdy asks the big man.
"Yes. One tone changed.” He shouts to Tug to push another man over. Tug complies, a man slides from the pile, and even I hear, amid the dissonance, the lowering note that's restored when the man rights himself.
"You made them open to suggestion,” the big man says. “What did you suggest? Why are they like that?” I'm unable to speak. I hold my hands apart and struggle to make sense of the scene. The machine is indeed the one of which I dreamt—which only makes the situation more unreal.
Randy, in among the workings, has his hands splayed on either side of his head. “We're gonna have to blow up the whole damn block."
The big man, pulling me along, strides closer. “Maybe not,” he says, and points up. “I see several structural weaknesses."
Tug returns his weapon to the bag on his shoulder. “How the hell is this thing even running?"
"You tell me,” says the big man.
"No cables,” says Randy. “No wires. Nothing like a battery."
I see Birdy wince. “It's getting much too loud. If they're done, and the thing is running, why are they still here?"
"This boosts Randy's theory about those wires in their heads,” says the big man. “Some kind of transceiver, connecting them, feeding them information. Maybe drawing energy."
I approach one section that appears to have been taken from the workings of Big Ben, a huge-toothed crown of metal, six-spoked, advancing slowly around a metal axis and supported by a small network of bars. A flap descends from a bar positioned horizontally above it, lifting as each tooth pushes it along.
Is the device doing anything except making noise? Perhaps it's a madman's dream. Perhaps it's my dream.
"What's it for?” asks Birdy.
"There was that time machine under Seattle,” muses Randy.
"That was not a time machine,” says Tug.
Birdy looks back and forth between the two men, who are circling the uprights about twenty feet apart. “You guys dealt with a time machine?"
"We definitely did not,” says Tug.
"This thing's warm,” says Randy, his hand along a beam. “But not hot. And we definitely did. What other explanation do you have? There were two of that guy at one point!"
Tug is inspecting a point where two beams intersect. “The eyes lie. Birdy can tell you that."
&nb
sp; "Yeah,” scoffs Randy. “So the Mad Magician did it with mirrors. Is that what you're saying?"
Tug tilts his head toward the big man, standing farther back to eye the entire device. “Ask the boss. Was that a time machine?"
"I'm still withholding judgment,” he says. “And it doesn't matter what this device is for. It's not formulating a cure for cancer. We need tools now to dismantle this thing. The weakest points seem to be higher up. Tools are in the trunk?"
"I'll go,” says Birdy. Randy tosses him the car keys, and he sets off the way we'd come.
"How about that underworld thing in that Hopi village?” Randy asks.
"I wasn't there,” says Tug. “And neither were you."
"Yeah, but you know the story. Maybe this is summoning up beings from the underworld."
"Let's get those people out of here. Randy, Tug, be gentle."
That's when I hear a voice and look for the source. I hear it again.
That one.
I'm looking at the big man.
A sharp crack like a board breaking catches us all. A blue-white arc of what appears to be electricity jumps among the people, skitters amid the machinery; its endpoints jump about, and then it vanishes.
"Hey, Tug!” shouts Randy. “What was that expression you told me? The one from Korea?"
"'Now the shit becomes the shitstorm.’”
"Perfect."
Then air changes to water.
I can still breathe, but the space around me grows heavy, and as I start toward the big man, instinctively aiming for the shadow of his protection, it's like trying to walk along a pool's bottom. The others move about in fascination, watching their own limbs and checking each other's faces for confirmation of this strangeness.
Light flashes behind the big man as if from a mirror, glinting. He sees me looking—I'm stunned, utterly useless—and by the time he turns, the air has opened, split by light, a crack tilted maybe fifty degrees backward.
Randy points and shouts something, but he might as well be speaking through a wall. His voice is faint, distorted.
The air changes again, suddenly cold—the sweat making sharp lines and patches on my back—and clouded, but less dense, so sound again behaves properly.
"Hoist me up!” Randy cries to Tug, aiming to reach the machine's upper confusions. Tug makes a step of his joined hands beside one upright, and I happen to be gripping another out of absolute confusion, when conditions change again. What had been swirling currents in the air congeal into threads of darker matter that brush against us before settling into enormous, flattened tendrils, the ends widely flared, rooted in the rift at the room's center.
One tendril flails and knocks Randy away from Tug, and then it's clear that the tendrils aren't moving randomly, but with purpose, as another slams atop Tug and two converge on the man himself. Birdy, back from the car, comes running from the far end of the room, his fat-muzzled weapon drawn. He fires at one rearing tendril; after each shot—he fires five times—a bullet drops to the floor.
Tug has somehow twisted free and is pounding away at what held him, but the substance yields in a rubbery way, and, unperturbed, twines around Tug's legs, then shoves against his chest until he's down again, grabbing a metal support for leverage. Likewise pinned now are Birdy and Randy. I'm untouched and still holding an upright, near to the huge crown slowly turning within its network of metal. And all the while, the man himself battles on, striking at two of them, keeping them at bay.
Tug reaches for his backpack, lying open on the floor, and another tendril forms from currents of the air, flashes downward, and immobilizes his arm.
The machine churns, growing ever louder than before; its elements glide and slip and rotate; the breach in the air generates its own sound, an electric hum that climbs in pitch. Then the people, who've remained unmoving all the while, join the cacophony. Their eyes open; their mouths open; the sounds they make, I know too well: they are sounds of human suffering.
The man himself is surrounded and besieged. His shirt tears and his flesh is suddenly striped with blood. As many arms form as are needed to bring him down, all of them rooted in that gaping seam. Even occupied with the physical struggle, tensed and straining, twisting and punching, legs working to gain purchase on the floor, going down to one knee—still the gold-flecked eyes never stop, the great mechanism of his brain continues to seek a solution other than force, since this is a fight he cannot win.
I have seen men fight, under the influence of my work, under the sway of ideology—brave, regretful, puzzled, desperate. Always, I've viewed it at a distance, watching films in small smoke-filled rooms in which the film sometimes caught and tore in the projector. Others helped me analyze what I saw. We discussed how long a person might fight when in pain. What made someone fearful? When did panic help and when did it hurt? To inspire my work, I sometimes watched those films alone. They appeared to be relics from another world rather than the world I had helped to make. When the film grew taut, it snapped. Often, I had to open the machine and fiddle about till it all ran right again. The smallest misadjustment could jam the mechanism and set fire to the film.
A shout comes from the big man as he's forced down by multiple tendrils, turning, as he falls, to face into the mechanism. I watch those eyes. They take in every aspect of the machine, pause, make a path among the workings. He studies the metal crown near me. Has he found a way to save us all?
To this point, the black tendrils leave me untouched, while my companions labor to survive and the group of people on whom I must have operated suffer some unknown torments. I hesitate before revealing myself.
I call out, “What can I do?"
In all this, he's never once looked at me. And even when I call to him a second time, he doesn't look my way. He has factored me out. His eyes shut and he renews the physical fight with intensified force, for now, rather than keeping him in place, the dark arms are pulling him toward that rip in space. Tug, close by, sees what's happening and briefly throws off the tendril on his back and, though still partly held by his other arm, reaches his friend and grabs him by the wrist before finding himself freshly assaulted.
Randy, too, has freed himself for the moment and catches hold of the big man's other arm; then he grabs an upright just as he's pummeled to the ground.
How, I wonder, do these branching arms know where to reach, when to strike? And then, though there is no voice speaking to me, I realize what part I've played in what's unfolded.
I shut my eyes.
I hear, over the rising exclamations and absurd racket of the device, the shouts between my companions. I hear his voice shout them down.
"Let me go! Let me go!"
"I won't do it!” cries Tug.
"Got to be another way!"
"I'll take the fight to them! Then you get the people out of here!"
Randy is nearly screaming. “You don't know what's in there! You can't win in there!"
"They won't expect it!” he says, but of course that's not true, because I can hear his plan and so whatever's coordinating this scheme can hear as well.
His friends keep insisting they won't let go. At last he orders them, audible though not shouting, “Gentlemen. Release me."
I open my eyes. The three men pause, holding on to this moment of decision.
Meanwhile, the machine spins and gasps and keens like a tormented thing and the people trapped in its midst weep with anguish. Now I look where the big man's eyes had looked. Most of the mechanism works with tremendous speed, but not the turning crown near me. I think how perhaps the world is ending and that wheel is like the world, or like another version of the world making its way into existence, riding strangely on its axis into the future, each spoke moving below the bar that holds the metal flap, each slow tick of that flap on the teeth another step toward that awful future world. I see that I might stop that world from coming.
I step quickly to a place above the crown and cock my knee, aiming between the spokes and just against
the bar above it. My shoe catches briefly on the metal wheel as I jam my leg through, and I shut my eyes as if that might keep the voice in my head from knowing what I've done. Blindly, I grab a nearby support with both hands and brace myself—against what's coming and against the urge to pull free my leg.
Something heavy slams against my head, turns me awkwardly, twisting my back, but I hold on.
I hear the man himself shout. “Lukic!” I resist looking. I think he's going to tell me to free myself. He's going to tell me to let him bear the burden. “Lukic! Look at me!"
They've been tearing at his head, these living branches, and his face is turned partly away, but his eyes are on me. He's digging in again, straining forward, rubber-soled shoes gripping the floor.
"Look at me!” he shouts again. “And don't look away! Don't look away!” Several tendrils leave him now and go to work on me. One slides below my foot and pushes upward, but already my leg is locked between the spoke and the bar. “Don't look away!"
Thoughtless and panicked, I do it, and then the first sharp pain cuts me and I understand him. I scream, but he shouts above it, “I'm here! I'm here! Look at me! Don't look away!"
I have never been strong, never used strength. I do not believe I have strength—not like his, in any case. Even so, I cannot be dislodged. The pain pours upward and shakes me like electricity, but I hold on. The scream shrills out from me, but I keep my eyes on the man himself.
The rotating crown labors to advance . . . and then it stops.
Many things happen at once. The rift snaps shut, cutting off the sound from that other realm, and, the machine stopped and silent too, there's only the frying hiss of the black tentacles laced about the room, and the one still in the great man's grip, as they are rendered into dust. Black particulate settles toward the floor but fades to nothing before contact.
"Get them out of here!” he tells his companions. “Fast!” Tug grabs two people, one under each arm, and hurries away. Randy throws another man over his back.
"Birdy's still down!” calls Randy.
"Check him! And grab the tools!"
At last I let go of the beam and tip sideways across the metal bar. I look away from the blood. The big man is over me, uncomfortably close. I can't catch my breath; I can only breathe his exhalations. “I wasn't insane,” I say.
Asimov's SF, April/May 2011 Page 14
