Play Dead

by John Levitt

  I looked off into the distance, as if remembering ancient grudges. I let my head nod slightly, as if in agreement, then gave a little shake and returned to the present.

  “Sorry,” I said, reluctantly. “I just don’t see it.”

  Jessie smiled enigmatically. I might not be buying into it, but she had bought into my act. She thought she almost had me.

  “Well, think about it,” she said.

  I shook my head. “It’s all academic anyway. Victor and those like him aren’t tyrants. They just fulfill a need. If practitioner society didn’t want him doing what he does, he’d be out of a job.”

  “Exactly. I’m not some evil black practitioner out to overthrow the order of things. I’m just going to convince people to see things my way. Democracy in action. What’s wrong with that?”

  I let an expression of uncertainty flash across my face. Then I dismissed it and stood up.

  “Nice talking to you,” I said. “But politics bores me. Besides, I’ve got work to do.”

  I hated to leave my beer unfinished again, but you can’t utter an exit line and then linger. I was well satisfied with my performance. Jessie believed she had me on the hook, and the next time we talked I’d let her push me a little further. I still didn’t know what she was up to, but it wasn’t about building a grassroots consensus. That much I was sure of.

  FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS I PUT IN SOME TIME searching for Jackie, but it was a brick wall. I was just spinning my wheels. I prowled the streets with Lou, looking for her, but she’d either finally left town or was holed up where I couldn’t find her. I also kept an eye out for whatever had followed me out of that singularity. I even went out a couple of times late at night, hoping to lure it into showing itself if it had bad intentions. But there wasn’t a trace of it. I was beginning to think I’d imagined it until I remembered Lou and Rolf had seen it, too.

  But now that I was looking for it, I did notice all kinds of small anomalies, signs that Jessie had been telling the truth. Squirrels that Lou didn’t want to chase, squirrels that looked more ratlike than squirrel-like. The occasional brightly colored bird that seemed out of place. A procession of centipedes scuttling down a gutter, nose to tail, hundreds of them. Minor things, all, but out of place and disturbing.

  I’d just about decided to pack it in and kick back for a while when the late-night knock at my door came. Lou bounded up from his spot on the bed, instantly alert. No growl; he wasn’t disturbed, but it wasn’t a random friend dropping by for a visit, either.

  I’m pretty secure in my own house, so I opened the door. Two people stood there; I didn’t recognize one of them but I sure did the other.

  Jackie.

  NINE

  “MAY WE COME IN?” SHE ASKED.

  I stepped back and motioned her inside. The person with her was unremarkable and rather unprepossessing—short, heavy, round-faced, thinning sandy hair, big ears that stuck out comically. He’d grown the type of little mustache people sometimes do when they’re trying to add character to an otherwise undistinguished face. His eyes gleamed a pale watery blue, and his shoulders slumped as if he were afraid a stranger might lash out at him at any moment. A more inoffensive-looking man I’d never seen. I immediately marked him as someone to watch very carefully.

  “Coffee?” I asked, as if they were casual friends just dropping by for a visit.

  “No, thank you,” Jackie said politely. Her companion held out his hand.

  “I’m Malcolm.”

  From his looks I expected his palm would be damp and sweaty, but it was warm and dry. He might look like a nervous Nellie type, but his skin told a different story. And in more ways than one. A series of intricately designed tattoos peeked out of his sleeve, coming all the way down to his wrist. I recognized several runes there that I’d seen black practitioners use in the past. He looked like a good candidate for the one who’d helped Jackie with the dead-body illusion, and yet I felt not a trace of talent coming from him. Was he shielding? I couldn’t imagine what the point would be if he was.

  “You’ve been looking for me,” Jackie said.

  “True. But if I’d known you’d be dropping by, I wouldn’t have wasted the effort.”

  “I suppose my mom told you I’ve done all kinds of dreadful things?”

  “Your mom?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You didn’t know?” She laughed, delighted, and then I got it.

  “No,” I admitted. “I didn’t. But she’s . . .”

  “White? My dad was a black practitioner, if you’ll pardon the pun.”

  “I was about to say too young. Just how old is she, anyway?”

  Jackie laughed again. “I had no idea you were so naïve. Let’s just say she’s older than she looks.”

  I felt foolish. Now things started to fell into place. Jessie had naturally trusted Jackie; she was her daughter, after all. She must have experienced an incredible sense of betrayal. And she’d be worried not just that Jackie’s inexperience and willfulness would cause trouble, but that it would be dangerous to her daughter as well. A typical family dynamic, now so obvious.

  “Well, whatever,” I said, struggling to regain control of the conversation. “But you did take something from her, didn’t you? And she wants it back.”

  “Well, yes, but it wasn’t really my fault. She wouldn’t let me even see it. So I took it. And she doesn’t just want back what I took; she wants me back as well. She’s afraid I’ll do something dangerous.”

  “Like creating a singularity?”

  Jackie smiled, almost beaming. “Impressive, wasn’t it? I tried to throw you off the trail first at that hotel, and when that didn’t work, I tried to get you out of the way for an extended time.”

  “Kind of drastic, don’t you think? I might never have gotten out of there.”

  “Oh, it would have dissolved after a while. A couple of months at most.” Jackie was still at an age where losing a couple of months wasn’t that big a deal. “Besides,” she said, “I knew he would get you out eventually.” She pointed at the corner of the room.

  “Lou?”

  “Sure. He’s kind of famous, you know.”

  Lou looked at her, then at me, then stretched, elaborately. This was just what I needed: Lou with a swelled head.

  Malcolm had been quiet up to now, looking at us both with a sort of bemused interest. But now he nodded. “That’s why we’re here, actually.”

  Jackie took me by the arm and looked at me earnestly. “I knew you’d find me sooner or later. I’ve been hunkered down in a shielded house, afraid to go out, but I couldn’t stay there forever. Then Malcolm found me.” She jerked her head in his direction.

  “If the house was shielded, how did he manage that?” I asked.

  “He’s clever. But that’s beside the point. He’d noticed the singularity, and such things are kind of a passion of his, so he found me. He wanted to know how I’d done it.”

  “You had Richter’s book to help you. That’s how you managed it, right?”

  “So my mom finally told you about that, did she?”

  “She did. It’s a big deal, apparently.”

  “Indeed it is,” said Malcolm. “You saw what Jackie could do with its help. And with my expertise and assistance, there’s no limit to what we might accomplish.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “But who are you, anyway? And why are you here? What does any of this have to do with me?”

  Jackie interrupted. “Malcolm’s a friend,” she said, which was no answer at all. “As to why we’re here, first of all, I want to convince you to leave me alone. Second, I need your help, too.”

  Great. It looked like everybody wanted me on board these days. It would have been an ego boost if I had any idea why. Malcolm chimed in.

  “And third, it’s not so much you as it is about Lou here.”

  “Of course,” I said. Lou had been quite in demand these last few years, and now his already swelled head was going to grow even larger
. Malcolm pulled out a chair and gestured.

  “May I?” He delicately seated himself at the kitchen table.

  “I’ve made quite a study of singularities. With what I already know, Jackie’s help, and Richter’s manual, I’m now fairly certain we could create a singularity so complex it would be indistinguishable from an actual world. Plants, flowers, buildings, and three-dimensional people—even a real society, with its own history. All identical to the real thing. For all I know it might actually be the real thing—at a certain level of complexity, things take on an independent existence.”

  Not a chance, I thought. Malcolm was suffering from a god complex.

  “That would be quite the feat,” I said. “But what would be the point?”

  “A test. If we can accomplish that, we’ll be ready for the next step.”

  “Which is?”

  “That will be made clear later on. But the thing is, the only way to test this would be for the two of us to enter the creation, to actually go there. That’s no problem, but I’m not so comfortable about navigating a way out once we’re there. Accessing it is one thing. Getting back might be a different matter.”

  I caught on. “I see. And you believe Lou could help you get back.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even if he could, he’s not about to go off with you.”

  “Oh, I’m aware of that. That’s why we want you to come along.”

  “Hmm. Assuming for the moment you could accomplish such a thing, why would I want to go there with you?”

  Malcolm looked genuinely baffled.

  “Why, it’s the chance of a lifetime,” he said. “A whole new world? Who wouldn’t want to explore such a thing? Think of what you might learn, what wonders you might see there.”

  “I think you’ve got me confused with Eli.”

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. But just to be clear, are you talking about making a construct of your own or about creating a gateway to an actual dimension?”

  “An interesting philosophical question. But difficult to answer. It’s not always a case of one or the other.”

  My God, he really was just like a pint-sized Eli. I knew better than to pursue that line of questioning; I’d get the same kind of semantic runaround that always drove me crazy. I brought Jackie back into the conversation.

  “On a more practical level, what exactly am I supposed to do about you, Jackie? I was hired to find you and get back what you took from Jessie, remember? And she’s paying me quite a bit for my services.”

  “I still can’t believe you’re working for my mom,” Jackie said. “I’ve talked to a few people about you. I wouldn’t have thought you were the type.”

  “You never can tell.”

  She shrugged and reached into the shoulder bag she carried and took out a couple of CDs.

  “Here,” she said. “The first one is the copy of Richter’s book I took—I scanned the pages into my laptop and then destroyed the book.”

  She said this with the thoughtless arrogance of youth, unaware of the enormity of what she’d done. Eli would have called it a crime; he venerates books. It was like someone casually mentioning they’d burned a Shakespeare First Folio.

  “And the other?” I said, reaching for the disks. There was no point in commenting on it.

  “The other is the dirt on the Sun City deal. Cassandra told you about that, didn’t she? I’m not even keeping a copy of that one. I don’t care anymore.”

  “Why is that?”

  “There’s no point. If it’s not Sun City destroying Point Reyes, it will be someone else. There’s money to be made, billions, and as long as there’s big money involved, it’ll never end. Sooner or later the bad guys will win. They always do.”

  “That’s a bit cynical, don’t you think?”

  “Not cynical. Just realistic. This planet is already dead; it just hasn’t quite stopped breathing yet. But there’s still hope—you just have to think out of the box. That’s what this is all about, you know.” I didn’t know, but she wasn’t paying any attention to me. She had the slightly glazed look of a true believer in her eyes. “We’ve screwed up one world, and it’s too late to fix it now. But maybe if we could start over again, we’d do a better job.”

  Now it was starting to make sense. Not actual sense; both of them were verging on bat-shit crazy in my book, but I could see where she was coming from.

  “Not much of a student of human history, are you?” I said.

  “On the contrary. That’s why it will work. But anyway, now you’ve done your job. You can give her the disks. Unless you’re planning on tying me up and delivering me to my mom in person.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Then why don’t you help us instead? It wouldn’t hurt you any and you’d be doing a lot of good, more than you know.”

  “It’s an interesting proposal; I’ll give you that. But it’s something I’d have to sleep on.”

  “Of course,” Malcolm said. “Who wouldn’t? But the experience will be more than worth it; that, I can promise. Trust me.”

  I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone I’d just met say “trust me” before. It would have been another warning sign if it wasn’t clear that Malcolm was basically clueless about nuances. He’d make a lousy conspirator. I guessed he hadn’t spent a great deal of time around other people. Too much time exploring the phenomenon of singularities, perhaps.

  “Hey,” I said to him. “You’re an expert on singularities, right? Supposedly.”

  “I do have some knowledge, yes.”

  “Well, the one I was in last week? The one Jackie set up? Something followed me out of it. Any idea what it could have been?”

  The two of them exchanged a quick glance. So neither was very good at conspiracies. That was reassuring.

  “Are you sure something came back with you? What did it look like?” Malcolm asked warily.

  I thought for a moment of making something up, to test his reaction, but thought better of it. I was pretty sure he was lying anyway, so better I just play it straight and let him think I was unaware.

  “I never got a look at it.” They both relaxed slightly.

  “I can’t think of anything. Unless I’m very mistaken, nothing in that singularity had an independent existence—there’s no way anything from there could exist in the real world.”

  “Huh. Well, maybe I was imagining things,” I said.

  Malcolm nodded. “Stress can play tricks on the mind.”

  “I guess.” Tricks were perhaps being played, but it wasn’t my mind that was doing it.

  “So what do you think?” Jackie asked, still pressing.

  “About your offer of a magical mystery tour? It’s not impossible. But as I said, I’d have to sleep on it.”

  Jackie seemed to want to discuss it further, but Malcolm pulled her toward the door.

  “Come on,” he said, in what he thought was a hearty tone. “Give the man some time.”

  “Are you going to tell my mom I was here?” she asked.

  “Probably. I have to hand over the disks, anyway. She’s going to ask how I got them.”

  “You don’t have to tell her.” I didn’t say anything. “Fine,” she said. “Just don’t tell her about what we’re intending to do, okay? At least not until you make up your mind about if you’re coming or not. She’d interfere, and then you wouldn’t be able to make your own decision.”

  That was a sad and clumsy attempt at manipulation on her part, reminding me that Jackie was barely more than a kid, despite being powerful and clever in many ways. But since I had no intention of telling Jessie any more than I had to anyway, it didn’t hurt to let Jackie think she’d succeeded in convincing me.

  “All right,” I said, with seeming reluctance. “I’ll wait on that part of it, then. How am I going to let you know when I make my decision?”

  “You’ve got my cell number, right? From Sherwood?”

  She smiled mischievously, a subtle reminder of how easily s
he’d played Sherwood and me. I had to give her props on that one.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Come to think of it, I do.”

  As soon as she and Malcolm left I waited a few minutes and then went outside and walked around the entire building, checking the wards, just to make sure. Everything seemed tight.

  I loaded one of the CDs into my computer, curious about what all the fuss was about. But I was in for a disappointment. It was a PDF file, obviously scanned in from the original book. Some of it was printed, and some handwritten in black ink. But the text was in German, with fancy lettering that I assumed was some sort of Gothic script. I couldn’t even identify some of the letters, much less understand what it said. Runes, numbers, symbols, and other things that were gibberish to me were scattered throughout. This was something for Eli to deal with.

  It was a bit late to head over to Victor’s, so tomorrow morning would have to do. At least things were finally moving in some direction, although it wasn’t clear what that direction was.

  TEN

  NEXT MORNING I CALLED ELI, MADE IT OVER to Victor’s, and handed the disks over to Timothy. He loaded them up, made copies, and gave me back the originals. Then he scanned the monitor screen, briefly paging through the file. The first disk was nothing but office memos, contracts, and e-mails, all relating to Sun City. But the second, the one I’d looked at briefly, was what Eli had been waiting for.

  He’d canceled a class he was supposed to be teaching and rushed over; he was that eager to take a look at the fabled Richter book. He almost pushed Timothy out of the seat in front of the monitor to get a look. In addition to the treasure trove of scribblings in black ink, diagrams, and text, there were also drawings of plants and creatures, none of which looked familiar. And although the text was incomprehensible to me, Eli, naturally, had no problem with it.

  “Wow,” Timothy said, looking over his shoulder. “This is amazing, whatever it is.” Eli just grunted, already engrossed.

  “Does it make any sense?” I asked.

  “ Hmm?”

  “Can you read it? The disk. Is it full of secret knowledge, or just recipes for sauerbraten?”