Perpetual Winter: The Deep Inn

by Carlos Meneses-Oliveira

  He got into the black car that had arrived and waited, serenely, for confirmation that he could proceed to pick up the Portuguese specimen, now that he was conclusively identified. But when the order came, they told Nolan it would not be him. The Holy Ghost had two men positioned to make the catch at that precise moment. Sons of a bitch. Who’ve they sent this time? Probably high school boys. Before moving to the agency, Dimmick had collaborated with the CIA as an external operative and knew what real war was. He never realized why he could never enter their group. Maybe it was because he had an accent or because he was ugly. Or because he didn’t go to Mass on Sundays or didn’t sing the National Anthem with his right hand over his heart. It was a pity the CIA was out of the picture. The Russians and the Jews didn’t have those quirks, of subdividing what had to be done by one hundred organizations that controlled one another. That’s why with half a dozen quarters, they give the advance they do to the service.

  “Roger,” Nolan communicated. “Understood. I just hope they realize this subject’s idiosyncrasy.”

  “They’ve been informed,” the Father told him personally.

  “Correct, but I’ve seen them being more blind than invisible,” Nolan Dimmick finalized.

  “Come home,” the Father responded.

  His colleagues had told him to stop getting in the leaders’ battles. “If they shuffled the deck and get the trumps, then let them pay their bets,” the local collaborator, who was at the wheel of the car, had commented. Nolan detested incompetence, whatever level it came from. But he could be at home in time for Christmas. That was good. He called for another helicopter to pick him up.

  The second pilot came, but he was steamed. Was he a taxi for civilians now? The car, with its lights off, had begun to be lifted by the aircraft about a minute before two police cars arrived, followed immediately by a medical emergency patrol and a yellow ambulance from the National Institute for Medical Emergencies. The Portuguese had an obsession with yellow ambulances. The alleyway was illuminated by rotating lights, proof that Christmas was arriving quickly, even at misfortune’s abode.

  The second black helicopter maneuvered onto the amphibious assault ship’s platform, overlooking the Tagus River, to put the black car with the two agents inside down when Tyrell Hendriks, the Father, released the last pigeon from the balcony of his apartment in Uptown Houston and watched it pass by Williams Tower, going toward the Holy Ghost in San Antonio, with the triumphant message, “Exactly twenty-three days.” Operation Lift had ended less than one month after it had started, thought the Father.

  * * *

  America is a country of cars and highways, not trains and tracks. No one would think to look for Louis Marcé along the railroad tracks by which he was escaping to the north. After a few hours’ march, a train hauling thousands of tons finally appeared in the distance, approaching anxiously in the dark. Louis left for the berm, determined to try his luck with a ride, but the iron horse’s speed kept him from jumping for it while it was moving. He even tried to run alongside but gave up. Jumping would be his death.

  Later, he saw a new headlight on the line, but eventually realized it was not approaching. It was stationary. Could it be the next station? He had more than enough money for the ticket but, for his disillusionment, the light began moving, albeit slowly and silently. It was still not the train station he was looking for.

  When the slow headlight arrived, Louis moved toward the berm again, curious to see the mini-train pass by. It didn’t have cars; it would probably be an isolated locomotive, perhaps electric. To his surprise, when it was clearly visible, it was only a handcar moved by the power of two men’s arms, like those you’d see in Bugs Bunny Cartoons or Charlie Chaplin. On the front stood two individuals in overcoats, with diving masks, cigarettes in their mouths, hands in their pockets and doctors’ poses, while two brutes in back motorized the little machine. What kind of comedians would ride that human propulsion vehicle in the middle of the night? he thought, laughing and immobile.

  When they passed by him, the men stopped the vehicle and jumped to the ground; the brutes put on masks just like the doctors’ and the four moved toward him. They could see in the dark: they had night vision glasses and had come looking for him. Louis, who never ran, shot through the trees in a zigzag filled with rage at having waited for his captors like a foolish duck, running from the soundless firing of darts he heard passing close by him and that from time to time crashed into the tree trunks ahead of him. Virginia’s forests were relatively dense in that area, but the leaves had dropped, the trees were naked and low undergrowth was sparse in winter. Neither the woods nor the night gave him enough protection from those four hunters. His night vision was so good his pursuers’ infrared glasses didn’t give them any advantage, but there were four of them and they knew the terrain well. Initially, one of the agents grabbed him but Lucas easily knocked him down and, as time passed, despite running in a zigzag, he was distancing himself from those chasing him. He ran to the railroad tracks. He was returning to the line in order to cross it again before another locomotive came, leaving behind those characters with whitish-pink skin who circulated in that hand moved cart that the steel monster would crash into a hundred pieces without even slowing down.

  Panting like prey, undoubtedly, but difficult to catch. He felt a vibration on the ground and saw the giant metal machine emerge from the night. He had the bad luck to be treated like a clown by the police on several continents but the good luck to flee from all of them. He threw himself toward the goal line, to the abysm of salvation, the trampoline that guaranteed his future in Montreal. The train was more than three hundred cars long, half an hour to cross, half an hour ahead of whoever was pursuing him. He jumped, crossing the line, passing the train by the skin of his teeth, saving himself at the last second.

  With the frenetic shaking, he woke up suddenly and jumped from the bed, standing up to run from the train. But he couldn’t because he was tied down. Straps on his ankles, above his knees, on his chest and wrists. Bound like Gulliver in a prison. The cell was dark and cold but the bed was heated and, at times, it vibrated and, at others, it moved. The mattress inflated and deflated without anyone saying anything. The sheets were a transparent fabric, not plastic. He was confined and nude in some solitary, with a cobweb of wires attached to his skin, sophisticated adhesives and some plugs that blew air into his nose. His body was peppered with hundreds of silver spots. He had been captured. Was he in a hospital? A laboratory? An autopsy center? No, he was alive and hooked up to, he didn’t know, how many machines. Could the redheaded doctor be responsible for this? The memories of his flight from home, from the collier, the storm, the terrified blonde children, the children’s song intoned during the ocean funeral by the mother of the man who had died, the boxes with amputated fingers, the X-ray, his flight through the forest, all came marching in single file, adding themselves to his vision of the train that came leading through the night toward him.

  Not to mention that cheap imitation of a doctor who had reported him. What would the judge say, the one who was so disconcerted by the handcuff marks, what would he say about them holding him nude in that solitary dungeon? Disconnected ideas came to the surface and then disappeared. I’ll never see the judge. This has been done so I won’t be tried.” Could it have been policemen wearing firemen’s uniforms that had read his thoughts and were punishing him now? Would it be His Excellency from the collier? Officially, I am dead, for sure. It wasn’t the police who did this. It was whoever plotted this from the beginning. It was whoever killed Quiroga, the Coach and the babysitter. But who?

  “Hello. Is anyone here? Can anyone hear me?” Louis yelled as loudly as he could, but he couldn’t shout much. The sound came out hoarse and his throat hurt. What a stench. It smells like a sewer. The plugs that blew air came loose and the smell was wretched. He raised his head and shouted again.

  “Help. I’m trapped.”

  He was decidedly not alone. A type of wheeled android
was looking at him with an imbecilic air and a series of people were strapped down like he was. The lack of light didn’t let him see clearly, but there were several. There was only one android and it must have been Christian, since it had a red cross on its chest. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. That one’s a naked girl. Damn! Perverts. There were definitely two women, both blonde. Three were men, undoubtedly, and, after them, he couldn’t tell what the two most distant were. He looked at the android and tried to spit at it, without success because his mouth was dry.

  “Hey, you. Hey, hey,” he shouted.

  All of the sudden, another seismic quake shook the dungeon to the verge of collapsing.

  “We’re all going to die, buried,” he shouted. “Wake up.”

  The smell was no better than the threat of an earthquake. It must be a sewer with rats and cockroaches. He hated rats, he hated pigeons, and he hated cockroaches. The floor was black, but there must not have been any water, otherwise he would have seen waves from the tremor. He could barely see. It must be mud. The vibration continued now with fewer individual shocks. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get up. A straight jacket, that system of belts. It was night, he could see through the small windows. The vibration was deafening and there were flames outside. Something was burning. We’re going to burn to death, he thought. They’re lucky. They haven’t woken up. Afterward, came sleepiness and dizziness again.

  “Éveille. Éveille,” proclaimed one of the prisoners at his side. He woke up and was still in the dungeon and it was still night, despite better illumination. The fire was now out, but he was still strapped down. He looked at the fellow who was shouting. He was restrained and naked, like himself, with transparent sheets or quilts. “Éveille,” the other one insisted.

  Louis turned to the tied companion. “Who are you? Where are we?” he asked, in Portuguese.

  “Quoi?” retorted the other. “Parle-toi français?”

  He was French. No. He was from Quebec. Louis looked at his hands and he had all of his fingers. He must not be Marcé.

  “Toi, tu parle français oú quoi?” the Gaul insisted.

  The other prisoner, who was to the left of the Frenchman, began coughing and became agitated. The Frenchman turned to him, vociferating, “Éveille, éveille. Attention a ne pas vomir. C’est dangeraux. Éveille.”

  “What the fuck is this?” the other responded. “Is this some kind of joke? Where the hell?”

  That one was American. Louis was in a scatological version of the United Nations or something like it. He heard women’s voices. They twisted to free themselves from the straps.

  “Hey, people,” said the American. “My name is Andrew, and I’m from Houston. I count seven people in here. Let’s say our names and country and who speaks and doesn’t speak English.”

  * * *

  There weren’t seven. There were eight. Andrew had forgotten to count himself. They all spoke English. Five were Americans, one was Australian, one French, and the other Portuguese. Andrew Kline, thirty-four, from Houston. Steven Boyd, thirty-seven, from Minnesota. Sofia Suren and Mariah Dexter, both twenty-one, from South Carolina. Larissa Mayamba Lee, twenty-eight, daughter of an Angolan mother and American father, from Harlem, New York. Caroline Furst, twenty-five, from Brisbane, descendent of Germans, whose language she spoke fluently, currently living in Oxford. Louis Marcé, who turned twenty on that day, but didn’t know it, from Lisbon. And finally, Pierre Tollmache, twenty-nine, from Lille, living in Paris.

  Louis quickly realized that none of them were wanted by the police and that they were all specialists in complex matters. Steven was a geologist and NASA pilot who had quit because of a conflict with three colleagues that the hierarchy had not been able to resolve. Andrew was an aerospace engineer specialized in photovoltaic energy and had a doctorate in data security. Sofia and Mariah studied exobiology and were experts in guided plant evolution and fungal symbiosis. Sofia had also specialized in extremophile genetics. Caroline, as blonde as Mariah, was an engineer specialized in miniaturized manufacturing units, specifically 3D printing applied to industrial purposes and historiography in her off hours. Pierre had done his undergraduate in mathematics and had a doctorate in game theory and data analysis. Larissa, a physics engineer, was nothing less than the most promising black female engineer dedicated to nuclear fusion in New England.

  Louis hesitated to say what he did because all of the others were geniuses. He said that he was probably there by mistake.

  “You said ‘by mistake’? That’s not the question,” Steven Boyd said. “What do you do with your life?”

  Louis was about to say that he was an MMA fighter, but that seemed like a horrible idea at that moment and said he was a weapons expert.

  “What types of weapons?” Steven interrogated.

  “All types,” Louis responded.

  “Do you work for some state agency?”

  “No.”

  “Strange. How do you earn a living as a weapons specialist?”

  “Poorly,” offered Louis. “I live with my parents.”

  “And why are you here?” insisted Steven who saw some uniting thread in the rest of the prisoners’ profiles and isolated Louis Marcé.

  “I have no idea. Did you come to this dungeon to ask questions?”

  They got quiet.

  “Can anyone imagine a reason for what happened to us?” Sofia asked.

  No one had any idea. All remember going about their normal lives, except that, in Louis’s case, normalcy had been heavily rationed for some time, and that they had all awakened there. They were all scientist or engineers, except for Louis who had dedicated himself to running from the police but was careful not to reveal that detail.

  The nauseating smell came from the fact that they all had a bag for eliminating waste stuck to their perineums and the seals on the bag was not perfect.

  At some point, the lights came on. The eight prisoners’ nudity was disconcerting and was only diminished by hundreds of small silver tattoos or body paint pattered on their skin below their faces, like sparse scales, giving them the appearance of marine animals because of their long hair and beards on the men who had them. They were in a circular chamber, facing each other. The windows closed and, on the ceiling, a polyhedron of LCDs came on. A man, fiftyish, appeared who identified himself as a doctor and told them they had been sedated with amnesia-inducing drugs for more than six months, which is why they had needed artificial life support instrumentation. They had been immobilized by physical restraint systems that would shortly be disengaged, releasing them. As none of them were health professionals, they ought to pay attention to the instructions on how to remove the medical devices, even though they were very simple. There was a medical robot on the ship and the only task it would carry out in this phase would be removal of their tunneled catheters. The beds would then be raised like chairs and they should remain seated for ten minutes, after which they could wash up and get dressed. Their skin was covered with platinum “seeds” that would flake off slowly in the future. The marrow of part of the long bones in their legs and arms, as well as their vertebras, had been filled with bio-compatible platinum in order to adjust their weight. There was no risk to their health as long as they were not subjected to repeated vibrations since the interface between the platinum and their bone marrow was the only unstable region. In this case, micro-particles could enter the bloodstream. If embolized, it could be dangerous for the brain and other organs. He went on to describe how they should remove the catheter, saline and other solutions, orogastric tube, nasal masks, EEG and cardiac electrodes, suprapubic catheter, thermal probes, oxygen saturation sensors, CO2, blood pressure measuring mini devices, neuromuscular stimulation electrodes and the pressure alternating socks.

  When he finished, the robot went to each one, excused himself, and removed the saline solution tube they had on their chests below the clavicle with a quick but precise movement, put pressure on the orifice for half a dozen minutes and then p
laced a patch of artificial skin on the wound. It repeated the procedure with the suprapubic catheter. The restraining bands were then released, freeing them so they could move. The beds themselves were true robots, moving to a full chair configuration and promoting their egress from the bed afterward. They removed the devices, cleaned themselves with small towels, dressed in disposable paper clothes and followed instructions to go down two levels, where they would find showers as well as clean clothes.

  They did so, with their faces marked by anxiety. Louis was the youngest, but also the calmest. He had been a marionette at the hands of unknowns for some time. There was little left for him to perceive who the unknown player was and why he had been interested in him.

  They were told to go up to the middle floor, where they found an almost closed horseshoe-shaped table with chairs affixed to the floor, like everything in that high-tech prison. Their names were on them. They found eight laptops, also affixed, one in front of each personalized chair. His said Lucas Zuriaga.

  Steven Boyd went back on the offensive and asked him if he was Marcé or Zuriaga, and he replied that Marcé was the name the robot had called him. Steven did not find his answer humorous and insisted on knowing why he had two names; Lucas explained that it was his artistic name.

  “What art?” Steven insisted.

  “The art of handling arms.”

  “What arms, specifically?”

  “My fists, principally.”

  The atmosphere was uncomfortable as everyone noticed that Lucas was unusually muscular.