Asimov's Science Fiction
Kindle Edition, 2014 © Penny Publications
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EACH IN HIS PRISON, THINKING OF THE KEY
William Preston | 23395 words
The action in William Preston's self-contained and powerful new novella almost directly follows his March 2010 story, "Helping Them Take the Old Man Down." The author is looking forward to completing—to his satisfaction and the satisfaction of readers—his Old Man saga with a fifth and final story. He tells us, "Special thanks go to my students, who constantly force me to think more deeply about my own writing as we plunge into great works of the past."
1. Phantom World
Jimmy Randolph, who had driven all four hours of the trip, went silent as they came in view of the lake, seeing a landscape his girlfriend did not see and hearing words she had not heard.
Bekka said, turning from the open window, "This is something else. Right? It's beautiful". Both hands on the wheel for the highway's curving descent, Jimmy made a sound that signaled agreement. From above, the road followed the lake's slender finger, the valley walls dense with trees, the water blue with the day's blue, the slender finger pointed toward the white beach and the city of Ithaca. Attention on the highway, Jimmy saw overlaid on this bending stretch a two-lane road arrowing between horizontal Texas fields; saw a low sky too bright, scarred with meager gray clouds; felt again, despite the hot air from the road, the harsh sting of a Hummer's air conditioning. The driver, a young man from the base's private security team, wore a sparse red beard that failed to conceal his acne. He heard the man say, "This isn't just nowhere. This is the capital of nowhere"—most likely repeating something he'd been told on his arrival, Jimmy thought, but then recognizing how so cynical a response so early in the mission wasn't good.
Most times, Bekka's presence suppressed some of his cynicism, muted his depression. Still, Jimmy wondered how many times someone had said at just that point on the road, "It's beautiful." Was her judgment as common and unconsidered as the judgment of all those others, all those people who couldn't find something to say but had to say something? How far wrong was her judgment about him?
His leg jumped when her hand settled on his thigh. "What's running through your brain?" she asked.
"Just trying to watch the road," he said, glancing in each mirror, taking in the modest traffic.
"Uh huh," she said, making it clear she didn't believe him. She had picked her hair into a massy weave; the wind pushed it to the roof. Leaning close, she drew her other hand over her forehead to restrain her hair. "Just don't go totally silent on me," she said. "I want my friends to like you."
His clenched lips twitched as he worked to say something, but she let him off, patting his leg. "Okay," she said. "No pressure. Be inside yourself."
How deep inside himself had the prisoner been? And silent for years. Could Jimmy have sustained that? Anyone would hunger for human contact, for human voices, or to hear your own voice, the reassurance that all of you is still there, that you are still familiar to yourself.
The steering wheel suddenly slick, he shifted his grip toward the middle. Perhaps Bekka had let the relationship move too quickly. Surely when she got to know him more fully...
The beach below was flecked with people. Jimmy and Bekka planned to meet college friends of hers, stay with them for a night, then, if the weather cooperated, camp at a park near a waterfall; there may have been more details, but he had not been a terribly attentive listener in the past six months, a condition that, rather than improving, had worsened in recent weeks. He imagined lying on a precipice to see water cascade through a cleft, but he couldn't get close enough to see where the water struck bottom. Six months ago, he had stood before a hole in the earth, a guard gripping each arm, and, peering down, known for sure there were mysteries he would never solve.
2. The Stone Avenger
Before lunch, in sunglasses, they strolled the glary white-paved Commons, an open mall with shops on either side. "This here," said Bekka, tugging his elbow, angling him toward a glass-fronted store. THE SAME PAGE TWICE: USED BOOKS. A narrowing chute of glass led to the entrance; when Bekka opened the door, a cold blast shouldered past them.
The twenty-ish male at the elevated front desk wore a rainbow bandanna. "Let me know if I can help you find something," he said. A tattoo, possibly the clawlike conclusion of a wing, patterned his neck, the bulk of the image beneath his yellow, saggy-necked T-shirt.
"I'm a browser." Bekka fanned out both hands and intoned with cosmic significance, "I explore".
"I just tag along," Jimmy said, tucking his sunglasses in his shirt pocket. Bekka cast back a puzzled frown he peripherally caught.
"I will make you interested in used bookstores," she said. Had she mentioned this before?
"That can be your mission," he joked, and then regretted the word "mission." Although she was in a graduate physics program, she headed for the art books. He did not follow her.
The air sharpened its chill the deeper Jimmy progressed. At the store's rear, he stopped below a dented lamp clipped to an exposed beam. It registered as too bright and hot—he saw an iconic interrogator's bulb. A stenciled paper banner thumb-tacked to the top shelf read "Sci. Fic./Fantasy." A book for the beach. When he was a middle-schooler, he and some friends had passed around a fantasy series, but that was the extent of his exposure to invented book worlds. In high school, he had discovered psychology and philosophy; he almost never read fiction, unless his father passed him one of Walter Mosley's mysteries.
Some books faced outward; he plucked one: a ringed planet in the background, spacesuited people probed with floating mechanisms a richly cratered moon. Tethys Station. A desolate place, far from anything familiar. Had that job, he thought. He put back the book.
Idling, he made a cautious effort to empty his mind. The army psychiatrist had recommended it, not caring whether Jimmy wanted to call it prayer or meditation or mindfulness; Bekka had offered to introduce him to yoga, knowing only that he needed to put some stressful events behind him. The problem was, to go blank was the beginning of the process, the first step into the passageway across the gap between himself and another. He had explained this to the doctor, but the man was skeptical. All he saw was someone traumatized by violent experiences. Jimmy's details of the matter defied belief.
Rather than go absolutely empty, he kept up a silly patter in his head: the titles of the books, snide comments on the covers. "I don't think that dress will work in outer space. How does that creature see straight with so many eyes? Dark Nova? That's just stupid. The Unknown Men. Oooo. Scary. Dreams of a New World. Nice raygun, pal. Man, you're too old to fight that—"
Jimmy's inner commentary went silent. The paperback's yellow cover—sky lemony, the human figure and the ground a shade darker—contrasted with the bold orange title— The Methuselah Ray —in a flag-shaped banner above the action. An elderly man, bald, his shredded shirt revealing striated muscles on age-slimmed arms, knelt on one knee in a cracked desert, fist drawn back to strike an obscure figure lurching in from beyond the cover, said figure bearing a lantern-shaped object that sent forth a gray-green light.
Cold air rattled the nearby vent. When Jimmy snatched the book from the eye-level shelf, the front cover, barely holding on, missing the top inch, shifted under his thumb. It lacked a back cover.
Book against his chest, he strode purposefully to the front desk. His urgency, his martial stride, caused the clerk to straighten from his slouch. Jimmy snapped the book onto the glass counter.
"What can you tell me about this?"
The clerk hesitated, then shifted his shoulders, bent to look, a
nd relaxed. "Oh, cool. It's a reprint of an old pulp. You like those?" He looked up briefly. "Like the Shadow and shit?" He corrected himself, "And stuff?"
"Pulp?"
"Action-adventure, mystery stories, science fiction. The twenties, thirties, so forth. This book's just a reprint, but the story, um, this one's from theee... thirties. Early thirties." He looked up again and read Jimmy's ignorance. "They're called pulp because of the cheap paper they used." Jimmy managed a nod. "And this character—" "The Stone Avenger." The clerk now had the book in his hand. "I'll tell you, my great-aunt... or whatever she was. Great- great aunt? Her mother and my great-grandmother were sisters. Does that actually make her my cousin? My mother always said 'your aunt.' Anyway, she wrote a lot of these, a lot in this series." He set the book down with some care. "I'm pretty sure she wrote this one. He battles this group called End of Days. They have a ray that rapidly ages people," he said, spinning one index finger as if he were unraveling a thread.
Jimmy read the author's name. "Acton Frost?"
"It's a pseudonym. One of the Brontës used Acton. Anne Brontë. Acton Bell. Trying to conceal that she was a woman. Same with my aunt. Women weren't supposed to write pulps. And she wasn't white, either. She was Mohawk. Anyway, the publisher used Acton Frost for what they call a house name for a couple of series. The stories always said Acton Frost no matter who wrote them."
"So this... this is fiction."
"Wellll..." Jimmy couldn't read his expression, a smile as erratic as his head bobbing. "This is a real guy. My aunt knew him. Seriously. That's how she ended up writing the stories. They're based on an actual person. Go dig up newspapers from the thirties and forties and fifties. You can find references. Mysterious giant of a man. A dark man from out of nowhere. Superior intellect. Inventor. Knows what he can't know. Rescuer of the helpless... along with his team of assistants. He was based in New York, but he got around. There was a book a while back that pulled together all the accounts, but it's out of print. The writer claimed he was even active in the 1970s and eighties. But the novels stopped back in the forties. I think they tried some new ones in the sixties, but his time had passed. He was huge in the pulp days. Like Batman-level huge. And these reprints did well in the seventies."
"What did you call him?"
The clerk drew a finger below the tear on the cover, where the bases of some letters remained. "The Stone Avenger. That was the title of the first story, The Stone Avenger. He gets completely sealed in rock. And he emerges in kind of a resurrection scene where he's transformed into this... mythic being. But it's not like people start calling him the Stone Avenger. That was some editor's idea, the same way an editor came up with 'Peanuts' for the Charlie Brown gang. I mean, maybe a couple of times someone calls him the Stone Avenger. His followers call him 'Big Man' or 'Boss.' Villains don't even speak about him." His head wobbled again. "Like if they don't say his name, he can't be... summoned.
"I mean, it's not a bad name. And 'stone' gives you the sense that he's invulnerable. He's not, but of course, if they kill him, the series is over.
"Here, look at this," he said, and produced a magazine from the glass case behind him. "This is one of the original magazines. First it was called Fighting Men," he said, pronouncing the title with dramatic verve, "but once he became so popular, it shifted to The Stone Avenger. Here's what he looked like in the earlier images, before the reprints. His hair hangs down more. And he's lighter than he is on the paperbacks. I think that's a race thing."
"He's... what race is he supposed to be?"
"It never directly comes up. He's described as copper-colored or golden or bronze. There's a line that gets repeated about 'skin darkened by equatorial suns.' Innn-teresting, right?"
"How many of these are there?"
"More than a hundred! See," he said, and leaned over the counter, elbows on the glass, the book in his hands again. He touched the spine, once black, now split with white lines that nearly erased the title. "It's mostly worn off. Number 12. Early one." Bekka had approached without Jimmy hearing her.
"Look at you," she said. "You buying that?"
He pursed his lips. "Yeah."
"The things I'm learning about you," she said, and picked up the book. "That's a good thing. Little surprises."
"The cover's coming off," Jimmy said to them both.
"Let me put some tape on it," the clerk said. "By the way, I'm Darren." His tongue peeked from the corner of his mouth as he smoothed the tape down. "I tell you, I wish she were still alive to ask about this guy."
Bekka poked Jimmy's arm. "Who's 'she'?"
"His relative. She wrote this."
"She was my great-great aunt. Or probably cousin."
Bekka put her book atop Jimmy's; Jimmy had already produced a ten.
"I'll accept that," Bekka said, and nudged him.
"Computer's down," Darren said. He tapped straight down onto a fat calculator atop the counter, then recorded something on a legal pad. "Funny to think there was a time when someone like this, you know, did his thing. Saved the world." He bagged the books. "Of course, if he were around now, he'd be..." He looked upward, wiggling his fingers, calculating.
Jimmy slid the book from the bag. "He'd be like this."
"Ha. Well... yeah."
3. Perilous
Brigadier General Weston refilled her glass from the water dispenser, which released gurgles of air into the enormous upended jug. The corner office windows ran the length of two walls, and Weston looked toward the road on which Jimmy had arrived. She quickly drained half her glass. Jimmy, having spent his entire morning seated, over the course of three flights and a drive, stood behind the proffered chair, his black beret joining the general's beige cap on her desk.
"Did you see the video?" she asked. "Of the capture?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Holy Jesus come again, that was something. It took a twenty-person team." She drank the rest of the glass and went to refill it. "Want some?"
"That'd be great, ma'am."
Though air-conditioned, the room felt stuffy, still warm from the morning sun. The general set down her own glass on her featureless metal desk and took another glass from a small table. "The doctor tells me I need to keep hydrated. I just wish I could take in all the water I'm supposed to and not have to hit the bathroom so much." She handed him his water. "Here's to not getting old too fast."
The icy water shocked his front teeth.
"Lieutenant, I've been given no details of your mission, except that you're to conduct an interrogation. You've got the look of an innocent soul, but let me say, I want none of that Abu Ghraib shit here. You didn't put in time there, did you?"
"No," Jimmy said, but he took too long to answer, and the general read it wrong.
"I'm going to require honesty and cooperation from you, Lieutenant, and if those qualities do not make themselves evident to me, I'm shipping you back to Intelligence post haste. In the last two weeks, they've taken both my XO and an entirely affable lieutenant colonel who did just about all the grunt work around here. This assignment may not end with commendations and effusive praise, but I will not have it end with courts martial."
"Honestly, General," Jimmy said. "I didn't. I wasn't there. I was in country. I saw some prisoners on their way there. That's it." He didn't say what a failure it all had been, pointless, both his interrogations and the entire military escapade.
Weston's scrutiny lingered; then her jaw shifted side to side, and she nodded. "All right. Last time MI came through here was before I arrived. I don't know what all they did, but I know it was ineffective. Every orifice has been examined, and there aren't any weapons of mass destruction up his ass. Whatever's in his brain, they couldn't get it. Truly, I don't know if this guy has any intel or not."
"So why keep holding him?"
"The same reason they'll be holding those poor sons of bitches in Guantanamo for another twenty years."
He nodded, recalling images of cage-like enclosures and kneeling men.
"You've been here how long?"
"Nearly two years. The past six months, holding just one man." She swirled the glass as if it held ice, or two substances in need of mixing, and set to gazing on the landscape again.
Jimmy took in the nothing that lay beyond Perilous Base. Twice on the road from the airport, the high-riding car had passed ground-level signs that identified the Texas landscape on either side as a nature refuge, but from Jimmy's perspective, attempts at preserving anything living had failed. A few weeds, an uninviting blank stretch of charmless, lumpy tan: perhaps there was life there that couldn't be seen, below the surface. Or, as he remembered from some grade school lesson, maybe rains visited this dry country one week out of the year, causing flash floods, filling every culvert and ditch, causing the colorless vista to blossom in yellows and reds. What did he know of this part of the world?
Jimmy had imagined the Hummer as if from above, animated, a red line reaching forward toward a set of small cubes set on the desert floor. And then exactly that appeared ahead of him, two-story buildings the color of the earth, surrounded by tiers of wire, and he sucked his upper lip, wondering if the confirmation of his mental picture was another manifestation of his abilities. He'd have to record it in his journal, himself an experiment on which he kept a close watch.
Jimmy said, "Can you tell me anything that isn't in the files?"
"The files," scoffed Weston. "I've never seen records like that. All the standard papers are missing. He might be a foreign national, for all we know. Rumors and adventure stories going back to the 1920s. Supposedly, the man has operatives and contacts everywhere. Either someone is withholding what's known about him, or he has friends who've covered his tracks. Or both." Her gaze wandered. "What's not in the files," she mused. "Well, he's scared of dogs."
"You've got dogs here?"
Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 Page 1
