Immobility

by Brian Evenson

  There was a hint of something else other than darkness from the far end of the tunnel, the opening out into the night, where the sky was not completely dark but fading fast. There was something else, too, he realized as his eyes adjusted, a strange tint to the darkness around him, not enough to help him see, but something keeping it from being completely dark. He cast his eyes around, looking for whatever it might be, but saw nothing, no crack under or to the side of the door, nothing on the floor or the walls. But it was still there nonetheless, puzzling him.

  And then suddenly it struck him. He looked all the way up, at the ceiling, and saw there, above his head, a small red light.

  He clapped his hands once and when the light came on saw, on the wall above him, a small camera. As he watched, it made a slight whirring sound, angling differently, looking for something. Looking, he realized, for him.

  He knuckled across the floor and to the other side of the hall, where the camera could see him. It whirred for a little longer as it tracked past him. He stared at it, one hand lifted in greeting. Suddenly it stopped, moved to point directly at him.

  “Hello,” he said to the camera. “Can you hear me?”

  The camera didn’t move. He turned to determine if it possessed a microphone or speakers, but saw no evidence of either. Feeling helpless, he raised his hands high above his head as if surrendering, then gestured at the door.

  Immediately he heard a thunking sound and the door loosened in its frame. As he watched, it swung open a few inches, then stopped. Because of where he was in the hall, all he could see was the door itself, not what lay behind.

  “If you have any weapons,” said a voice through the crack, “we ask that you leave them outside.”

  “I don’t have any weapons,” Horkai lied, stifling the urge to touch his boot and make sure the knife was still there and, if it was, that it was still hidden.

  “If you come in peace,” said the voice, “you shall find us to be your friends. If you come to make war, you shall find in us formidable enemies.”

  It was a statement rather than a question, so at first he didn’t bother to respond. But when the person on the other side of the door seemed to be waiting he finally said, “Duly noted.”

  The door swung open a little wider. A hand, hairless and pale and strangely transparent, appeared around the edge of it, extended and open.

  “You may enter,” the voice said.

  Slowly Horkai began to drag himself across the floor. And now, Horkai thought, his heart pounding, we will see what is inside. If it is a trap, then I am walking into it. If it is not a trap, I will take what I came for and leave.

  Jaw set, he pulled himself along. He rounded the door and for the first time saw the man on the other side.

  And that was the moment that everything irrevocably changed.

  PART THREE

  16

  THE MAN ON THE OTHER SIDE of the door could have been his double. His skin was exceptionally pale, almost the color of bleached bone. His head was hairless, even the eyebrows missing, and from what Horkai could see—forearms, hands—the rest of his body appeared to be hairless as well. His features, though not identical to Horkai’s, were not dissimilar either, and they were roughly the same height. The man was wearing a long tunic, belted at the waist, a pair of worn leather boots below that. Horkai was too surprised to do anything but stare.

  The man smiled. “Ah, brother,” he said. “You’ve come home at last.”

  He lowered his extended hand in Horkai’s direction, but Horkai pushed it away. “Can’t stand,” he said. “Fell off something a few days ago and must have broken my spine.”

  “No need to worry, brother,” said the man. “Time heals all wounds.”

  “How long since I saw you?” asked Horkai. “Do I know you?”

  “You haven’t seen me, brother,” said the man. “I was speaking metaphorically. I do not need to know you to recognize that you are my brother. Look at you and then look at me, and then tell me if you dare that we are not brothers.”

  Horkai slowly pulled himself over the threshold of the door and inside, the man stepping a little to one side to let him enter. On the other side was a small office, four desks in all. On the wall were the door controls and a small screen showing what the camera was seeing just outside the door. A track pad for moving the camera was beside it. The office itself was lit by a battery of long-stalked LED bundles making up a lamp in the middle of the floor. It gave the room a stark and unearthly pale glow. The lamp, Horkai saw, had a hand crank to charge it. On the far side of the room was the opening of another hall.

  “You look exhausted,” said the man.

  “I am,” said Horkai.

  “You’re lucky I thought I heard something,” said the man. “If I hadn’t and you hadn’t moved into the camera’s range when you did, I wouldn’t have checked again until morning.”

  The man pulled the door closed by a handle on the inside, then used the wall switch to trigger the door lock.

  He came back over to stand above Horkai, shaking his head.

  “No, no, no,” he said. “It just won’t do. But if I’m not mistaken.” And then, lifting a finger, he turned on his heel. He plucked at one of the light bundles in the lamp and it came free, battery and all, the end of the bundle still glowing. He walked briskly across the office and down the hall on the other end. This, Horkai glimpsed briefly in the light cast by this makeshift flashlight, was lined with row upon row of metal cabinets. He watched the light slowly fade down the hall until it was gone.

  Horkai pulled himself over to a chair and then, with great effort, managed to climb into it without tipping it over. From there, he regarded the room. On each desk was an old computer covered in plastic, the plastic dusty enough that it was clear it had been years since any of the computers had been used. He opened the drawers of the desk he was sitting at, found them empty except for a nub of pencil, its tip broken off, and a key chain with no keys on it. The key chain had a representation of a golden figure blowing a trumpet on it, the words FLIRT TO CONVERT etched below.

  Flirt to convert what? he thought. What could it possibly mean? The golden figure above the words made him wonder if he’d stumbled upon a relic from some sort of alchemical cult, a Midas cult interested in converting flesh into gold. But that was crazy, wasn’t it? And why flirt?

  And this place, he wondered, looking around, what was it before? Storage of some kind obviously, but for what?

  He heard a distant clattering noise and a moment later saw light bobbing up the corridor and toward him. The man was pushing something in front of him that gradually resolved from the darkness to become a wheelchair.

  “I thought we had one, and I was right,” the man said, resocketing the bundle in the lamp. “It’s just been sitting back there in storage, but now it has come in handy. Shall we?”

  He helped Horkai slide out of the chair and into the wheelchair, making little encouraging but inane comments the whole while. When he realized Horkai was looking at him strangely, he apologized.

  “You’ll have to forgive me,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had anyone to talk to.”

  Horkai nodded.

  “Now you’ll be able to move around on your own power,” the man said. “Or I can push you if you’d rather. Maybe a little bit of both?” The man stopped speaking, narrowed his eyes. “By the way,” he said, “how did you manage to get here? Surely you didn’t crawl the whole way?”

  “Of course not,” said Horkai quickly. “I had a wheelchair,” he said, “but it broke down.”

  “Where?”

  “Not far from here. Maybe a quarter mile back.”

  “You’re still on miles, are you? We thought the ones left alive might have switched to metric by now. Apparently not. I’ll go fetch your other wheelchair in the morning,” he said, “see if it can’t be fixed. Must have been hard going, considering the condition of the roads. I’m surprised you could make it at all. Did you see my plants,
by the way?”

  Horkai nodded.

  “How are they doing?” the man asked. “But excuse me,” he said, “we haven’t been introduced. Mahonri, same spelling as the prophet, the one who saw the finger of God. And you are?”

  “Josef Horkai,” said Horkai.

  Mahonri gave him a bemused look. “Strange name,” he said. “Who are you named after?”

  “I don’t know,” said Horkai. “I’m not sure I’m named after anyone.”

  “That’s odd,” said Mahonri. “Here, all of us are named after someone from the Scriptures. You look like us: why aren’t you? Shall I give you a new name?”

  “You asked earlier about your plants,” said Horkai. “They’re fine.”

  “Splendid,” said Mahonri. “I’m glad to hear it. Best effort so far: they’re still alive.”

  “The others have died?”

  “Of course,” said Mahonri. “These will die as well, it’s inevitable, but they’re doing better than the last batch. Of course I cheated a little: I started growing them inside.”

  “Why do you plant them if you know they’re going to die?”

  “Because someday they won’t die,” said Mahonri. “And to measure how safe it is outside. It’s getting safer for humans. A little safer all the time,” he said. “But I’m forgetting my manners,” he added. “You don’t want to stay out here in the office all night, do you? Shall we go somewhere more comfortable?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he plucked another light bundle from the lamp and started back down the hall. Horkai fumbled getting the wheelchair turned around and maneuvering it through the desks, but after a moment was following him down into the hall.

  Only it wasn’t a hall exactly, he realized once he was in it. It was a vault: crossing through the door, he could see rows of cabinets stretching to either side of him, dozens of rows, maybe more. The one Mahonri took him down was just big enough for his wheelchair; he kept clipping the handles of the lower cabinets, which were hard to see in the near dark. The row seemed to go on for dozens and dozens of yards. He hurried as quickly as he could, trying to catch up.

  But Mahonri had stopped, was waiting for him, weirdly lit by the makeshift flashlight he was carrying.

  “Incidentally,” he said, “how did you know to come here? Did one of us recruit you?”

  “I didn’t know,” said Horkai, realizing he was out of breath. “I just saw that someone had started painting the street signs again and decided to find out who.”

  “That was me,” said Mahonri proudly.

  “And then I saw from the road the arch of one of the openings. “It seemed as good a place as any to go for shelter. It was just luck that brought me.”

  “It wasn’t luck,” said Mahonri. “It was God. Look at you. You are our brother, you belong here. God led you here to help us do His work.”

  Not knowing what to say, Horkai said nothing, trying keep his face as neutral as possible. This seemed to be enough for Mahonri for the time being; he gave a curt smile and turned on his heel, starting down the row again.

  They came to a break in the row, a cross-passage that would allow movement to another row. They crossed the break, continued straight on.

  “What is in these?” asked Horkai, more as a way to slow Mahonri down than out of any real curiosity.

  “Records,” said Mahonri. He stopped, turned around. “What we have here is the history of the human race, a record of births and deaths for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

  “Why?” asked Horkai.

  “What do you mean, why?” Mahonri responded. “Humanity is important. All these things must be preserved so that, when the time comes, humanity shall know what it has been, is, and will be.”

  “When the time comes for what?”

  “When the time comes for humanity to return.”

  “Return from where?” asked Horkai.

  “From extinction,” said Mahonri. “We’re here with the sacred calling of watching over the records, of preserving them and keeping them safe. And now you are here to join us.”

  “Just records?” asked Horkai, thinking, How can anything come back from extinction?

  “Excuse me?”

  “What about the gardening you’ve been doing? Or is that on your own time?”

  “No…,” said Mahonri, dragging the word out long. “That’s part of it, too. We’re much more than clerks. We’re keepers.” He gave a guileless smile. “Would you like the tour?” he asked.

  Horkai hesitated, then nodded.

  Mahonri set off again, continuing straight ahead. Horkai banged the wheelchair along the cabinets, trying to keep up.

  They came to another break in the row, and this time Mahonri turned right. Horkai followed him past aisle after aisle, until they hit a wall. Here, they turned left.

  “This all was meant for records, too,” the man said, his voice deadened by the closeness of the cabinets. “But it became clear we needed the space for other things.”

  The cabinets abruptly ended, the final one mangled and only half there. Mahonri touched a switch, and an LED bulb came on overhead to reveal an open space a little over two hundred feet square, bound by granite walls on two sides. Filling it were eight man-sized storage tanks arranged like the spokes of a wheel. Six were currently iced and buzzing. Around these were a series of sixteen smaller titanium cylinders, each about three feet in diameter and three feet tall. Only four were iced.

  “Power was the hardest thing,” said Mahonri. “At first there was an emergency generator we could use, but we rapidly ran out of fuel. So, we converted to solar cells. You saw them in the parking lot, no doubt. They’re all over the far side of the mountain as well, thousands of panels. Even with that, we still have to keep most of the lights off, and we can never use all the storage pods at once.” He looked around him, gestured to the pods. “Lehi’s in the one closest to us, followed clockwise by Zarahemla, Teancum, Helaman, Enos, and Jonas. Originally we thought we’d save the tanks for humans, freeze them and use them to start over with later, but we couldn’t manage to get any back here without them dying.”

  “But aren’t you human?” asked Horkai.

  “Of course not,” Mahonri said. “And you’re not either. If you were still human, you’d be dead by now.”

  “If we’re not human, what are we?”

  “Lots of theological debate over that one,” said Mahonri. “You can look at the commentary if you’d like, the notes that each of us makes when the others are asleep—our thoughts on our callings, our religious musings. The Scriptures aren’t clear about it. Helaman believes we’ve had our actual bodies taken away from us, replaced temporarily by organic machines that are neither hurt nor affected by what destroys an ordinary body. Jonas believes that God works by natural means and that he’s allowed us to be infected by a polyextremophilic bacterium, some sort of Deinococcus, say, or perhaps by a variety of bacteria, and that this has given us our resistance.”

  “Dino-what?”

  “Teancum wonders if we’re becoming transfigured beings,” said Mahonri, ignoring him. “Translated by the finger of God from mortals to immortals. The fact that our bodies seem exceptionally resilient seems to support this, though the fact that we seem also to continue to age, albeit somewhat slower than humans, does not. Enos has been very compelling with his arguments for why we’re not human, but seems to have no thoughts on what we actually are.”

  “And you, what do you think?”

  “Me?” said Mahonri. “I think we’re the guardian angels of the human race,” he said. “We know our calling and we strive to fulfill it. The specifics don’t matter much. That’s enough for me.” He turned and pointed at the storage pods. “I occupy one of the two remaining pods when one of the others wakes up. You can use the other.”

  “Why would I want to use the other?”

  “You can’t stay awake all the time,” said Mahonri. “You wouldn’t last long enough if you did. If we’re going to be any use at all,
we have to stay alive until it’s safe for humans outside. We’ll add more solar panels somehow and work you into the rotation. Instead of being awake for one month and asleep for six, we’ll now be able to be awake for one month and asleep for seven. Thanks to you, we’ll be alive for eight lifetimes instead of seven.”

  “Hold on just a…” Horkai started, but Mahonri had already turned away, was approaching one of the nonfrosted titanium cylinders.

  “Plants,” he said. “Seeds. They’ve all suffered at least slight exposure, but they’re resilient. Some might grow. Indeed, as you’ve seen, some have.” He walked over to one of the noniced titanium cylinders and opened it, beckoning Horkai forward. Horkai rolled up until he was beside it, used the arms of the wheelchair to lift himself and peer in.

  There was a series of square plastic baskets inside, stacked on top of one another. Each was full of clear glass bottles, and each of these in turn was filled with seeds, all kinds, all varieties, each bottle carefully labeled.

  “Don’t need to freeze these,” said Mahonri. “Just keep them dry and protected. Though we have a few frozen as well just in case. You can plant a seed that’s three thousand years old, and if it’s been kept in the right conditions chances are it’ll grow. Every once in a while when I wake up, I plant a few, just three or four, not enough to make a dent, not enough that they’ll be missed. Usually they don’t do much, but as you saw, the last batch is still alive. If this one is still alive when it’s time for me to go into storage, I’ll leave a note for the person who comes next.”

  He closed the cylinder, turned back to Horkai.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, patting Horkai on the shoulder. “I’ll go over it in more detail before I go into storage. I’ll write down what’s important, what you need to know.

  “And now…,” he said, turning away, his voice trailing off. He took a pair of cryogenic gloves from where they hung on a hook on the wall and slipped into them. He removed a pair of tongs from its hook as well. He pressed a button on one of the iced cylinders. The lights flickered briefly, then came on a little stronger. The green light on the side of the cylinder went amber, then red.