by Jeff Somers
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“My quarters,” he said, blinking rapidly. “Where they could be comfortable while we fetched you.”
I thought about it for three steps and decided I believed him. A sign over the pair of swinging doors was in English, with arrows pointing up for GALLEY and BRIDGE. I didn’t want to go to either place, but I wanted to get out into the open air as quickly as possible.
“Can you swim?” I shouted over my shoulder.
“Yes,” Adora said immediately.
“Fuckin’ hell, no, I canna swim!” Remy snarled. I blinked. Remy could swim. I’d seen him swim. He swam like a fucking fish. Before I could think on that any further, Kaufman crashed through the swinging doors and I followed him out into the warm, wet air. For a moment all I was aware of was the warm sun on my skin and the distant sound of birds. Then I was aware of the ten or twelve armed men and women waiting for us on the deck. A shaft of pain stabbed up from my neck and into my head, making me wince as I struggled to figure out who to put the gun on first. A thin, medium-sized man wearing glasses stepped forward
go
XI
ON GENERAL PRINCIPLES I’D LIKE TO SHOOT HIM
Everything swung ninety degrees and the floor slid away underneath me and I was sitting up, back muscles screaming, wrists burning. I stared at the thin man for a second; I knew the face, but the name escaped me. He looked old, like he’d been trapped under a rock for years and only recently set free. His glasses, thin wire-frame affectations, were brand new, though, pristine and gleaming in the dim light of the tiny room.
My head was pounding.
“Take your time, Avery,” he said, his accent vaguely Russian, his grammar precise and clipped. His grin was easy and confident and familiar. “We have all the time in the world, yes?”
He was wearing a utilitarian gray jumpsuit, the kind Techies wore when they had to crawl down some sump pipes to run some cable. The other thr people standing in the room with us were wearing them as well, two dour-looking older women who’d spread and flattened into something asexual and a tall, stick-thin Indian man with a pencil-thin mustache who leaned against a far wall eating the world’s least-appetizing apple with apparent relish, his brown eyes locked on me.
In a cage on the floor, a few feet away from us, was Remy, hands locked on the bars, staring at me.
“Avery! Don’t trust ’em! Get me the fuck out of here!”
The skinny old man with the glasses scowled and closed his eyes as if wishing for strength. “Someone muzzle that dog for me, please.”
For a second no one moved, and I studied the cage. It wasn’t just a square of rusting iron or even a nifty cube of alloy; wires ran from it in a thick braid, and the whole thing seemed to shiver with some unseen energy. I didn’t know where they were getting the power, but if I’d ever been in a room with four Techies, this was it.
After a moment, the Indian grunted and pushed off from the wall with bad grace. Sticking the apple into a pocket of his jumpsuit, he plucked a black rod from a nearby wheeled tray and stepped over to the cage. Remy squealed, his face going… blurry… for a moment as he scampered back. The Indian leaned in and studied him for a moment, judging distances and the spaces between the cage’s slats, and then with one professional movement he thrust the rod into the cage. The second it made contact with Remy, the kid stiffened in one sudden spasm and then slumped over. He wasn’t unconscious—his eyes rolled over to land on me, and he blinked slowly—but he’d obviously lost most of his upper motor functions. I made a note of the rod, and the cruel, easy way the Indian had used it.
Then I looked back at the skinny prick with the glasses. I knew him. I gathered myself and tried to launch myself at him, but a thick strap around my waist held me in place, and all I managed to do was make the gurney I was on jump off the floor for a second and crash back down with bone-rattling force while the two other Techies each scrambled back from me. My old friend, though, just stood his ground, watching me, and slowly extracted a crumpled pack of actual, real live cigarettes from his pocket, pulling two free and sticking them both in his mouth.
“Avery, I will give one, and you will listen to me, yes? Plenty of time for killing us later.”
His name, everything about him, was on the edge of my mind. I pushed it aside and swallowed rage. “Where’s Adora?” I asked.
“She is well, in another place, not far,” he said immediately, producing a lighter with some sort of conjurer’s trick and hunching over it, plumes of white smoke rising into the air around him. “She has expressed a wish to continue her journey alone. After we have debriefed her, we will allow this.”
I nodded to myself. Good for her, I thought. Inexplicably, people always seemed to want to stick with me, and they usually ended up regretting it. I figured Adora was probably the smartest person I’d ever known. Smart enough to leave me behind, at least.
He smiled, plucking one of the cigarettes from his mouth and stepping forward to hand it to me.I snapped one arm up to take hold of his wrist and yank him toward me, but he stepped back just fast enough to evade me, and smiled.
“You do not recognize me. Yes, I understand. This will be remedied, Avery, in a moment, believe me. Now, I will offer you the smoke again, but only if you give me your word that you will not try to break my arm this time.”
I considered the odds of me breaking my bonds, the odds of the skinny Indian fellow jamming that black rod up my ass, the odds of me accomplishing anything useful by refusing, and my burning desire to smoke that cigarette. After a moment, I nodded curtly. “All right.”
He grinned and stepped forward, angling the cigarette toward me so I could lean forward and take it between my lips. I straightened up, closed my eyes, and inhaled deeply. It was a crap cigarette, but it was real tobacco, old and stale but real, and my heart skipped a beat as the nicotine hit my bloodstream. It had been so long, it was like my first cigarette all over again. I was light-headed and calmly happy for a second.
I opened my eyes again and pushed the smoke out through my nose. “Why is he in a fucking cage?” I nodded my chin at the man with the glasses. “You realize that’s gonna count against you, right?”
He smiled, and for a second I almost had his name, the whole batch of memories I was sure were there. Then they skittered away like pebbles, skimming along the slick floor. “Avery, we will try an experiment. Bear with me. I am going to tell you my name. I want you to let me know what happens. Ready?”
I blinked, smoke rising up between us. “Sure.”
I blinked, my HUD shuddering in my vision like someone was shaking me violently. “What?”
The Techie shrugged. “You are being prevented from noting certain things about your surroundings, Avery, by a very powerful Psionic. A Pusher, is the term I’ve heard used.” He took his own cigarette from his mouth and leaned against a bank of humming instruments, ashing on the floor. “Most accept the theory that such people are the result of evolution, but I have my own, controversial theory.”
I rolled the cigarette around in my mouth luxuriously, trying to keep up as my vision and HUD stabilized. “What’s that?”
The Techie threw out both arms and seemed pleased to be asked. “Aliens, Avery. I believe if we could sequence their genome we’d discover they differ from human DNA in significant ways. It would explain much.”
He said this with perfect seriousness, and I wasn’t sure if he meant it or if it was one of those elaborate Techie jokes no one understood. I sucked in smoke and tried to concentrate. “I’m being Pushed, is what you’re saying. Right now.”
“Right now, and for some time now, on a continuous basis,” he agreed, putting his cigarette back in his mouth and pushing his hands into his pockets. The Indian fellow was lounging against a bank of instruments to my left. I realized with a start that the other two Techies had left the room at some point. “This is easily the most powerful Psionic operative I’ve ever encountered. Throughout your entire journey he Daniel Krokos, he has kept you und
er his complete influence. Not just you, but your pretty friend, too.” He frowned. “I am not sure if he bothered others as you moved about; it seems unlikely, but it would have made his position safer.”
I didn’t understand what he was talking about, so I decided to switch to a subject I could get my arms around. “You bought me.”
He nodded. “We monitor the black markets constantly. We seek all manner of equipment, schematics, data cubes—so much to try and gather.” He shook his head. “We do not as a rule seek out human traffickers, but we do hear names and auction details, and you, Avery—well, we have been searching for you for some time now.”
I studied him, but no sense of almost knowing who he was returned. “Huh. I’m a popular guy. Who’s we, exactly? This Geek chorus you got going here, I mean.”
He smiled and looked down at his feet, amused. “You have heard of Superstes per Scientia.”
I nodded. “SPS, sure. So this is it?”
He nodded, looking back up at me, eyes amused. He wasn’t scared of me, that was for sure. I was still tied down to a gurney, but my hands were free; I was insulted. I let my eyes drag a bit over him and thought I spotted a piece tucked into his belt right at the small of his back. A little insurance.
“SPS bids you welcome, Avery. You have grown important.”
“Fuck, not again,” I said, taking the cigarette from my mouth and ashing on the floor. “Being important usually means I’m in for some serious asskicking.”
He smiled. “Be happy, Avery—you are among friends. I do not know what would have happened if you were allowed to remain under the influence of this Pusher, but I do not think it could have gone well. We will free you of this affliction and then we can discuss the work that must be done. There is not much time and there is not much left to save, but with your help perhaps more than we expected.”
I nodded cheerfully enough. “Happy as hell, as always, to be kicked in the balls for exactly zero pay.” I put the cigarette back between my lips. “So where’s this fucking Pusher? On general principles I’d like to shoot him.”
The Techie laughed, pushing off from the equipment with a snakelike undulation of his thin frame. “I will show you.”
He walked over to where Remy still sat and began following the thick braid of wires stemming from the bizarre cage, finally plucking one particular cord and pulling it through his hands as he walked until it led him to a small handheld device, familiar enough though I hadn’t seen one operational in a while. He gestured over it for a moment, and then looked back at me.
“What we’re doing here, Avery, is trying to preserve technology. Knowledge. Despite the faults of the System, it provided some stability, but now everything, as you would say, has gone to hell, and we are working to preserve what we can. As a result, right here in Spain we have what you might call a Techie’s paradise, yes? Collected here is a lot of amazig tech, and we get to play with it all. There has been some wonderful work performed here these past few years, while the world shrinks and burns outside.” He pointed at the cage. “For example, this. It does not have a name. What it does is disrupt the peculiar brain-wave patterns of a Psionic.” He looked down at it. My HUD sharpened as I realized he was about to do something with Remy, and I fingered the material I was bound with, wondering if it would burn, how I might get free.
“Sadly, it is not very practical, as it is large, heavy, and has immense power requirements. Fortunately, though, you have brought the subject here to us!” He looked back at me, cheerful. “Thus, we can try our experiment. Thus!”
He made a dramatic gesture over the handheld and the cage suddenly seemed to vibrate, going blurry around the edges. Remy sat up ramrod straight and began to scream, a steady, unbroken openmouthed wail.
I surged against my restraints, biting the cigarette in half. I twisted and turned until the gurney overtipped, crashing me to the floor with a rattle and smacking my face against the cold cement. I didn’t feel it.
“You fucking hurt him and—”
“Avery!” the Techie shouted without looking at me.
The Indian Techie leaned forward with a bored expression and jabbed his black stick against my neck, and a searing pain came and went so fast through me it might have never happened, and every muscle in my body, including my abused bladder, relaxed simultaneously.
The pain in my head swelled until I thought, well, fuck, this was it, I was going to stroke out right here. And then, suddenly, it was gone. Relief swept through me and I forgot to struggle, a cold sweat breaking out all over me. Blood, hot and salty, overflowed my mouth and onto the floor. Remy had stopped screaming, and I looked at the cage.
Remy wasn’t in the cage.
Instead, it was an old man. The oldest man I’d ever seen in my life, grotesquely ancient, a tiny, shriveled person in a soiled old suit that looked to be pre-Unification, an old cut in a cheap, shiny fabric that hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. He was panting, sweat dripping off his flattened, red flower of a nose, and his tiny, dark eyes were locked on me. My mind was blank as we stared at each other, and then a single thought drifted through me: That motherfucker hates me.
I looked up at the Techie with the glasses to see if he’d disappeared, too. He was looking down at me, one eyebrow raised in a question. I stared at him for a moment and then shut my eyes, anger and pain filling me up, making me vibrate with the need to hit someone, to strangle someone, to kill and just keep killing. I knew Remy was dead. Remy was a bloated corpse on the floor next to Belling in Mexico City, and I’d failed, again, to keep a single person alive. And I’d kidded myself that I was off the Rail, that I was calling my own shots.
Despair was like anesthetic sweeping through me. My hands shook violently, fluttering like strangled bugs.
I remembered, suddenly, being on the truck after being pressed, me and Remy and half the town. Remy up for it, helpg me take on the single guard—and we had him. We could have walked away. I saw his face—young and happy. Trusting. The fucking kid had trusted me.
Filled with a formless, blank rage, I looked at the Techie. “Hello, Grisha,” I said, my voice surprisingly calm. “Don’t untie me. I might fucking kill you.”
XII
MAKES ME WANT TO BE A BETTER PERSON
“He’s got to be the most powerful Psionic on record,” Grisha said, flicking his cigarette onto the floor as he knelt down to peer into the cage. “Certainly the most powerful I’ve ever encountered.” He paused for a second. “It is good to see you, Avery.”
I nodded absently, staring at the gnarled old man in the cage, too, thinking about Remy. Grisha had refused my advice and untied me. I tried to picture the body I’d left back in Mexico City in Belling’s room. I remembered stepping over it, not even glancing down to see who’d been killed. I pictured Remy lying there, still there. As I pictured him, I saw Kev Gatz, gutshot, dead underneath Westminster Abbey. Then I saw R.A. Harper, staring at me after Belling slit her throat. Then Gleason, swollen and blackened, animated by Ty Keith’s nanobots. I saw them all, everyone, dozens and dozens of them—people I’d tried to spare, to protect, to merely leave behind. Every fucking one of them, dead.
“I am sorry. This is a shock.” He paused to cough, hard, into one hand, his face reddening. “But we must speak. There is much to discuss that involves you.”
“Fuck you,” I said leisurely. Grisha was barely there. In some small sliver of my brain, I wondered that he was here, that he was still alive. It was distant and vague, though, and I felt no urgency in exploring the event.
The little man in the cage stared back at me with slitted, yellowed eyes. He was about a thousand years old, and they looked like hard years. The malevolence he projected at me was like a physical sensation, and I wondered if maybe Grish was wrong about his little cage, if maybe it wasn’t one hundred percent effective. He had a round head like a rotten potato, off of which his face hung in heavy white-whiskered folds like it had become detached from the bones and tendons beneath it. His nose had
been broken several times and never set, his ears were red flowers blooming from the dirty, encrusted folds of his skull, his suit had once been purple and was now just dirty, and his hands were tiny, tiny things with thick sausage fingers that looked useless for anything more subtle than holding your prick while you pissed.
As we stared at each other, he spat delicately onto the floor of his cage without taking his eyes off me.
Grisha stepped over to the cage and leaned down to put his face near the old man’s. “What I would like to know first,” the Techie said in a wondering voice, “is why not simply Push Avery into helping you?”
The old man slid his eyes to Grisha and worked his lips like his teeth were sliding out of his head. He affected a stoic, calm expression, but something about the way face never stopped moving, never stopped sucking at itself told me he was terrified.
“Can’t,” he suddenly growled, his voice deep and scratchy, like he’d swallowed razors. “We tried. A lot, in the field. Motherfucker doesn’t take Push well. You can do it, but it ain’t easy, and keepin’ it up long is fucking impossible. All those others in his head; you’d haveta Push ’em all, simultaneously.” He spat again. “But he’s susceptible to suggestion. Takes a light touch. Subtle. Gotta get in there and really work it. Y’can fool the eyes, and then he sort of Pushes himself, see.”
“Why?” I asked, standing up. “Why Remy?”
The old man just stared at me, his tiny eyes following me.
“Forgive me for putting it in this way, Avery,” Grisha said seriously. “But he was incidental. This Psionic wished to stay close to you. This was expedient.”
“Expedient.” I wondered, for a second, about the mysterious man in the white suit. A prop, I figured. To make it convincing. One more person killed on my account. I crouched down to peer between the bars of the cage. “Let him out.” I made fists until my knuckles popped, and my HUD snapped into razor-sharp clarity.
