Twelve Days

by Steven Barnes

  “We pretty much run a petting zoo here,” Roy said. “This is just where we pen them when we need medical testing.” He laughed. “We don’t hurt any of them. Nothing like that.”

  Desire to believe was a powerful thing. After all, it could be true.

  “Well, we believe that part of what seems to be random communications, or suboptimal communication, are actually mental outreaches on a completely different level of consciousness.”

  Olympia felt her brow wrinkle, an odd sensation. “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do we.” He grinned. “But sailors used the wind a very long time before we understood pressure gradients. Understanding is the booby prize. Do you want to understand love, or experience it?”

  Olympia felt warmth creeping around her collar. She wanted …

  “The real question,” he continued, “is: can we use it?”

  “Can we?”

  “That,” Madame Gupta said, “is what we’re going to find out.”

  A lab-coated tech with HI! I’M MIKE! stitched onto his shirt appeared through a door in the back, holding the furry hand of a healthy, wide-grinning, and bowlegged black chimpanzee. The chimp made a kissy face, and then chittered. “This is Serge!” Mike said. “Serge, say hi to Hannibal!”

  Serge bounced up into the tech’s arms. Hannibal vibrated with delight.

  “Have we your permission?” Madame Gupta asked.

  “Is it safe?”

  “Oh, completely,” she said. “We’d just like him to look at some pictures, listen to some music. Nothing to worry about.”

  The tech smiled. “Serge is on loan from a facility in New Mexico. Very gentle, loves kids. Here.” He let the friendly chimp clamber onto the boy, and the two of them embraced. Serge played huggy games immediately, which delighted Hannibal.

  Mike gestured to Olympia. “Ma’am?” he said quietly.

  When she responded, he gestured her over to a station. On a featureless bust next to a computer screen rested a golden mesh cap. Mike peeled it off the bust and held it up. “This is a harmless, noninvasive scan system we’ll use to monitor Hannibal’s brain waves. Do I have your permission?”

  “Why do you need to do that?”

  “Well, partially to be certain that Hannibal’s brain wave patterns remain within a safe range.”

  “Safe?”

  “No activation of the amygdala,” he said. “No sharp beta waves, representing fear or anger response. Want to make sure that neither of them ever experiences excessive stress. Safer than a roller coaster.”

  “I … would appreciate that.”

  It took mere seconds for him to slip and strap the cap into place. Hannibal barely noticed.

  “There’s more,” he confided. “We’ve identified simpatico brain wave patterns, and if Hannibal and Serge manifest them in similar amplitudes, then we have the best chance of … ah.” He was suddenly distracted and pleased by something on the screen. “Very good. I think we have a ‘go.’”

  Despite her momentary misgivings, Olympia was now only curious. “What are you doing?”

  “Something very, very clever.”

  Madame Gupta had been watching the exchange with a Yoda-like smile. Olympia almost expected her to start scrambling her sentences. “I’m going to leave you in Michael’s very fine hands,” she said. Leave you, I will.

  “You’re off?”

  “I will see you again before you depart. And Hannibal?” The boy glowed up at her.

  “Hannibal,” he said. Twice in a day! Could the miracle she’d prayed for since Hannibal’s diagnosis finally be unfolding? Easy, girl. You just got here.

  Madame Gupta stroked Hannibal’s cheek. His smile was radiant. “A very good afternoon to you, young sir.” She winked at Olympia. “A very interesting lad, indeed.”

  Madame Gupta glided out the door, lowering the air pressure as she did.

  Mike grinned. “We’ll say good-bye to Serge now. He’s going to be busy, and we’re sending him back to the zoo this afternoon, so say good-bye.”

  “Bye,” Hannibal said.

  Olympia shook her head. “He’s said more since he saw Madame Gupta at the school than he has in the previous year.”

  Mike took Hani and Olympia down a hallway. Out through a garden corridor wreathed with vines that seemed to grow out of the rock, but actually were rooted in cunningly concealed planters.

  “Do you like it here?” the tech said.

  “Oh yes, very much.”

  “So do we.”

  Olympia felt dazzled and dizzied, the computer screens and toys and smiling faces threatening to spin her like a merry-go-round. She reeled, off-balance, struggling to remain calm. “What exactly is this place?”

  “Not just a research center,” he said. “But a home. And a nexus for meditators from all our centers around the world.”

  “What pays for all of this?” she asked.

  “We have benefactors. People who believe in the work we’re doing.”

  “And they fund it?”

  Mike scratched his head. “Well … there’s more to it than that, but you’re on the right track.”

  They traveled another corridor, this one narrower, and lit with corkscrew fluorescent bulbs. Where were they now? Certainly no longer under the library building. Had they been traveling counterclockwise?

  Hannibal was just gawking and trailing his hands along the ridges and valleys of the rock walls, enchanted.

  “Now,” the tech said. “This is where a lot of the work gets done. We teach meditation here, and … other things.”

  “Other things?”

  He smiled mysteriously. “Yes,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  He opened a door into a room filled with plush chairs and couches and wide black-rimmed video monitors.

  They sat Hannibal down at a black couch positioned in front of a computer screen. The couch was warm and malleable, like a divan-shaped balloon filled with Jell-O. “Squishy!”

  Olympia tried it for herself. She sank, and then buoyed back up almost as if she’d dropped into a colony of friendly jellyfish. “Yes! It’s squishy! What is this?”

  “It’s sort of a water-couch. Hundreds of individual cells filled with water and maintained at body temperature. It molds to his posture. Madame Gupta’s own design. Feels amazing, doesn’t it?”

  He adjusted some dials, and the translucent image of a chrysanthemum blossomed on the high-def screen in front of him.

  “Hannibal, do you like the flower? Nice flower?”

  Hannibal squinted at it, displaying little apparent enthusiasm.

  “How about this? Spider-Man?” The familiar red-and-blue web-slinger appeared.

  Hannibal’s smile expanded.

  “How about this?” A soccer ball! Hannibal clapped in delight.

  “He loves soccer,” Olympia said.

  “Soccer it is! All right, Hannibal, just watch the soccer ball, all right?”

  The boy nodded and leaned forward toward the screen, riveted. The overhead fluorescents paled him, accentuating his cheekbones, and made him seem older than he was.

  “What is this?” Olympia asked.

  “We’re scanning him. Our technology uses brain scans to reconstruct images, and it helps us to measure activity and find ways the brain is working. Identify approaches to improve function.”

  “Really?” Olympia felt numb, but forced the feeling away. Her face was a mask, her responses curt, because the schoolgirl inside her was squealing. Her own childish enchantment worried her. Hannibal needed her head firmly planted on her shoulders, not floating away with bedazzlement. But that was so difficult when her instincts roared, This is the best thing that’s ever happened more loudly with each passing moment. Other specialists had studied different parts of her boy—his physical health, his psychological health, his intellect—but Madame Gupta was the first to see him as a whole. In all these years, Madame Gupta might be the only person who could see her child at all. If not for Olympia’s mask,
she might have dissolved into tears.

  It was all just too much. “That’s wonderful,” she said, embarrassed by how lame the words seemed.

  “Yes, it is. So. Let’s get this going.”

  The soccer balls multiplied, twisted, and spun on the screen. “Serge!” Hannibal said, pointing to the balls with delight.

  The chimp? “What, darling?” she said.

  “Serge!” he said.

  Olympia was confused. “What is he saying?”

  The tech bit his lip and squinted, seemed a little baffled, even upset. But when he noticed that Olympia was watching him, he shook himself and relaxed.

  Olympia’s numbness broke. Was something wrong?

  “Concentrate, Hannibal,” he said. “Please look at the balls. Just think about the balls…”

  Hannibal watched, apparently delighted with the black-and-white spheres while Mike worked his magic.

  At last, Mike sighed. “Fabulous! That was very good.”

  “He did well?”

  “A whole lot better than that.” He shook his head. “I think Madame Gupta will be tickled pink. I’m sending this on to her.”

  Olympia hugged her boy. “You did great, Hannibal.”

  “Serge?” Hannibal asked. “Is Serge good?”

  “He’s asking about the chimp,” Olympia said.

  Some emotion she couldn’t name flitted across Mike’s face.

  “Serge,” Hannibal repeated.

  She finally understood what her boy was asking. “Now that he’s finished, can we go back and play with Serge again?”

  Again, Mike’s expression was impenetrable. “You’ll have to talk to Madame Gupta about that. This way, please.”

  * * *

  When they returned to the lab room, the techs were standing, applauding. Madame Gupta wore one of the widest, brightest smiles Olympia had ever seen. She embraced Hannibal, and he beamed. “Scrumptious,” she said. “In fact, I don’t believe we’ve tested a subject with higher potential.”

  The techs applauded and whooped. Olympia was dazzled. “So…?”

  “So we’d like Hannibal to come back. In fact, we’d like to invite you to come and stay with us for several days.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible. Why not immediately? I think we could promise your boy the best Christmas he’s ever had.”

  Christmas away from the memories locked in their walls at home? At a vacation retreat in the mountains? She wanted to say yes, but of course she would have to talk to Nicki first. It was all happening so fast. “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Please do.”

  Hannibal tugged on her wrist, and she remembered his request. “Could we see Serge again before we leave?”

  Their Afro-Indian hostess shook her head with infinite regret. “I’m sorry, but he is no longer in the public portion of the facility. As we said, we’re preparing him to return to New Mexico.” She smiled. “But, we would like to serve you a fabulous lunch, and then your helicopter awaits for a trip back to Atlanta.”

  “Thank you very much,” Olympia said, and allowed them to escort her out.

  * * *

  Hannibal was not happy. The game had been a wonderful one, something he had never experienced. What terrific pictures! Soccer balls, yes. But Serge was hiding there among them, peeking out at him, grinning at him, calling to him. He’d felt that connection.

  Then he’d heard voices telling him to relax, relax. For his heart to slow down. Odd music, music that Mommy couldn’t hear, calming him. Slow. Slow.

  Then a whispered suggestion, something he couldn’t remember, but it made him feel funny. And then … Serge was gone. Just … gone.

  Hannibal couldn’t feel the connection anymore. It was like looking at the television when the screen was dead. Nothing. He was not happy about this.

  He hoped Serge was all right. Certainly, Serge was all right.

  Maybe if he was a good boy, they’d let him see Serge again, so he could be sure.

  CHAPTER 22

  Terry was thirty minutes late to the shuttered warehouse east of downtown Atlanta. He knew the Pirates would be impatient for his arrival, and didn’t care even though there was a part of him that knew he should. Being late anywhere could lead to grim consequences, making his friends doubt his commitment.

  One way or another, he was about to have an argument. Terry could feel it. There was scant chance that this would be a happy conversation.

  When he lifted the aluminum roll-up door and shut it behind him, he felt the irritation instantly.

  His four compatriots clustered in a corner of the empty warehouse, watching a long-lens video of three trucks leaving Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia, sliding out onto Cobb Parkway, and heading south toward the freeway.

  “Right on schedule,” Terry said, and the others turned and nodded. So far, argument averted.

  “And there’s not a lot of reason to believe it will change New Year’s Day,” Mark said.

  Terry grunted. “So that’s it. The gems will come in, and slide back out. We divert the convoy in South Carolina, and we’ll have…”

  Father Geek made rapid calculations on his iPad. “I do believe I can promise you seventy seconds.”

  “That should do it, I reckon.” Mark stretched, yawning fiercely.

  Geek nodded. “Yep, that should do it.”

  Terry leaned back against the wall. “And if anything goes wrong? If they fight back? I mean … we don’t know for sure that the guys driving the trucks even know what they’re carrying.”

  “You mean, what if they’re not bad guys?” Geek asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Ronnell grinned, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. “Then they may not be bad guys, but they’re definitely having a bad day.”

  Mark squinted at Terry. “You got a problem with that?”

  Ah. The argument had arrived just in time.

  “Yeah, actually,” Terry said. “I’d like to put a little more thought into nonlethal alternatives.”

  “We’ve been over all this, Terry.” Mark drummed his fingers on his thigh. “What’s up with you?”

  “Just thinking. It’s like we said: there are lines you can’t step back across. I want to be sure we’re not doing that.” He felt a shiver. “It’s cold in here.”

  Mark and Father Geek exchanged a strained expression.

  “And … what about cops?”

  Father Geek seemed on stronger footing now. “Assuming they will reach the fire road at four o’clock, we’ll blow the Wilson Farms water tower at three forty-five. That should attract all the police and highway patrol for thirty miles.”

  Terry wasn’t convinced. “And if it doesn’t? I mean … if we miscalculate, and there are highway patrolmen on that stretch of road, and they take issue with the barricade, what do we do?”

  “We move forward,” Mark said.

  “‘Move forward,’” Terry repeated. “That’s such a nice, antiseptic way to phrase it.”

  Pat moved forward, narrowing the distance between them. “What are you saying?”

  Then the words he knew were coming tumbled from Terry’s mouth before he could dam them up. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  “What the fuck?” Mark’s whisper, low and ugly.

  “A little late for that, Boy Scout,” Pat said coldly.

  “No,” Terry said. “You’re wrong. It’s not too late. For any of us.”

  A frozen moment of time, like the hollow between a lightning strike and a thunderclap. Mark was the one who said what they were all thinking. “Terry, this isn’t going to end well.”

  “I reckon you’re right,” Terry said. “But someone has to speak the truth. And the truth is that the five of us have a choice. And my choice is to walk away. I have nothing to say to anyone outside this room.”

  “We’re supposed to just believe that?” Pat asked.

  “Yes,” Terry said.

  “And you expect us to just let you
walk out?” Lee’s voice rose to something very near a squeak.

  “No,” Terry said. “But I wanted to give you the option.”

  “What the hell do you mean? What kind of option?”

  Terry sighed, already sensing the hopelessness of it. “We need to think about who we are.”

  “What?” Mark flicked two fingers in a signal, and the Pirates approached more closely, squinting as if examining some kind of previously undiscovered species of insect.

  “Why do you want to do this, Geek?” Terry asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Hijack O’Shay.”

  Father Geek glared, eyes frozen open and locked on Terry. “I want the money.”

  “No, you don’t. You want a reason to get up in the morning.” Now Geek lost his basilisk gaze and blinked. “And you, Mark…”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You talk payback, but that’s not all this is about. As XO, you were the best tactical mind I’ve ever known. And how do you walk away from that? Just what are you supposed to do? You became your job. And without your job, you’re left without an identity.”

  Mark glowered at him. “You’re out of your mind.”

  Terry managed a wan smile. “That doesn’t make me wrong. And you, Pat?”

  Ronnell sneered, fiddling with his onyx-handled Colt .38, popping the cylinder open and snapping it shut again. “I think you’d better stop now.”

  “It’s too late for that,” Terry said. And so it was. And they all knew it. That particular genie was out of the bottle. “It’s been too late. But it’s not too late to stop this.”

  Pat stopped playing with his revolver. “All right, Grasshopper. What’s up with me?”

  “You said it. The only thing you were ever best at was killing people. You liked it. You got to do it legally.”

  Something glittered in Pat’s eyes, gleaming like a Cheshire cat’s teeth. “You need to watch your step.”

  “Why, Pat? Are you going to kill me, too?”

  “Shit happens.”

  At another time, someone might have laughed. Not today. “You’re hoping something will go wrong, Pat. You want something to go wrong, so that you have another opportunity to do the thing you love, and at the same time claim that it’s a shame that it happened.”