Beyond Asimios: Book One

by Martin Fossum

  —Be careful, Mr. Rafiq, she said. One can never escape one’s shadow.

  Rafiq smiled.

  —We’re wasting time, Rafiq said as he got to his feet and left the table. I’m tired of waiting.

  At that moment there was a knock on the door.

  As a precaution, everyone except Anne started for the bedroom, but Rafiq swiftly leaned over and parted, just slightly, the curtain to the front window.

  —It’s the currier, Rafiq said.

  Nava moved quietly to the door and looked through the peephole.

  —It’s Tomas, she said as she hastily turned the lock and allowed the figure to push his way in. The dark form slipped inside and stood for a moment while Nava locked the door behind him. Tomas was strong and slightly hunched under his black pea jacket and tight dark sailor’s cap. His hair was matted where it trailed over the back of his coat, and his thin beard outlined a round, fleshy mouth that stood proud of a large flat nose and a pair of pair of peering rodent-like eyes. He was winded and breathing heavily, and it was evident, as he stood there, that his thoughts were shifting quickly from the travails of his journey to the smells in the room—particularly the scent of pork—for his nose led him straight to the table where Anne was in the process of setting him a place.

  —Oh, for the great goodness of nature, Tomas said in his loamy Bavarian burr. I’m famished. It only takes one good meal and it can sustain you for days, he declared as he quickly removed his jacket and hat, fell into a rickety chair and began to tear at the loaf of bread offered him.

  The others returned to their seats to wait for Tomas to sound the news of the world outside their hole, but anticipation was met with disappointment, for they were forced to sit through the currier’s single obsession: to fill his empty belly. It was quite a show, for he impressed with his ability to cram both a handful of bread and a large spoon of stew into his maw at the same time; this while proselytizing the virtues of genuine German pork.

  —I must admit, Tomas said, that if you let a pig fatten on good German pasture, you are only doing yourself a favor. In the country is where this is possible. Corn and garden waste is important too. Buy your pig in the spring and slaughter it in December, and you’ll have the perfect Christmas roast.

  —Oh, this pig was no special pig, Anne said with a chuckle. I bought it on sale at the Saver Super Market.

  Tomas’s smile turned south.

  He held the spoonful of stew in front of him and the bread in his other hand and regarded them both. Then he shrugged and continued to eat.

  —I’m speaking of ideal circumstances, you should know, he said. Either way, good German pork stew is good German pork stew, and it fills an empty stomach up and gives one perspective.

  —Speaking of perspective, Michael said. What kind of new do you bring? Are we meeting tonight? And, Tomas, did you see any police?

  —You were certain that you were not followed? Nava said.

  —I was not followed, Tomas said. Of that I’m sure. Did I see any police? Yes, but no more than usual. We will have no problem making it to Spandau tonight. But we should wait till dark before we make for the U-Bahn station. Travel by daylight is not recommend.

  —So we’re meeting in Spandau, Rafiq said. Where?

  Tomas ripped another chunk of bread off the loaf and inserted another spoonful of stew into his mouth before he acknowledged Rafiq’s question. And Rafiq did all he could to prevent himself from slamming Tomas’s face down into his food.

  —The meeting is at an old bookstore, Tomas said after drawing down a long drink of water.

  —In Spandau? Rafiq said. Where?

  Tomas looked around for a moment as he searched for a napkin. Michael handed him one over the table and Tomas took it and wiped his fingertips and dabbed the cloth over the corners of his mouth.

  —Haselhorst, Tomas said at last as he scanned the table with grave concern. The meeting is in Haselhorst.

  Glances were exchanged.

  —On Telegrafweg, continued Tomas.

  —The address? Rafiq said. What’s the address?

  Tomas smoothed the napkin over his thigh and then carefully withdrew a slip of paper from his jacket pocket. I’ve been given instructions not to show this to anyone, he said. And I don’t know if I should…

  Rafiq ripped it from the halfwit’s hand and went off to inspect it under better light.

  —I know this place, Rafiq said as he balled up the paper and threw it across the floor. The Hyperion, he muttered to himself. I’ll see you later, he said suddenly as he plucked his jacket from where it was hanging near the door. He slipped it on and then took hold of a shoulder bag that had been stashed in the corner of the room.

  —You’re going? Nava said. Can’t you wait for us?

  —It’s better that we split up, Rafiq said as he peeled off his eyepatch and stuffed it into his bag. He then reached into another pocket and removed a lump of rubbery material that he unfolded in front of a small mirror that hung on the wall near the kitchen. The material in his hand was synthskin, and he stretched it carefully over his face, and after a few adjustments he turned around…and was transformed. Even his vacant eye now looked real. If it weren’t for the familiar shock of dark hair, it might have seemed like a complete stranger had materialized before them.

  —Good luck, Helena said as Rafiq picked up his bag and made for the door.

  —Be careful, said Nava. Please be careful. She stood up and went over to him and gave him a generous hug. Rafiq smiled through his strange new visage, and then he was out the door, the cool autumn wind thrusting a crumpled leaf or two through the opening as he left.

  After Rafiq was gone, Tomas turned back to his meal and shoveled a couple spoonfuls of stew into his mouth before tearing off another hunk of bread with his teeth.

  —You know, Tomas said. It was very risky for me to come here today. One false step or any sign of suspicion and I could be questioned, you see. What I’m doing, though probably not appreciated, is quite dangerous.

  At this, Nava came over, took hold of Tomas’s arm and looked him in the eye. It should be understood here that Nava was an attractive woman. She had short-cropped brown hair, nearly in the style of a boy’s, and her large brown eyes and mouth were stunning in their symmetry and proportion. To receive attention from Nava was no small gift, and as she leaned toward Tomas with affection, the weight of his spoon grew heavy and a lump formed in his throat.

  —You are very brave, Tomas, she said. What you’ve done for us, and continue to do, cannot be overlooked nor appreciated any less. It’s strong souls like yours that further the cause and set the example. You’ve done well, and we are in your debt.

  —Yes, we’re in your debt, Michael said flatly as he picked up the wad of paper that had landed on the floor near his feet. He uncrumpled it and looked at the address and then stuffed it in his pocket.

  —We’ll wait for nightfall, Nava said as she patted Tomas on the shoulder. It won’t be long, she added.

  Michael helped Anne clear the table while Tomas mopped his bowl clean with a corner of bread. When he was done Tomas stood up, stretched, and yawned, and then made a line for Anne’s couch where he sank into one end and immediately began to drift off.

  —You rest, my good boy, tante Anne said as she tucked a small pillow under his cheek and pulled a blanket over his feet. A good German nap is always in order after good German pork stew.

  As Tomas left this world for the world of fractured dreams, the others sat around the table and plotted their route to Hasselhorst. After short study, it was agreed that taking the U-Bahn was their best option…but they would be exposed. They’d be scanned as they entered and left the stations, and they ran the risk of getting flagged by U-Bahn security if they didn’t send any VI signature. At least a quarter of the people in Berlin still didn’t wear VIs, and that served to their advantage, but a surveillance eye might mark them as suspicious. They had ways around this, though. They’d wear loose clothing, scarves and
facial paint: a couple of black lines along the cheeks, or a few smudges of silver paste on the nose and chin foiled their sensors. Their faces became junk data, and the security eyes would sweep on in search of different targets.

  After they agreed on their course of action, Michael got out a notebook, sat down in the corner of the apartment and began to write in his journal. Nava, on the other hand, sat and nursed their little daughter, perhaps for the last time, as she talked softly to Helena about their plans to bring little Lyv to Switzerland. Helena would take baby with her to Zurich where Helena’s sister had agreed to make her part of her family until things calmed down and Nava and Michael could provide the girl with a more stable situation. Nava’s eyes glistened as she brooded over the inevitable. With each passing moment the reality came hurtling toward her, forcing her to come to grips with the idea that she and her child would soon part.

  —She will be loved and cared for, Helena said. You have important things to do, and there’s no room in your world for this little one. When you have made progress and secured a better life for her, then you can hold her again.

  —It seems so selfish, Nava said as she gazed down at the infant. How can a mother do what I’m about to do? How can a mother leave her child, at the very moment that child needs her most?

  —You’re fighting for her, remember. You’re fighting for Lyv and millions of daughters like her. If you remember that, you will make it through.

  Nava forced a smile and then bit down on her lip. Helena had been good to offer to do this. Without her, their options were few. But Helena was needed by her family and school, and it was in Zurich where she would begin her residency and further her medical education. When Helena’s sister was asked it she would take in the baby, she agreed without hesitation. A home and care was offered, and it was too good to pass up.

  As the two young women talked softly, Anne busied herself about the kitchen with the washing of pots and the drying of pans, and as she worked she hummed a faintly recognizable melody allowing a profound sense of peace to settle over the small apartment. Nava drank in the moment, savoring every second that she could hold her child, knowing somewhere deep inside that she would never again know such tranquility. Right now time seemed to fold in on itself, forming a communion between former and future lives; possibly the sensation a fetus feels as it swims in its mother’s womb…a future being who will soon see light and life. From this point on things will never be the same, Nava thought. The river rolled on and the raft they were sailing on was coming apart. Up ahead, around the bend, could be heard the crashing of the waterfall.

  When the sun was low and the shadows crept up the curtains, Nava roused Tomas and they prepared themselves, except for Helena, to take their leave from Anne’s apartment and make their way to Spandau to rendezvous with the other members. Nava and Michael dressed warmly and packed their essentials. Tomas, slow to awaken, found a toothpick and worked away at his yellow teeth while he watched with curiosity as Michael, Nava, Helena and Tante Anne conducted their teary farewells. At one point Michael picked up Lyv and walked over to the far side of the apartment where he sat down and huddled over the tiny child. With his back to the others, he whispered a set of secrets that only he and Lyv would know. Soon, he returned and transferred the child to Nava’s arms, and she took her up and spun her around in a cheery effort to avoid a cataract of tears and physical collapse.

  —Du bist so schoen, mein liebshen! she said. I love you, I love you, I love you!!

  But time for leaving was upon them, and Michael ushered Tomas out the door so that Nava could have one last word with her daughter. Nava’s last image was of Helena waving back at them, the tiny babe peeping through the blanket as Tante Anne frowned and then locked the door tight to the night.

  As Nava came down the steps, Michael reached out and took Nava’s hand . She knew she shouldn’t cry. But sometimes we betray our better judgment.

  —We’ve got a problem, Tomas said as they left through the garden gate.

  Michael and Nava turned toward him, their faces barely visible in the dusk.

  —What? Michael said.

  —My bike is gone, Tomas said. I put it right hear against the fence when I came. Now it’s gone.

  —It’s been stolen, Michael said.

  —And I bet I know who stole it.

  —Rafiq? Nava said.

  Tomas shrugged. Who else?

  —Well, so what, Michael said. What do you want to do about it?

  —I don’t’ know.

  —So we walk then, Michael said. What did you expect? Were you planning that we would all ride your bike?

  —No. It’s just disappointing. I stole that bike only a week ago. Now it’s gone. Such is life.

  And they started walking down the degraded sidewalk with its broken concrete and weeds beneath the intermittent buzzing streetlights and the roar of the skimmers taking off and landing at the nearby airport. Here and there stood abandoned burnt out cars…hulks so scortched that they held no recycle value. Lonely windowless skeletons of blackened plasteel and carbon fiber. Above them emerged the “E” the “S” and half of the “C” of the ten-by-four mile low orbit ESCOM satellite billboard that competed for brightness with the waxing moon. A little later the smaller Coke billboard would emerge, and by midnight the sky would be so crowded in glowing advertising that one would be hard pressed to find a star.

  It took about half an hour before they approached the center of town. The entrance to the U-Bahn station stood in the middle of the square of run-down municipal buildings and a classic cathedral with a sunken roof. Before they wandered out into the public space, they got out their frog paint and a flashlight and helped one another apply a few lines of the pigment to their noses and cheeks. When they were done, Michael tossed the paint applicators over a fence and they then rounded the corner and made for the stairs that led to the underground station.

  As a tactic of precaution they split apart. Michael went first, then Nava, and then Tomas. There were people lingering in the square. A few burn barrels were lit, sending sparks into the sky. A number of groups were assembled: addicts and gangs of some division or other most likely, but they didn’t give the three any trouble. Above them all, on the wide façade of the cathedral that loomed over the square, was painted a giant fresco of the face of Clive Werg. The text below his disfigured and fearsome visage read Ich Weiss!

  When they reached the bottom of the stairs they purchased their tickets in the autofenster and then pushed past the clunky security gate and down to the platform where they waited among the other riders. Tomas bought a bottle of beer from a concession machine and he tucked it into his pocket. The three of them didn’t speak. They kept their distance from one another, but stayed within sight. A column of air preceded the train, and then the sleek graffiti-covered pod hurdled into the station and came to a sudden rest alongside the platform. The doors shot open. Nava and Tomas found themselves on the same car. Michael entered the car next to theirs. They exchanged glances through the glass and then found their seats and soon they were underway.

  The seats left and right of Nava were empty. Then, out of nowhere, a bald man in a dark suit lowed himself into the seat opposite her and threw her a murderous gaze. Nava’s heart missed a beat before she realized that this business stiff probably didn’t even know she existed, and that he was likely lost in the v-wash pumping through his implant. She turned away for a moment to look down at the other end of the car; when she turned back the man’s gaze had lowered itself to the floor, and with his head slightly cocked and his mouth open just so, he was a dead ringer for a powered-down droid. To the droid’s right, and several seats down, Tomas was in his seat and sipping at his beer and staring at a small paperback that he held open in his lap. Was it the book or Tomas himself that stirred the curiosity of a pair of young skin-modded, studded leather-wearing jogs sitting across from him? They hissed and snarled at the courier, but he ignored them until the jogs went back to clicking their stain
less steel rings and probing orifices. The cars raced along the tracks…

  The train emerged from the netherworld—made passage into the blurred lights of mother Berlin (that dull beast city upon the mire)—until it slowed and came to a stop at another station: was it Britz-Sud, or was it Grenzalle? The studded leather-loving jogs slipped out the door and fresh bodies were drawn into the vacuum. Then the Bahn was off again. It coughed and spat and Nava found herself thinking about Helena and Lyv among other thoughts.

  She moved through the large house that was her life, throwing open doors and moving through rooms…staring out the windows of her past and future. So strange to have wound up here, she thought as she now sat wedged between two passengers: one a man with silver hair, purple skin and glowing crimson fingernails; the other, a corpulent woman embalmed in anise perfume and wearing a thick, felt coat. How fortunate it was to be alive…to sit elbow to elbow with others who had their own unique set of struggles and joys. And how beautiful it was to feel the air entering and leaving one’s lungs…to feel one’s blood as it coursed through one’s body and to feel the vibrations of the hurtling Bahn. How fascinating it is to think and to reflect, and how beautiful it is to have the capacity to stand up and fight against system that has grown too corrupt and has failed to serve the people that depend on it. Since the transnationals had dissolved the United Nations and with it The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there seemed no other option, she reasoned. It is a human right not to go hungry and thirsty. It’s a human right to have shelter, education, and medical care, and it has to be a human right to be born free from genetic augmentation and manipulation. Nava had decided that she would go to any and all lengths to defend these principles and she would give her life to help people like Anne Erlich; those who had nothing and were accused of the worst transgression; being useless and a drain on society. “If you do not produce, you do not belong.”

  Nava had gone to prep school in Seattle and grew up in the company of world elites. She knew what wealth was. Armed escorts had accompanied her whenever she entered the dreaded Zone 3 security regions. She received a lavish twentieth birthday party and spent six inebriated weeks in the great capitals of the world, dining at five star restaurants and dancing in the most fashionable clubs. She was given horsemanship lessons through an Austrian riding club and she spent a semester studying art in Milan. She was attractive and was never short of male or female attention. And then one summer her life took an abrupt turn.