Bleak History

by John Shirley

  ***

  BLEAK HAD ANCHORED THE cabin cruiser upriver; had come down here in the smaller boat. More prudent.

  It was almost dawn. But here, in the shadow of a civilization, it was still dark. The sky was dark blue, showing aluminum gray of predawn; darkness draped the buildings.

  As Bleak approached the rotting dock pilings, he smelled treated sewage, dead fish, decaying wood, tar, mildew. The reflection of a thin scythe of setting moon rippled with his passage, green-yellow on black. He looked back, once, to take in the baleful glower of the Manhattan skyline on the other side of the river.

  His aluminum prow kissed the old, guano-frosted wooden ladder and he shipped the oars, clambered carefully forward, swearing when he nearly pitched into the drink. He grabbed the ladder, steadied himself, then tied up the boat with the painter. He could hear Shoella's ShadowComm contingent, fourteen of them up there, whispering on what remained of the old dock. He hoped no one would insist on using a familiar to probe his mind. He hated the feeling of a probe.

  Bleak climbed the ladder, feeling them more clearly, up there, with every rung, their presences altering the ambient field of mind like fourteen iron spikes driven into the ground near an electromagnet. Only it wasn't a magnetic field; it was the apeiron field, as the Greek philosopher Anaximander had called it: the field of boundless essence that subtly took part in the other energy fields and gave birth to them; the pattern of undifferentiated consciousness from which all consciousness sprang. The apeiron was subtle yet endlessly powerful. It was the Hidden, the field traversed by planetary ghosts and other spirit beings; the energy which natural conjurers such as Bleak and the other members of the ShadowComm used as their medium of expression, each practitioner expressing himself in some personal, unique way.

  Bleak climbed up onto the crumbling dock, put his hands in his coat pockets, facing New Jersey and the fourteen members of Shoella's La'hood. He was glad to be up here, where the breeze seemed fresher, pleasantly briny, coming in from the Verrazano Narrows way off to his left. But nervous, facing off with Shoella's bunch. He wasn't much liked by them.

  Yorena flew at Bleak, first, just to make sure of him; to see if anyone was coming up the ladder behind him. The familiar flapped ponderously around him, leaving an acrid smell behind, and dropping a few pinfeathers; then flew back to Shoella. The creature settled on a craggy, tar-spackled post beside her: Yorena looked in profile like a big gull, except for the falconlike beak. The pattern of speckles on her chest seemed to change configuration as he looked at them.

  “Was it really necessary that we all come?” asked Oliver, stepping forward. Like most of them, Giant and Pigeon Lady aside, Oliver was quite ordinary looking. A young man with heavy-lidded eyes, he wore a Mets baseball jacket and hat; someone you'd see on the subway and not give a second thought. Even the ferret on his shoulder, a familiar of sorts, didn't seem so very exotic. “I hate coming to this part of New Jersey.”

  “Shoella thought it was necessary,” Bleak said, shrugging. “I'm not arguing with her. The CCA is making its move on us. They tried to get me today. They've got a new way to find us. Meaning we have to keep this meeting short.”

  Oliver scowled. “Meaning we shouldn't have had it at all, you ask me. If they're after you, and you're here...” His right hand curled up as if gripping an unseen weapon—and it might just do that, since Oliver could throw energy bullets too. Only, he threw them in the manner of a hardball pitcher.

  “Sounds like a risky meeting to me,” someone else in the group muttered. Giant, the little person.

  The others, standing in a semicircle behind Shoella, were mostly a harmless-looking mix of men and women, only one over sixty—the Pigeon Lady. A bland appearance was camouflage, but not everyone bothered: young, pale Glory was dramatically Goth in her style, while Giant, a Hispanic near-dwarf, went out of his way to bristle with piercings, and studs in black leather. To Bleak he looked like an anthropomorphic hedgehog. He'd annoyed Giant, once, by calling him Sonic. But Giant's conspicuousness could end in the blink of an eye—he had the gift of calling up camouflage sprites and could vanish against the background if he chose.

  “Maybe,” Bleak said, “this wasn't such a good idea. But the idea was to warn you—tell you about the detector, and maybe work together, figure some way to fly under this new radar of theirs...” He broke off, glanced at the sky, became aware that someone was looking at him from behind—from some distance away, up high. Pigeon Lady waddled up, grinning at him toothlessly, and he nodded to her, smiled, acknowledging the help she'd given him on the street. One of her pigeons fluttered from her shoulders, and in its wing wind he heard, “That's okay, I gots to help if I can. “

  How did she get over here to Jersey, he wondered, with all those pigeons? They wouldn't let her on a subway with those things. Did they hide in her clothing?

  “Shoella,” Bleak went on, talking to the group, “wanted you to hear it from me.” He turned and saw a light approaching in the air, still a ways off, over the river. It was almost lost in the lights of the Manhattan skyline—as if one of those lights had detached from its skyscraper and come hunting.

  Giant stepped forward. “You could be working with the feds.” A piping voice.

  “You know that's bullshit, Giant. We don't have time for a mind probe. You see that light coming over the river?” Bleak pointed.

  They all turned to look. A spotlight beam was probing down from the oncoming light; you could just make out the outline of a helicopter. Coming right at them, about two hundred yards away, sixty above.

  “It's them and...they have a detector,” Glory said. The tense little woman, her head draped in black silk, trembling as she closed her kohled eyes—peering with her mind. “I can see it. I see the device in someone's hand! A little arrow!”

  “There's something we can do,” Shoella said, looking coldly at Bleak. “If Gabriel really didn't bring them here on purpose...he'll help us deal with them.”

  “Let's do it,” Bleak said, nodding.

  “Everyone!” Shoella called, gesturing. They crowded around him—put Bleak right at the center. Shoella murmured to Yorena, who pulsed the plan to their minds.

  Bleak felt the someone in the chopper looking right at him. Some familiarity around the edges: it might be Drake Zweig.

  “They're CCA,” Glory muttered. “I've got that much.”

  So the feds had found him already, Bleak realized, shaking his head. That agent Sarikosca, maybe. Zweig. Coming after him again...and they'd be calling in backup. Which meant the others, La'hood, could go down too. They might all get swept up, trucked away to some nameless detention center for their kind.

  “So they did follow you here,” Oliver said disgustedly. “They're after you—and they'll get all of us!”

  “I don't think they followed him,” Shoella put in. “They're just flying around the area using their little detector—and picked us up.”

  “Let me shoot them down, Sho',” Giant said. “I've got a clear shot—they're almost in range.” He raised his arms, to call the lightning down.

  “No,” said Bleak, shoving Giant's hands down. “The peeps in that chopper have been briefed all wrong about us. They're not to blame.”

  “Don't fucking touch me, Bleak.”

  “Focus, dammit! If Glory can make an illusion...”

  “I can try,” she said, gazing raptly at the CCA chopper, beginning to murmur to the Hidden. “But it won't hold for long.”

  The chopper neared; the crowd of ShadowComm muttered to one another, looking around for somewhere to run to. But running would draw too much attention to them.

  “Listen up!” Bleak said sharply. He'd sometimes commanded a platoon in Afghanistan, and the tone of authority came easily to him when he needed it. “Count to three, then everyone back away from me, leave me in the center! They've got the detector focused right on me.”

  “No one show any power,” Shoella hissed. “Blank out till they move on!”

  One, two
, three—and they all drew back from Bleak. He drew power, massively and suddenly, so that he'd surge with energy. That should draw the CCA detector to fixate on him, over the others—and Bleak bolted. He ducked quickly away from the fourteen La'hood ShadowComms, becoming a human decoy.

  Glory projected an illusion to the observers in the helicopter—the illusion lapped out like ripples in water, undulated through Bleak's mind: the La'hood group as a crowd of the homeless, partying drunkenly at dawn around a fire in an old oil barrel, waving bottles, all blurred with a sudden flurrying of pigeons. Easy to ignore them and focus on Bleak.

  Already fixed on him, the detector tracked him as he pounded across the dock—he could sense someone looking at him from above, the detector arrow sometimes entering their line of sight.

  Bleak was pounding away from the ShadowComm group, through darkness, up the pier to the street, hoping to lure the chopper away from La'hood—and hoping he didn't step through a hole in the rotting wooden deck, maybe break an ankle.

  The helicopter's spotlight fixed him, stayed wobblingly with him. The chopper veered to follow as, sticking to the shadow of a building, he ran up the street, then cut left along the avenue paralleling the Hudson.

  Not in great shape anymore, he thought, breathing hard as he got to the sidewalk. Second time I had to run from these bastards today. Not fit. Dial back my drinking.

  “STAY WHERE YOU ARE,” boomed an amplified voice from overhead. “WE'RE SENDING A PATROL CAR. I REPEAT, STAY WHERE YOU ARE.”

  A patrol car. Bleak heard the siren approaching off to his right. He wondered what lie CCA had told the police, to get them to detain him.

  Puffing, he turned right, down a side street, saw what he was looking for, a PATH train entrance. If he could catch a train, he'd take it a couple stops, get out, and, if he was clear of them, maybe get a cab through the tunnel. Then—where? Get a subway to Brooklyn?

  No, he shouldn't go see Cronin now. Not until he'd done a better job of losing these bloodhounds. Wasn't safe for Cronin.

  He could hear the helicopter's engine, feel its wind stirring the hair on the back of his head, as he jumped down the stairwell, taking the first flight all at once, wincing as he struck, pounding down the next steps.

  They hadn't planned this, he decided, slowing to stride into the station. Shoella was right, they must've been trying likely areas with the detector and just happened to catch the meeting's signal.

  But Bleak knew that by the time the chopper got back, the fourteen La'hood ShadowComms would have gone in fourteen directions, slipping away, anonymously, into the city, with the skill of a lifetime's practice.

  Except for Giant—who didn't need to scurry off. He could literally vanish.

  They were probably safe for now. And chances were he could get out of a PATH station, down the line, before CCA called someone to cover its exits. Going underground ought to throw off their detector. With any luck, he'd lost them for the night.

  Bleak paid, went past the kiosk into the train station just as an early-morning train was rushing up. He got aboard a train car with no one on it but a sleepy security guard heading for a job and settled back into a seat at the other end, catching his breath. Hoping he was right to figure the others had got away.

  So where did he go now? He was tired. Needed rest. But where? He didn't feel safe going to his cabin cruiser. Nowhere to lay his head.

  What was that line from the Bible? The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

  Me, he thought—only I'm not the Son of Man, I'm not the son of anyone. Going to have to be the sunless man. Hide in the dark for a while. Keep to the shadows.

  That's what he was stuck with. Another quote came into his head—from a very different source, an old hippie rock band. What was that band's name? Knocked down, it gets to wearin' thin. They just won't let you be.

  That's what it was like for Bleak. The feds wouldn't let him be. Their Remote Viewing division —early CCA, maybe—had come sniffing around in Afghanistan, hinting about Special Recruitment. He'd wondered how they knew about him—about his talents. Suspected that they'd set him up to leave the Rangers early. As if they had other uses for him and didn't want him on the firing line.

  But he'd refused to play along, after the Rangers. He'd ducked out on them. Made a life for himself in New York City, where it was easy to vanish in the crowd. A sort of life, anyway.

  It was hard for Gabriel Bleak to live like a normal human being. Couldn't keep a relationship long. Had to be secretive—which women hated. But if he wasn't secretive it was good-bye, Esme; good-bye, Laura; good-bye...Wendy.

  The train hummed through the tunnel, windows flashing with passing lights, and Bleak realized he was clenching his fists, his knuckles white. He tried to relax, but he was seething with anger. Seething at having to run from that chopper; at being tracked by a spotlight from above. Forced to run like a panicked dog with its tail on fire.

  He sang the tune to himself, '“Knocked down, it gets to wearin' thin. They just won't let you be.... “' Muttered, “What band was that...”

  “That was the Grateful Dead,” said a voice near his ear. From some invisible entity.

  “Go away!” Bleak said angrily. And felt it depart.

  He was still burning inside. And he wasn't even sure whom he was angry at. Not at CCA—not particularly. Not at Shoella and her people, with their pointless suspicion of him. Not at the army, especially. Not at his parents...not exactly.

  It was more like he was mad at all of them, and at himself, for the outsider life he had to live. It didn't make sense to be mad at yourself, he figured, for being what nature made you. But that's how you ended up feeling.

  He was quietly but perpetually pissed off at who he was, and what he was, and how everyone around him dealt with it—or failed to.

  It had been that way almost from the first night. The night he'd realized. The night he'd first looked deep into the Hidden. Years ago...

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gabriel Bleak, two weeks after his thirteenth birthday.

  He was living with his parents, in eastern Oregon. His parents had caught him at it out in the barn, that night. Could be they had expected to catch him masturbating over a girlie magazine, or smoking marijuana cadged from his young Native friends on the Rez, or feeling up some drunken local girl.

  But this...

  He had been a kid living alone with his folks on a ranch, just trying to keep up with homework and Future Farmers of America meetings—he'd always found being around animals soothing—and getting into rock 'n' roll, and starting to look at girls a lot more: his eyes drawn to their hair floating in the wind, their thighs on the desk chairs at school, the pale, glossy curve of their shoulders when they wore sleeveless blouses, the sudden parabolas of their new breasts; noticing the color of that girl's eyes for the first time, noticing that she'd started painting her nails.

  He'd been a kid reading Marvel comics and Conan and Horatio Hornblower novels; just a kid watching war movies on late-night television. Always drawn to the military.

  Why? What was it about the military?

  But he knew, on some level. Later, grown-up, he'd work out the why of it: if you were a good soldier, you were part of something bigger, locked into a kind of family. A tough, ritualized, formalized masculine family. They had to accept you, if you did your job. Even if they sensed something was strange about you.

  He never felt really fully connected to his parents. Not after his brother vanished. And after that day, two days past his turning thirteen, he hadn't felt accepted by them at all.

  He went to church with his parents—there were devout Lutherans—but never felt a connection there, either. Not the kind other people felt. Feeding a new calf with a bottle, that gave him a feeling of connection. And there was that other connection, to the unseen, that was on the edge of his awareness...tingling there. Not coming into focus. Not till that night.

  That nigh
t in October, Gabriel Bleak, a boy of thirteen, lay atop his bedclothes, still dressed except for his shoes, trying to read Spenser, The Faerie Queene, for extra credit at school—Miss Williver, his English teacher, had talked him into it. He was surprised that he liked it. He was just lying there reading the part that went

  And forth he cald out of deep darknes dredd

  Legions of Sprights, the which, like little flyes

  Fluttering about his ever-damned hedd

  Awaite whereto their service he applyes,

  To aide his friendes or fray his enemies...

  And it gave him a peculiar feeling, reading those lines. Out of deep darknes dredd legions of Sprights. Not a feeling of dread, himself, but a sense of recognition both thrilling and unnerving.

  He wished he had someone he could talk to about that. Other kids worried about talking about sexual feelings. The Bleaks bred animals, and there wasn't much mystery there. These other sensations troubled him. That tingling around the edges. Something's there, unseen. Waiting.

  He found himself drifting into a familiar fantasy of talking to his brother. Who was gone, dead ten years now. But now and then, he liked to pretend his brother was there to talk to. He imagined saying, “Hey, Sean, I wish you could read this book, it gives me this feeling like the stuff that's so...that I can feel but I don't know what it is. Gives me those moments where I feel like if I'm somebody else than what people think, like that might still be okay. Like it's part of this world. Faerie, he calls it. He makes it seem like it's its own world and part of this one too. Not that I'm a fairy, dude, but...there's something there, it's like he knew...”

  He caught himself. Stop doing that! Dumb to pretend. Man, you 're just a dweeb with an imaginary friend. He wished he had a real, living brother or sister. He had a few faint memories of that other boy, his fraternal twin. Fainter every year since Sean had been killed, so his dad had told him, when they were not yet three. Some accident Gabriel hadn't witnessed. His folks were vague about it. A tractor. The boy playing unseen under the wheels.