The Karma Booth

by Jeff Pearce

  “Is it true what he’s saying?” Tim asked them. “Did you sic those maniacs on Emily Derosier? You gave them some… power or something?”

  “She does not belong here,” said the teenage boy.

  “You decided she was interfering!” prompted Tim. “You come in and take it upon yourselves to decide who lives and who dies! She was right about you! He’s one of yours—a fucked-up renegade—and when he crawled and slithered and climbed his way back up to human form and got stronger, you got pissed! So you wanted to discipline him for yourselves, is that it? And she had the decency to let us know we can get rid of him!”

  “You are not supposed to know these things yet,” said the elder monk.

  “Why?” demanded Tim. “Because you say so? Fuck you. You put him down here! And then you play chess pieces with his crazy-ass followers? People have died because of your imperious bullshit! Fine, you found him, so take him out of the game now that you’re here!”

  “What makes you think they can?” taunted Limonov.

  “I’ve seen what they can do,” growled Tim.

  “Oh, yes, of course,” purred Limonov, nodding. “The avenging angels who stood in the rain and slaughtered a whole village to rebalance the scales! Didn’t you ever wonder about the logistics, Cale? They killed, but they didn’t kill you.”

  “I wasn’t murdering baby girls,” Tim reminded him.

  “No, you weren’t. That’s one explanation.”

  “He was untainted,” said a female monk. “Receptive.”

  “Oh, please!” drawled Limonov. “You cannot see the truth, Cale? This, I think was their warped idea of what you call a recruitment drive. Your job interview.”

  Tim looked in horror at the female monk. Her face was serene, her eyes on Limonov. And the bastard was still laughing.

  “Allow me to give you some knowledge, Cale, from having been in their privileged club. They cannot hurt you. They couldn’t then, and they can’t now. They’ve bound their abilities—their force of will, if you like—to their energy of moral certitude. I prefer to call it hubris, but do not worry, Cale, they are mere wind-up toys when they are on this plane of existence. They come in like soldiers with their pointless little missions, and they cannot deviate. You were moved to this street only because you are a few feet away from me. You are, how shall we say…? In the blast zone, so to speak, yes. Oh, I am sure the British woman, Derosier, told you about the war?”

  Tim nodded. He hated this man, this being, whatever he was, but the exile was speaking more truth than he would ever get from the monks.

  “And who do you think really lost this war?”

  “That is not accurate,” insisted the female monk.

  “Ah, yes,” said Limonov. “Your side ‘won’ that war the way Britain won World War Two. Does that give you a fuller perspective, Cale? You’re a student of history, aren’t you? Think rubble in the aftermath. Rations and ruin and empty lingering doubt over what you think you gained!”

  “All due to your betrayal,” said the teenage boy gently. “There were beautiful places where petalled and crawling things could live and flourish, but did not need to grow in a biological sense. They lie charred and burnt, yet white in their ashes. There are trenches of light made from your destruction, filled with shallow rivers of emotional cess, breeding infections and despair. And yet there can be a rebuilding. You were sent down here not for this world to be a prison, but as a redemptive opportunity. Now you stain this place.”

  Limonov kept the same mocking insolence through the boy’s speech and turned again to Tim. “Tell me, Cale. What do you think would happen if you sent one of these sanctimonious frauds through the Karma Booth?”

  “I don’t have the authority for that,” snapped Tim. “Legal or moral.”

  “Well, when do you, Cale? You watched a massacre unfold years ago, didn’t you? Yes, you could tell yourself then that you didn’t have the power—that you were an impotent witness. You saved an old woman and a child, and good for you. But now! Now you have the luxury of new information! You could bring those dead villagers back. Maybe you do not even need the Booth! Have you thought of this? Maybe if you kill one of these fools right now, you’ll get… Oh, five, ten illiterate cattle herders in trade?”

  “Nice try,” answered Tim. “But they’re not from here and neither are you. My bet is your former coworkers stroll out of a Booth on the other side of the world just like you did.”

  “You are so weak?” countered Limonov, feigning surprise. “You are saying you don’t really have a choice?”

  Maybe he did. Tim looked to the monks, wondering if the bastard was right. He could do nothing back then because he had been overwhelmed, but what if it was within his grasp now? Emily’s words came back to him. There are natural laws to all things. Even if something fantastic has broken through into what you perceive as reality, it follows and must conform to the natural laws from where it came.

  The problem was that he stood between two evils.

  “No.”

  “No?” echoed Limonov, looking offended that his gambit had failed. “Fine. Let’s see if they can die without the Booth!”

  Then the disgusting mass was back on Limonov’s arm, and the hissing, slurping thing returned to the side of his head. His hair had once more changed, and his eyes were no longer his own color, no longer even the dead boy’s glacier blue. Worms feasted within the corneas, and Limonov’s mouth drooled something viscous that fell and clung to the cobbles of the street and allowed crawling centipede things to scuttle down.

  All of this ugliness… but nothing compared to the screams of the teenage boy and the female monk a few feet away, their skin blistering and popping with grotesque ruptures, their bodies dropping to the ground and convulsing into fetal balls, then jerking spasmodically as if beyond the air and the concrete and the distant traffic rhythms of any decent life. They were being toyed with and violated by unseen creations of Limonov’s hate. There were tearing sounds and more screams. All of the other monks looked ashen and drained, unable to comprehend that this was actually happening to two of their own. And still it went on.

  The monk victims became smears against the palette of night air.

  Scarred limbs on the ground like portions of dumped meat.

  Clothes that were never ripped but now rags.

  A torso.

  A burned hand.

  “Tim! Get away!”

  Crystal’s voice. At the foot of the steps of Rue Foyatier.

  The monks didn’t even care anymore that Emily Derosier was within their reach. They backed away. They were turning to retreat and to disappear. Limonov was too strong for them. No, thought Tim. You come back to interfere, and now…

  He snapped. A switch was thrown in his consciousness, a trigger pulled, and it wasn’t out of pity over the slain monks. He hated them. But he hated Limonov’s senseless, gleeful carnage far more. He was blind in his rage, throwing himself at the phony Russian, this mass murderer and Booth escapee, and it shocked even him to find himself with his hands successfully around the man’s throat, rolling on the hard, wet cobbles. Limonov’s fist exploded in his jaw, and then the monster ran down the street.

  Through his rage, Tim knew it was insane to go after him. If Limonov could kill the monks, if he could kill the Booth victims, why didn’t he turn his fury on Tim? Only Emily Derosier seemed able to hold her own against him and while Limonov might have to flee from her, he had plenty of time to kill Tim before he escaped.

  They ran. Tim after this man who was more than human and worse.

  Tim lost track of where they were.

  Limonov turned into a major thoroughfare where the traffic picked up, and he rushed into the intersection with cars honking around him, swerving to avoid hitting him.

  “You’re useless, Cale!” he railed over the traffic. “Why don’t you wish to kill the monks as badly as you want to kill me?”

  Tim looked for an opening in the traffic. There was none. A Peugeot bleated a
warning and barely missed him as he stepped off the curb.

  “You had a trial, Limonov! You were found fucking guilty, and you were sentenced to die! You stole and cheated and killed for every extra minute you breathe on this earth! You hunted down those resurrected victims all to—”

  “Who weren’t supposed to be here any more than your flapper girlfriend! Do you like what they can do?”

  Damn it. The psychopath had made it across the street.

  “Do you think all these things are natural, Cale? A man who grows an obscenity on the back of his head, and a Greek boy who can swap his face with those he knows? A girl who can tell you when you brushed your teeth and went to work and when you fucked and when you slept on any day of your life? You do not believe that they will not get darker? Like Zorich?”

  “You’re raving,” said Tim. “You’re raving because at the end of it, you know you had your verdict! It’s not about them.”

  “Oh, you want to speak of justice!” scoffed Limonov. “Your own government hired me, Cale! Not once but three times! When do statesmen become convicts for the Booth?”

  There was a break in the traffic. Tim raced forward, but Limonov wasn’t moving. He was looking past him, and now Tim saw why. Whatever gifts he had stolen from the resurrection victims, he was using one now, and down the street, a woman was screaming in terror and agony behind the wheel of her car. She didn’t understand what was happening to her. She couldn’t understand.

  Tim dashed to the side of the street where Limonov stood, but his target was running again, and Tim couldn’t follow. Emily Derosier must have been protecting him from direct assault, but their enemy had poured all his hate and bile and nightmares into the traumatized woman behind the wheel. Tim was on the pavement, but the car jumped the curb and followed because it had to follow, the woman desperate to kill the nightmare—

  He tried to get away but two tons of steel and rubber and glass slammed into him, crushing him against a telephone pole, collapsing his lungs and ribcage, forcing blood to spew from his mouth.

  Blood stopped pumping. Oxygen stopped reaching his brain, and then there was nothing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Naked as a babe, he was born, and naked, he emerged back into life, legs weak and giving out under him as his fingers reached through mist and touched the thick index of glass.

  The Booth. Oh, my God. Then…

  How much time had elapsed? How much had he lost?

  Couldn’t focus. Couldn’t summon words.

  His eyes were wet. Feeling. Overwhelming, cathartic feeling over life returned, because he remembered the agony of blood in his lungs, of his smashed-up, impotent body. No, you’re alive. It’s real.

  Then Miller and Crystal were staring at him, taking his arm, and why were they staring at him so strangely? He was back, wasn’t he?

  Sheets. Bed. And then there was nothing again for hours.

  He woke up again in a hospital bed. Crystal was curled up in a chair next to him, asleep. Probably exhausted. Distantly, he could hear a doctor being paged in French over the intercom system in the hallway. The place had the usual hospital smells of disinfectant and mop cleanser and anxiety. He hated the foul taste in his mouth, and would have loved to brush his teeth. His eyes felt tired. He idly scanned the room, and Emily Derosier sat on the opposite side of his bed from Crystal, watching him with an affectionate smile.

  “Hello,” she said pleasantly.

  “How… long?”

  “Only an hour after he killed you,” she answered. “You fell unconscious once you were out of the Booth, and they moved you here. It’s been about a day. I’ve come by every so often, but I don’t like to stay too long. Your friend, Miller, would have too many questions. So would she.” Meaning Crystal.

  “You did this?” he whispered.

  “I protected you from Limonov’s attacks, but I didn’t bring you back, no. If you don’t believe me, Crystal will verify I was with her. She assumed I made your body disappear—fade out like the bodies of those slain monks. Well, she thought it was me or Limonov—at the time, she was understandably upset. Scattering pain and outrage everywhere, poor thing. I could feel you were still with us and told her there was a chance.”

  It came back to him. Le Santé Prison. The Booth there. Before that, there was nothing but the agony of the car against his chest, and the blood stream in a geyser from his mouth with its coppery taste. No memory of whatever was in between.

  “I don’t understand,” he whispered, still feeling drained. “Limonov wasn’t executed. Nobody else was executed over me. So how…? I came back like…”

  He was about to say like you.

  “If you weren’t responsible, then who?”

  “It’s an interesting question,” she said.

  “I don’t feel different.”

  “Because you’re not different,” said Emily. “And I don’t feel any connection with you over the kind of abilities the other victims have.” She laughed lightly and asked, “Are you disappointed?”

  “Christ, no.”

  “Good,” she said sweetly.

  “And Limonov?”

  She frowned. “I’m sorry. Gone. Escaped. I think you know where he’ll try next.”

  He followed her meaning. “Help us then. Help us get there first. Please.”

  “I will when the time comes,” she answered. “But… I think he prefers you to try to find him yourself. He’s waited for you to figure it out.”

  She rose and leaned down to kiss him on the cheek like a loving sister. Glancing at Crystal still asleep in the corner, she said, “I think she’s in love with you. Just my opinion, but I used to be very good at telling such matters. Take it as you please.”

  He tried to sit up, the stiff white sheets crunching under his effort. “You’re not going to clarify things, are you? A million questions over this. A million more over your life, what it was like back then, your time?”

  She smiled at him as she took a step towards the door. “As to the first, well, I don’t want to be accused of stealing his thunder. As to the second… I’ve given you a sort of ‘welcome home’ gift. You can open it any time when you’re ready. And she can join you if she likes, if you two decide to move forward together.”

  He didn’t understand at all, but then she was waving goodbye, saying simply, “You should rest now. That can wait. I have a feeling it will be terrible before it’s all finished. You’ll need your strength, and you’ll need to be strong to think clearly.”

  There was no point in calling after her. He heard her heels click along the hallway tiles. Then he dozed for an hour, and when he stirred again, Crystal was sitting on the edge of his bed, holding his hand.

  From the windows of the private jet, the vast green and brown landscape of Tanzania looked eternal. And for all they knew, maybe it was. It was a nice thing to hope for, thought Tim. In the hot and busy airport in the capital of Dar es Salaam, a black man in a white dress shirt and khaki trousers met Tim, Crystal and Andrew Miller as if they had been expected well in advance, and he explained cheerfully that he was to be their new pilot. Pilot, noted Miller. Not driver? The answer was no. Where they were going wasn’t easily accessible by road, so they would have to take a small Cessna plane in.

  “I thought Mr. Braithewaite owned a complex outside the capital,” said Tim.

  “Mr. Braithewaite does not own anything here,” said the pilot pleasantly. “He is our very honored guest.”

  “Then where are we going, man?” asked Miller.

  “Selous Game Reserve.”

  While Miller thumbed through his guidebook, looking up Selous, Crystal glanced to Tim then back at the man loading their bags into the plane. “Wait a minute, I’ve been to your country before. The Tanzanian Game Department doesn’t allow any permanent human settlement in the Selous Reserve!”

  The pilot, unruffled, opened the cabin door for them to get in. “The Tanzanian government is quite willing to make an exception for Mr. Braithewaite.
”

  Tim and Crystal traded another look of mild surprise. All they could do was speculate over whether the rules were bent for Braithewaite because of his enormous wealth—or the enormous power they knew he discreetly wielded.

  I don’t want to be accused of stealing his thunder, Emily had told him. Orlando Braithewaite.

  The billionaire had given the world the Karma Booth, and he was the one with the answers for everyone. But Emily had left it for Tim to learn where the Great Man was, confident that he would.

  And in the end, Tim had tracked down the billionaire almost the same way he had divined her location.

  Because Emily’s words in his hospital room had reminded him of something.

  After he had finally convinced Crystal he was all right and had told Andrew Miller to stop being ghoulish, waiting for him to display “victim powers,” he had informed them he needed to cross the Channel and take a trip right away to Norfolk. He knew he would have to do this chore in person.

  In a rural locale, there was a large biosphere constructed thanks to Braithewaite Sciences Inc. It waited with exhibits that were open to the general public in the summer and autumn seasons. Braithewaite had made news in Forbes and New Scientist twenty-three ago, and while he refused to pose for any promotional photos, the teams of researchers from the universities of Cambridge and East Anglia were happy to smile over their generous grants.

  It was here that Tim had to come. One of the exhibits on display was a project that looked seemingly forgotten by the research teams, but which the brochures assured visitors was monitored twenty-four hours a day via CCTV. Strictly speaking, according to Miller, it was called biomaterial. It looked like an otherworldly collection of green vine and algae and lichen that gradually changed hour after hour. It would turn into a nautilus shell, then gracefully back to plant life. Then to petrifying wood. And back to lichen again. It grew—slowly, steadily. Twenty-three years ago, it had been as modest as a bonsai tree. Now it snaked and twisted its way to half the length of the exhibit room and stood almost eight feet high.