Axis

by Robert Charles Wilson

  “You were very close to something you didn’t understand. I’m not surprised Genomic Security took an interest in you.”

  “So Dvali was involved in one of these communicant cults.”

  “Not involved in it. It was his. He created it.”

  Dvali, she said, had taken his Fourth treatment in New Delhi years before he immigrated to the New World. “I met him not long after he was hired by the university. There are literally thousands of Fourths in the area around Port Magellan—not including those who choose to live out their extended lives quietly and in isolation. Some of us are more organized than others. We don’t hold conventions, for obvious reasons, but I meet most of the known Fourths, sooner or later, and I can sort out the cliques and subgroups.”

  “Dvali had his own group?”

  “So I gather. Like-minded people. A few of them.” She hesitated. “We’re called Fourths, you know, because on Mars the treatment is equivalent to entering a fourth stage of life, an adulthood beyond adulthood. But the treatment doesn’t guarantee any special maturity. That’s built into the institutions surrounding it as much as into the treatment itself. Avram Dvali brought his own obsession into his Fourthness.”

  “What obsession?”

  “With the Hypotheticals. With the transcendent forces of the universe. Some people chafe at their humanity. They want to be redeemed by something larger than themselves, to ratify their sense of their own unique value. They want to touch God. The paradox of Fourthness is that it’s a magnet for such people. We try to contain them, but—” She shrugged. “We don’t have the tools the Martians put in place.”

  “So he organized around the idea of creating a, a—”

  “A communicant, a human interface with the Hypotheticals. He was very serious about it. He recruited his group from among our community and then did his best to seal them away from us. They became much more secretive once the process was underway.”

  “You couldn’t stop him?”

  “We tried, of course. Dvali’s project wasn’t the first such attempt. In the past, the intervention of other Fourths was enough to quell the effort—abetted, when necessary, by Sulean Moi, whose authority among most Fourths is unquestionable. But Dr. Dvali was immune to moral suasion, and by the time Sulean Moi arrived, he and his group were in hiding. We’ve had very sporadic contact with them since—too little and too late to stop them.”

  “You mean there’s a child?”

  “Yes. His name, I’m told, is Isaac. He would be twelve years old by now.”

  “My father disappeared twelve years ago. You think he might have joined this group?”

  “No—from your description of him and my knowledge of Dvali’s recruiting, no, I’m sorry, he’s not among them.”

  “Then maybe he knew something dangerous about them—maybe they abducted him.”

  “As Fourths we’re inhibited against that kind of violence. What you’re suggesting isn’t impossible, but it’s extremely unlikely. I’ve never heard even a rumor that Dvali was capable of such a thing. If anything like that happened to your father, it was more likely the work of Genomic Security. They were sniffing at Dvali’s heels even then.”

  “Why would DGS kidnap my father?”

  “Presumably to interrogate him. If he resisted—” Diane shrugged unhappily.

  “Why would he resist?”

  “I don’t know. I never met your father. I can’t answer that.”

  “They interrogated him and then, what, killed him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Turk said, “They have what they call Executive Action Committees in DGS, Lise. They write their own legal ticket and they do what they want. I’m pretty sure that’s who took Tomas Ginn. Tomas is a Fourth, and Fourths are notoriously hard to interrogate—they’re not especially afraid of death and they have a high tolerance to pain. Getting any information out of a stubborn Fourth means putting him through a process that’s usually, in the end, fatal.”

  “They killed Tomas?”

  “I expect so. Or transported him to some secret prison to kill him a little more slowly.”

  Could Brian have known about this, learned about it at work? Lise had a brief but horrifying vision of the DGS staff at the consulate laughing at her, at her naïve quest to uncover the truth about her father. She had been walking over an abyss on a skin of thin ice, nothing to protect her but her own ignorance.

  But—no. As an institution, Genomic Security might be capable of that; Brian was not. Unhappy as she had been in her marriage, she knew Brian intimately. Brian was many things. But he was not a murderer.

  Clever as Ibu Diane had been about discarding cars and clothing, Turk seemed to lose some of his confidence as they left the wooded lands and entered the industrialized outskirts of Port Magellan. Coming past the oil refineries at dusk, the ocean on the left and the refineries emitting a kind of fungal glow, he said, “There’s a couple of vehicles I keep seeing ever since we got on the main road. Like they’re pacing us. But it could be my imagination.”

  “Then we shouldn’t go directly to Arundji’s,” Diane said. “In fact we should get off the highway as soon as possible.”

  “I’m not saying we’re being followed. It’s just something I noticed.”

  “Assume the worst. Take the next exit. Find a gas station or somewhere we can stop without arousing suspicion.”

  “I know people around here,” Turk said. “People I can trust, if we need a place to stay overnight.”

  “Thank you, Turk, but I don’t think we should endanger anyone else. And I doubt Lise is anxious to make the acquaintance of one of your old girlfriends.”

  “Didn’t say anything about a girlfriend,” Turk said, but he blushed.

  He pulled into a filling station attached to a retail store. This was the part of Port Magellan where the refinery workers lived, lots of prefabricated bungalows assembled in haste during the boom years and gone shabby since. He parked away from the pumps, under an umbrella tree. The last daylight had gone and there was only the yellow-orange glare of the street lamps.

  “If you want to dump the car,” Turk said, “there’s a bus station a couple of blocks down. We can catch the bus to Rice Bay and walk to Arundji’s. Won’t get there till midnight, though.”

  “Maybe that’s best,” Diane said.

  “Hate to abandon another vehicle, though. Who’s paying for all this transportation?”

  “Friends and friends of friends,” Diane said. “Don’t worry about it. Don’t take anything out of the car.”

  Lise begged permission to go into the small store and buy something to eat—they hadn’t stopped for a meal since breakfast—while Turk and Diane unscrewed and discarded the vehicle’s license plates.

  She bought cheese, crackers, and bottled water for the bus trip. At the counter she noticed a stack of disposable utility phones, the kind you pick up when you’ve lost your personal unit, also favored, or so she had read, by drug dealers seeking anonymity. She grabbed one and added it to the groceries. Then she walked around the back of the store, bag in one hand and phone in the other.

  She tapped out Brian’s home number.

  He picked up almost immediately. “Yes?”

  Lise was briefly paralyzed by the sound of his voice. She thought about clicking off. Then she said, “Brian? I can’t talk right now, but I want you to know I’m okay.”

  “Lise . . . please, tell me where you are.”

  “I can’t. But one thing. This is important. There’s a man named Tomas Ginn—that’s T-O-M-A-S, G-I-N-N—who was taken into custody a couple of days ago. Presumably without a warrant or any legal record. It’s possible he’s being held by Genomic Security or somebody claiming to be DGS. Can you check on this? I mean, is it okay with you that people are being kidnapped? If not, is there anything you can do to get this man set free?”

  “Listen to me, Lise. Listen. You don’t know what you’re involved in. You’re with Turk Findley, right? Did he tell you he’
s a criminal? That’s why he fled the States, Lise. He—”

  She turned and saw Turk come around the corner of the store. Too late to hide. She closed the phone, but that was a useless gesture. She could see the anger on his face in the stark artificial light. Wordlessly, he took the phone from her hand and threw it into the air.

  The phone sailed past a lamp standard and fluttered like a huge moth before disappearing down the embankment of a ravine.

  Too shocked to speak, Lise turned to face him. Turk’s face was livid. She had never seen him like this. He said, “You have no fucking clue, do you? No idea what’s at stake here.”

  “Turk—”

  He didn’t listen. He grabbed her wrist and began to pull her toward the street. She managed to break his grip, though she dropped the bag of cheese and crackers.

  “Goddamnit, I’m not a child!”

  “Fucking prove it,” he said.

  The bus ride wasn’t exactly pleasant.

  Lise sat sullenly apart from Turk, watching the night roll by in the frame of the window. She was determined not to think about what Turk had done, or what she might have done wrong, or what Brian had said, at least until she calmed down. But as the anger abated she simply felt desolate. The last bus south was half-empty, the only other passengers a few grim-faced men in khaki pants and blue shirts, probably shift workers who lived downcoast to save the cost of city rent. The man in the seat behind her was muttering in Farsi, possibly to himself.

  The bus stopped periodically at concrete-block terminals and storefront depots off the highway, a world populated by forlorn men and flickering lights. Then the city was behind them and there was only the highway and the horizonless dark of the sea.

  Diane Dupree came across the aisle and took the seat next to Lise.

  “Turk thinks you need to take the risk more seriously,” the old woman said.

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “I surmised.”

  “I do take it seriously.”

  “The phone was a bad idea. In all likelihood the call can’t be traced, but who knows what technology the police or Genomic Security might bring to bear? It’s better not to make assumptions.”

  “I do take it seriously,” Lise insisted again, “it’s just . . .”

  But she couldn’t finish, couldn’t find the words for the sudden awareness of exactly how much of life as she had known it was slipping away under the wheels of the bus.

  By the time the bus reached a depot near Arundji’s airport Turk had stopped gnashing his teeth and had begun to look a little sheepish. He gave Lise an apologetic sidelong glance, which she ignored.

  “It’s a good half mile to Arundji’s,” he said. “You two up for the walk?”

  “Yes,” Diane said. Lise just nodded.

  The road from the depot was rural and sparsely lit. As they walked Lise listened to the crackle of her footsteps on the barely-paved verge of the road, the rush of wind raking scrubby, treeless lots. Off in the high grass some insect buzzed—she could have mistaken it for a cricket except for the mournful tone of its creaking, like a disconsolate man running his thumbnail over the teeth of a comb.

  They approached the fenced territory of Arundji’s at a back entrance, away from the main gate. Turk fished a key out of his pocket and swung open a chain-link gate, saying, “You might want to stay inconspicuous from here on in. The terminal shuts down after ten o’clock, but we’ve got a maintenance crew on site and security guards out where they’re grading the new runway.”

  Lise said, “Don’t you have a right to be here?”

  “Sort of. But it would be best not to attract too much attention.”

  She followed Turk and Diane to an aluminum-sheet hangar, one of dozens lined up at the rear of the terminal. Its huge doors were chained shut and Turk said, “I wasn’t kidding about that crowbar. I’ll need something to spring this.”

  “You’re locked out of your own hangar?”

  “Kind of a funny story.” He walked off, apparently looking for a tool.

  Lise was sweaty and her calves ached from the walk and she needed to pee. She no longer owned a change of clothes.

  “Forgive Turk,” Diane said. “It isn’t that he distrusts you. He’s afraid for you. He—”

  “Are you going to do this from now on? Make these guru-like pronouncements? Because it’s getting kind of tiresome.”

  Diane stared, wide-eyed. Then, somewhat to Lise’s relief, she laughed. Lise said, “I mean, I’m sorry, but—”

  “No! Don’t apologize. You’re absolutely right. It’s one of the hazards of great age, the temptation to pronounce judgments.”

  “I know what Turk is afraid of. Turk is burning his bridges behind him. My bridges are still there. I have a life I can go back to.”

  “Nevertheless,” Diane said, “here you are.” She smiled again. “Speaks the guru.”

  Turk came back with a piece of rebar from the construction site and used it to lever off the latch, which was flimsier than the padlock attached to it and came away from the door with a concussive twang. He rolled open the big steel doors and switched on the interior light.

  His plane was inside. His twin-engine Skyrex. Lise remembered this aircraft from their abortive flight across the mountains—ages ago, it seemed.

  Lise and Diane used the grimy employees’ restroom while Turk did his preflight checks. When Lise came back from the rear of the hangar she found him in a heated discussion with a uniformed man. The man in the uniform was short, balding, and conspicuously unhappy. “I have to call Mr. Arundji,” he said, “you know that, Turk,” and Turk said, “Give me a few minutes, that’s all I ask—haven’t I bought enough rounds over the last few years to earn me that?”

  “I’m advising you that this is not allowed.”

  “Fine. No problem. Fifteen minutes, then you can call anybody you want.”

  “I’m giving you notice here. Nobody can say I let you get away with this.”

  “Nobody’ll say any such thing.”

  “Fifteen minutes. More like ten.”

  The guard turned and walked away.

  In the old days, Turk said, an airport was anywhere in Equatoria you could carve out a landing strip. A little four-seater prop plane would get you places you couldn’t otherwise go, and nobody worried about filing a flight plan. But that had changed under the relentless pressure of the Provisional Government and the air-travel conglomerates. Big business and big government would drive places like Arundji’s into the ground, Turk said, sooner or later. Even now, he said, it wasn’t exactly legal to be making this kind of after-hours departure from a closed strip. Probably it would cost him his license. But he was being squeezed out anyhow. Nothing to lose, he said. Nothing much. Then he pivoted the plane onto a vacant runway and started his takeoff run.

  This was Turk doing what he claimed to do best, Lise thought: putting on his shoes and walking away from something. He believed in the redemptive power of distant horizons. It was a faith she couldn’t bring herself to share.

  The aircraft left the ground swaying like a kite, its huge feathered props pulling them toward the moonlit mountains, the engine purring. Ibu Diane peered out the window and murmured something about “how much quieter these things are than they used to be—oh, years ago now, years ago.”

  Lise watched the arc of the coast tilt to starboard and the distant smudge of Port Magellan grow even smaller. She waited patiently for Turk to say something, maybe even to apologize, but he didn’t speak—only pointed once, abruptly; and Lise looked up in time to see the white-hot trail of a shooting star flash over the peaks and passes of the mountains toward the emptiness of the western desert.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Brian Gately wasn’t prepared for the violent image that popped out of his mailbox that morning. It provoked an unpleasant memory.

  In the summer of his thirteenth year Brian had done volunteer work at the Episcopal church where his family worshipped. He had not been a particularly
devout teenager—doctrinal matters confused him, he avoided Bible Study—but the church, both the institution and the physical building, possessed a reassuring weight, a quality he later learned to call “gravitas.” The church put a sensible boundary on things. That was why his parents, who had lived through the economic and religious uncertainties of the Spin, went to church every week, and that was why Brian liked it. That, and the pinewood smell of the newly-built chapel, and the way the stained-glass windows broke the morning light into colors. So he had volunteered for summer work and had spent a few drowsy days sweeping the chapel or opening doors for elderly parishioners or running errands for the pastor or the choirmaster, and in mid-August he was recruited to help set up tables for the annual picnic.

  The suburb in which Brian lived was graced with a number of well-maintained parks and wooded ravines. The annual church picnic—an institution so quaint the words themselves had a sort of horse-and-buggy aura about them—was held in the largest of these parks. More than a picnic, it was (according to the flyer in the Sunday bulletin) a Day of Family Communion, and there were plenty of families there to commune with, three generations in some cases, and Brian was kept busy laying out plastic tablecloths and lugging coolers of ice and soft drinks until the event was well under way, hot dogs circulating freely, kids he barely knew tossing Frisbees, toddlers underfoot, and it was the perfect day for it, sunny but not too hot, a breeze to carry off the smoke of the grills. Even at the age of thirteen Brian had appreciated the slightly narcotic atmosphere of the picnic, an afternoon suspended in time.

  Then his friends Lyle and Kev showed up and tempted him away from the adults. Down through the woods there was a creek where stones might be skipped or tadpoles captured. Brian begged a break from his volunteer work and went off with them into the green shade of the forest. Down by the verge of the creek, which flowed in a shallow ribbon over gravel tilled by ancient glaciers, they found not just stones to throw but, surprisingly, a habitation: a scrap of canvas tent, all awry, and plastic grocery bags, rusted cans (pork and beans, animal food), empty bottles and brown flasks, a corroded shopping cart, and finally, between two oak trees whose roots had grown out of the ground and twined together like a fist, a bundle of old clothes—which, examined more closely, was not a bundle of old clothes at all, but a dead man.