The Shibboleth (24 page)

The ravenous wolf inside me raises its snout and howls in triumph when I'm inside. I feel expansive and contracted and savage all at once as I look out from behind her eyes and banish Ruark, boot her out.

In and down, past whorls of memories and great shelves of events ringing like bells—a smorgasbord of memories I could eat until I died, but somehow, they don't look so good to me now. The part of me that lusted, that hungered for the easy and the anodyne—the
escape
of pleasure—it's gone. Lost to me.

I shuffle through her memories enough to discover her particular talent. She's a telepath like me—they call us
bugfucks
here—and borderline insane OCD. Mostly in regards to clothing, but it's also her hair and the accoutrements of life that need to be ordered and collated. Counted, labeled, numbered. Folded lovingly. And money. She's a regular Ebenezer Scrooge, she is. Counting pennies makes her happy.

But her ability? Her talent? It's so normal, it's hard to discern it's even telepathic.

She's a truth machine. If you lie, she knows it.

I can taste blood. Her nose must be streaming. From her viewpoint, I look over at my empty meatsuit. I look husked and hollow, hair a clotted mess in the failing light of the Montana mountains.

Sometimes I worry that when I'm not home, when I've busted loose of the cage, what happens if someone else like me comes along and walks right in and takes over? Possesses my skinsuit?

It's a harrowing thought. And this is a society of bugfucks and mentalists. Who knows how many kids will be here who can do the same things I do? I'll have to be very careful.

I go back home, and I've never felt more relieved to be back within my body, the light weight of my limbs and my bony chest and my dick and nuts all in their proper positions.

Mine. All mine.

Ruark coughs, splutters. Turns to the soldier and yells, “I told you to turn that field
up
!”

He looks bewildered in the face of her rage. Her nose pumps blood over her lips and down her chin into the neck of her uniform, discoloring it.

“What was the setting?” She is furious, and I understand why. It's a violation when someone takes over. And she felt safe. It's like Jerry's story of the snake. She thought one thing, and then the world turned, pivoted, and became different.

“Ma'am, it was on 6.5. That's the recommended setting you sent in your last memo.”

She glances at me, eyes blazing. “Crank it up to 8.5,” she says.

“But, ma'am, at that level, it will put a strain on the bunker's electrical grid—”

“Did I ask you to discuss power reserves? Turn it up, you moron.”

He cranks a dial, looking uncomfortable.

But I can feel it. It skitters and howls. It thrums. The ether is poisonous now, like an acid eating away at the membranes of the mind. It's hard to think at all with that part of my awareness being scoured. I can feel the shibboleth withdrawing, retreating inside of me like sap sinking into a tree with the coming winter.

Ruark looks at me, defiant. I rouse the shibboleth. I find it in me to go up and out into the space/not space. It's painful, the juddering, shivering mindscapes between lit match heads. But I can do it. It hurts not like calcium-brittle bones, nor the deep-seated rot of cancer, but like a fever of the spirit—as if at any moment the cohesion of my being, my thoughts and hopes and emotions, will just erode away and dissolve into nothingness forever.

For now, I can manage it. I can make another assault, make her dance to my fiddle. The shibboleth heeds my call, and the pain is bearable.

I am stronger than this.

That frightens me, more than I can say. I've unseated Quincrux. Instead of the Witch eating me, I ate her. Where does it all stop? After I've unseated God himself? When I've supplanted the thing in Maryland? Where does my appetite end?

I
am
stronger than her Helmholtz field, for now. But it might be better if I don't let her know that.

So I go back home. I let my shoulders slump. I hope she won't notice that my nose isn't bleeding.

Ruark's expression turns hard and gleeful all at once. A cruel smile thins her lips, already coated in gore.

“Good,” she says. “Very good. New operating procedures will be put into effect immediately.” Only now does she wipe her nose, but delicately, as if determining the extent of the mess.

“You asked for it,” I say.

The sun has passed over the rim of the world, and the open door of the motor pool looking out among the pines has been cast into gloom. A door slides open in the far wall, and two more soldiers exit, holding guns and looking at me without much warmth. Fluorescent lights tick, flicker, and illuminate the area in a blue, artificial glow. The air stinks of gasoline, exhaust, and oil.

“You're strong, kid. Good for you.” There's blood in her teeth as she says this. Her tattoos look like intricate bruising in the failing light. “But you're just a flea compared to the director. And we have your little brother, understand?”

I feel small now. Beaten flat.

“We can always arrange a little attitude adjustment for you. At first, we'll only break his arms.”

I've killed people before. Stolen memories of men in battle dying in the sights of my gun, choking the life from a Viet Cong
soldier with my bare hands in the mud, his bayonet piercing my thigh. And more recently, taking everything that was Ilsa Moteff into myself. I can do it, let her loose to run rampant, like some tiger in a movie, burning bright, hungry and terrible. The beast in me, free to stalk on vaporous feet.

I could so easily wring Ruark as dry as a sponge.

I don't.

“Indicate in the affirmative if you understand your—and his—situation.”

“I understand.”

One of the soldiers hands Ruark a handkerchief. “You should clean yourself up, ma'am. Getting dark now, and the mountain lions will come down from the heights if they smell blood.” He moves to the opposite side of the blast door from the Helmholtz box and waits, looking at Ruark. Near him is a control panel that features a keypad and a large red button.

Ruark steps over the bunker's threshold and moves to stand by the transport we arrived in.

She scrubs her face with the handkerchief. When she's through, holding the bloody rag, Ruark nods at the soldier, and he enters numbers into a keypad and then depresses the button. A yellow light flashes into action, and the air is sundered by a short siren. The blast door squeals and shrieks and then begins to close with a rumble. The view of the pines narrows.

“You break the rules, you go feral or try to escape—and we know you like to bust out of every place you've been stuck—we'll make sure that the rest of your short, sorry life, and your brother's, is full of pain. Got me?”

“Got you.”

“Good. These gentlemen will escort you to your home for the immediate future.”

She's smiling as the door obscures her from view.

It closes with a clang.

The elevator is a big metal box, remarkable only because of the extensive security and a ring of metal benches. One of the soldiers—the bunker bull—places his hand on the biometric scanner and then taps a series of numbers into the keypad.

I really shouldn't, but I go in and snatch the number from his mind. The Helmholtz shivers the ether, but I get it. Fifteen numerals: 384623829317293. The length of the key code is unfortunate—I'll never be able to remember it all—as is the fact that they change it every day. So, to escape, I'll have to chop off his hand, place it on the scanner before it cools,
and
remember the code. I guess I could take over his body, pull his gun, and kill all these guys. Then find Jack. So close.

Craptacular.

“What's with the benches?” I say.

“You'll see. Sit down.”

Once I sit, the soldiers follow suit. The elevator shudders into movement. Descent.

“Fifteen up and fifteen down. How much of my freakin' life is spent in this damned box?” one of the soldiers says. “Be glad when I'm back on perimeter or guard duty.”

“Shut up, Markos. We've got a package.” This from Sergeant Davies, the man with the passcode.

“Figure, up and down with every escort, that's five, six times a day. That's three hours, seven days a week, twenty-one hours a week.”

“Boo-fucking-hoo. I said shut it, soldier.”

“Least they could put some Muzak on in here.”

Another one of the guards snorts, shifts in his seat.

Boredom is part of the job of a soldier. Long periods of nothing punctuated by intense episodes of violence and terror. I remember. But these boys are edgy, trying to break the stress with humor. I scratch at the surface of Markos's mind. He's seriously freaked by his assignment. One image is clear: kids flying in formation in a clear blue sky over a mountaintop. The idea of it corrodes his mind. He can't explain it, and that challenges him, wears him thin. Everything here—in this bunker, on this mountainside—is wrong, and with each descent, it's like being swallowed by strangeness. He's overcome with panic.

I soothe him, calm his mind. He relaxes and leans back into the bench. Davies, watching him, grips his M14 a little less tightly. When he's satisfied Markos is cool, he shifts his gaze to me, notices me watching him.

Most folks avert their gaze when challenged with another unvarnished stare. Not Davies. He just looks at me, indifferent and efficient, holding his rifle lightly, swaying with the movement of the elevator car.

What seems like ages later, it shudders to a stop. The door slides open, and cold air seeps into the elevator car. There's a short hall leading to a dark stone wall with a single door. There's a Helmholtz box next to the door. Everything is rough; I can see the crags and fractures in the face of the stone, made prominent by the single fluorescent light. It buzzes and flickers.

“And here we are.” Davies unlimbers his rifle and uses the barrel to indicate I should disembark. “Men, stay here.”

He walks me down the hall, presses the code again at the keypad, and the simple metal door swings open, revealing a quite large room, a single bed, a toilet and sink. A stool. The Helmholtz pulses the ether, rising and falling, stronger than I've ever felt it. Around me, all around, is rock. The only sparks of life are Davies, Markos, and the other soldiers in the lift.

Davies gestures for me to enter the room.

“Can I get room service?”

Davies grunts. I can imagine him with a cigar in his mouth. “I'll have the concierge bring your bags.” He puts his hand on my shoulder and gently shoves me into the room. He pushes the door, and it swings shut with a click.

It's cold here, almost cold enough that I can see my breath.

There's a crackle, and I see a speaker hung high up on the rock wall of my room. There's a small cluster of devices nearby, most likely a camera and a microphone.

The speaker squelches, crackles, and then I hear a voice, a familiar voice say, “You're a half a mile underground. The bunker's on lockdown. Once the soldiers exit, no one will be able to enter or leave until I release the new access codes. So even if you've tried any of your little mental … tricks, you're here for the duration.” She chuckles. It's a
look-at-how-powerful-I-am
chuckle. “Consider this a little tenderization. Nighty-night, Mr. Cannon.”

The lights flicker and go out.

Absolute darkness.

“You guys forget to pay the electrical bill?”

Silence.

Darkness.

“Really?” It comes out more like a scream than the snarky way I'd heard it in my head. “Leave me in the dark?
Really?
”

I wait for a response. Nothing.

Reality stretches. For ages I wait, panting in the cold darkness, waiting for them to turn the lights back on. I have the car keys, and my wallet, loaded with the cash Jerry gave me, fat lot of good that does me now.

Eventually, I fall on my hands and knees and crawl forward until I find the bed. The thick wool military blanket is rough on my skin as I wrap it around me and begin shivering in the dark.

The ether pulses with poison. The cold seeps into my bones. The darkness is complete.

And sleep won't take me.

I am alone.

I cast out my mind, but the ether thrums with the corrosive effects of the Helmholtz and I am tired and the darkness is complete. I cannot fathom where I end and the night begins or the rock or the cold. I am misery bound tight in a woolen blanket. Muffled and buried underground.

I have my memories.

There was a girl once, buried underground. An evil man and his twin sister held her for their games. Held her secret and near death in the dark. Until two boys rescued her.

Me. Jack.

He's nearby, I know, but farther away than ever. And I am locked here, incarcerado.

Who will save the saviors?