ELEVEN:
Science Fiction Stories
Michael Canfield
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2012 Michael Canfield
Published by Vauk House Press
Cover background photo by Ics9
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*****
Jason comes to my cell, sets his watch’s alarm. No more than a hour’s exposure at a time, no more than every other day.
In the hour we talk about many things: the world, politics, God—and we talk about light. At opposite corners this cell has two naked bulbs, in sockets screwed into the brick.
“I’ll see the next locale has a window—and natural exposure.”
I thank him. I haven’t felt sunlight in so long. The guards had orders to give me an hour a week here, but didn’t. I don’t trouble Jason with this; he works hard. He holds a responsible position despite his youth; he has more important concerns. Today I leave Egypt for another site anyway, so the matter loses significance.
Instead, I ask about my next assignment.
“You’re worried,” Jason says.
My previous assignment: the black-bearded Saudi, heavy browed, black eyed, yielded no intel. To date none have. I tell Jason I fear if I fail again I’ll receive no more assignments and he will no longer handle me.
“That’s irrational,” Jason waves the notion away. “We’re a team.”
“I doubt my abilities,” I tell him.
Jason frowns, wounded. “You have done everything I’ve asked. It’s on me.”
Before Jason gave me a job, I had no meaningful existence. Meaninglessness make solitude unbearable. I can’t return there. I spare Jason this, but he feels it anyway.
“Look at me,” says Jason. “This is the one. A high-value subject. A driver, from Yemen, detained in Basra. This is the break I’ve…that we’ve waited for.”
Jason checks his watch. He calls it a diver’s watch. It resists water, it shows direction, it does many useful things, and now it tells him our time together draws short. “We should pray,” he says.
We kneel in the sawdust. Arms out, palms upward, we give Our Heavenly Father thanks.
“…Lord help us see what lies hidden, help us rid this world of these monsters who would rain terror on innocents. Give us strength to do our work. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” Jason kneels a moment longer, eyes shut, unblemished face serene.
“Feel that,” he says. “We’re never alone.”
God exists in all things.
Jason’s watch alarm goes off.
After a deep breath he rises, brushes sawdust off his khakis, calls the guards to bring the crate.
Safety concerns require I travel in it. A move (I must move often) takes two or three days, sometimes longer. Lying down in a lead-lined crate for transport reminds me of the concrete tomb in Abu Ghraib prison where the Americans found me and liberated me. The tomb had, Jason explained, probably housed me for decades. In the crate, I will lose myself, cease existence. This thought would send me into despair except I know Jason will free me ASAP. I have avoided food beforehand, because, though this mind and soul sleep in the crate, this body still fouls itself.
Jason will fly ahead, but first he injects me with the sleep drug to ease my passage. He tells me one more thing:
“I can’t do it without you, Ba’al. I need your help.”
Before Jason became my handler, I had no identity. I cannot lose his friendship.
Jason fights to keep the world safe from terror.
So do I.
I cannot fail.
He needs help only I can give.
***
I awake at the next site. Jason has prepared it, instructed the guards, chosen my cell, but has already returned to Virginia for other work.
I lie on a mattress, one of two. I sit up. I acclimatize. Concrete walls. A latrine bucket rests in a narrow space between the mattresses. Straw covers the other bits of naked floor, which measures two meters by two. On the ceiling, three meters high, powerful fluorescents behind chicken wire hum and flicker. A small window in the cell’s door has bars, but no glass. The cell has no window to the outside, no sunlight.
Circumstances often limit the available options. Anyway I have work to do.
Nine days pass.
On the tenth, my assignment begins.
I stand at the door, press the side of my face against window bars. At this angle I can see way way down the long long hall. The guards have a detainee.
The detainee, who appears small, wears a hood. The legs and sleeves of the jumpsuit the detainee wears bunch up over wrist and ankle shackles. The detainee shuffles down the hallway between the guards.
I step away from the door.
Three days form the standard length of an assignment. In three days I will see Jason again.
One mattress in this cell appears cleaner than the other. I have left the clean mattress alone. Now I remove straw that worked its way onto the mattress and find spiders there. I brush them away. “Dirty damn spiders! Get lost!”
Tumblers turn. The guards bring in the detainee, who makes no sound, not crying.
The guards here work twelve-hour shifts, in pairs. They wear gray wool masks; one wears a gold watch, the others I distinguish by posture. I believe this site lies in Europe. At the Egyptian site the guards acted lax. Just as they did not give me my hour’s sunlight, they did not usually hide their faces—despite orders.
Here, the guards always wear their masks.
They unshackle the detainee. They remove the hood. Freed, the detainee’s hair, black stranded with gray, falls slack and wet. I see why this detainee appears small.
Besides in DVDs that these guards play on their desk at the hallway’s end, I have not seen a woman for so long. In my professional capacity Jason has never assigned me a woman. However, women as well as men, exist in my conscience.
I have forgotten, as individuals, the people I knew before my liberation. While entombed, my thoughts decayed, but shadows remain.
The detainee blinks to adjust to the bright light in the cell. She fights to absorb her surroundings: the walls, the straw…
She takes me in last. Her knees buckle. I appear too large for the cell. I appear with a black beard, heavy brows, and black eyes. I remember seeing this myself, so I know how I look. My jumpsuit appears dingy compared to the detainee’s cleaner one.
She watches the guards go.
The guards have orders not to speak to each other around me, but after they relock the cell, one makes a remark to the other. Even though they always wear their masks, they do not follow every order given. However, I have not heard them speak their language enough yet to understand it.
The detainee shrinks into the corner. “Hello,” I say in Arabic. “People call me Ba’al. What may I call you?”
She doesn’t answer. I try other dialects and some other languages but the problem lies elsewhere. I think she does speak Arabic, and probably English. She experiences shock. She shakes. Her skin, like her hair, appears wet from perspiring, which tells me she does not experience dehydration. I find this fortunate, as we have no water in the cell, and I don’t know when the guards will bring some.
I sit against the wall in the corner furthest away. I motion her to sit too. She crouches, wraps her arms around her knees.
“How long since you have seen your family?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer.
“You don’t want to talk?” I ask.
For a long time I wait and listen to her breathe.
She falls asleep in a ball in the corner. I come close slowly, as not to wake her. Exhaustion binds her. I move her onto the cleaner mattress and use straw to make a pillow for her.
I lie on my own mattress.
The guards put in a DVD. The other cells in the hallway stand empty of course, and little noise exists to interfere with the sound of DVDs. The guards like DVDs in English, of people with American accents. I don’t know if the guards speak English, so I don’t know whether they understand the DVD voices or simply enjoy the images of people and things.
They have several different DVDs and replay them often. I recognize this one from the music. I like the last part of this DVD best and when that begins I rise and go to the little window in the door. I feel the guards like the last part best too. The soldier in the DVD named Ripley protects a young friend called Newt from an alien. The alien has no name. To kill the alien, Ripley crawls into a device resembling a strong artificial man. The alien threatens Ripley’s and her friend’s way of life. The alien kills people, including many Marines, but in the end Ripley kills the alien.
Hours and hours later, when she wakes, the detainee exists weaker. Normally, sleep restores strength and health in people.
Not near me, however.
She does not try to rise. The time hasn’t come yet, so I go to her, try to cradle her shoulder to help her sit up. She recoils from me. “Get away!” she says in Arabic. Her accent sounds poor. I think I know her accent.
“What country do you call home?” I ask in English.
“I am a legal resident of Canada!” she shouts. Tears well in her eyes. A laugh escapes her lips, despite everything. “As if that mattered,” she says, “here.”
I find laughter infectious, so I laugh too.
She exhales. “Am I here to torture you?” she says.
“Torture me?” I ask. “Why?”
She looks me up and down. “A woman in your cell. You must find that humiliating.”
“Why?”
“You’re Saudi, aren’t you?”
She guesses that from the accent from my mouth when I speak. I let her think so.
“There you are then,” she says.
“They call me Ba’al. What do they call you?”
“My name is Muhammad,” she says.
“That does not seem right.”
“No I suppose it doesn’t seem right to you. It isn’t the name I was born with. Obviously.”
“Oh. Did Jason name you?”
Her look tells me she doesn’t know Jason.
“Jason named me Ba’al,” I explain.
“Both our names are lies then.”
“Jason tells the truth.”
“You’re certain? You have faith? Of course you do.”
“Of course I have faith, of course I do. Don’t you have faith?”
“Not your kind. Do you know where your name comes from?”
“From Jason.”
“No, I mean…. Well you should ask this Jason what your name means sometime.”
“You drive a car?”
“I do.”
“Oh.”
“That surprises you.”
“In Canada?”
“Europe also. We can drive in most places.”
“In Canada, Europe, The United States. No, that doesn’t surprise me.”
She makes an expression like a smile, but with lips only. Her eyes don’t smile.
“Talking to you seems interesting,” I say.
“Seems? Aren’t you sure?”
“No.”
The word frightens her, or perhaps the way I say it does.
“The process does not go like this…” I reach out. She shrinks away. I put my hands over her face, her nose, her mouth, her eyes. She struggles, but her weak body, unlike her mind, cannot fight. My last assignment, the black-beard Saudi, heavy browed, and black eyed, the man who appeared too big for the cell, he had a mind that long internment had broken.
If, like this woman who calls herself Muhammad, a detainee come to me with a mind still strong, the process can take many days, not three, but I haven’t the time so, pressing my hands against her face, I pull her mind.
It doesn’t work. I cause her fear. The fear could move her, but she remains unprepared. She doesn’t accept.
Or I can make her accept, finish the job, and see Jason soon.
Enough. I must stop.
I remove my hands and sit back. I have orders; I have duty. Her chest rises and falls, she sleeps again.
I follow orders because I, as Jason would say, “am” a soldier. Not everyone can soldier. A guard, for example, says Jason, “is” not a soldier necessarily—even though a guard may belong to the armed forces. For example, according to Jason, the American guards at Abu Ghraib prison back in 2004 did not act as soldiers. Those men and women lacked leadership; he doesn’t fault them that. He does fault them for lacking discipline. He says he and I, true soldiers in the war on terror, strive for a higher standard. We have a hard job, we fight monsters, but cannot allow ourselves to become them. This fight brings value to my life.
***
Six days pass with her—not three. Six days. For the last two I’ve female Mohammad’s life force in my hands, as she fades despite resistance.
What happens now?” she asks. She knows. They always know. Not on the surface, not in a place they can articulate something so outside their experience, but they do know. So we wait.
“We can talk,” I say.
“About what?”
“Whatever you wish. You have children?”
She shook her head.
“Husband?”
She smiles, almost laughs to herself. “No.”
“Why not? You don’t like them?”
She considers her response. “I think I like work more.”
“Works give life meaning,” I tell her.
“Yes.”
“Tell me about your work.”
“I made—I make—films. Movies.”
“I like movies. Did you make any the guards have?”
“I somehow doubt it. I make documentaries. About women. About people. Our people. Our culture.”
“Oh.”
“That’s a common reaction.” She pauses to rest. “I have a question. In all this time, you haven’t used the verb ‘to be’ once.”
“You noticed?”
“You seem pleased. Forgive me, how can you speak a language so well, know its idioms, and not know the verb ‘to be’?”
“I know the verb, but it reflects the world poorly. It implies some permanent state. Yet everything moves. We change, we flow, and merely appear to ‘be.’ ‘To be’ means stasis; stasis means death. I rejected the nihilism of stasis, the monstrosity of ‘to be.’“
She coughs deeply. Her isolated existence ebbs. I give her some water. “We are alive,” she says. “I am. Though for how much longer?”
“You will live as long as I do, and I have already lived a long time.”
“What are you? Are you good?”
“I seek ‘to be’ good. I can perhaps accept that use of the word. Though goodness, if I possess any, must come from my actions, because how can it pass that I “am” good, unless I do good things?”
She does not hear me. “I have to tell you, when they first brought me here, I feared you.”
“Now you feel close to me.”
She nods.
“You feel the transference. I come toward you. Allow it.”
“Can you forgive me? In this cell, looking like you do, I assumed you were a terrorist. Even though I’m falsely accused myself.”
“You don’t need my forgiveness. You have God’s.”
She formed the last words she would speak as an individual, as separate existence: “Poor foolish man-child. How can you still hold on to that even in this place? There is no God. Not even a false one. Only people.” She closes her eyes, her eyes, for the last time. With great effort she wraps her hands around mine. “Only us.”
Exhausted, I lay down next to her.
Six days, six days it has taken.
Not three.
Many more hours pass through the night while last vestiges dissipate, and the mummy forms.
At last I can rise. I call the guards.
While I listen to their footsteps approach, I feel a start.
This one exists different than me, and the others in me. She does not believe in God. No God, not even the wrong God. She said so, and now I feel a floor pulled away beneath me, this void, this empty, this non—I don’t know what to do with this.
The guards open the cell door.
Jason has briefed the guards for what they now do, but they find themselves unready, nevertheless. This always happens. This counts high among the reasons Jason moves me often.
Jason has told the guards to expect a mummified corpse of the Saudi man in the cell with the newer detainee. The cover story exists to protect them. Jason does not tell lies; however, he sometimes finds it necessary to simplify facts. So the guards believe they see the woman who called herself Mohammad alive in the cell, and the large Saudi man dead. Actually they still see me: Ba’al. I have moved to the female’s form and discarded the black-bearded Saudi’s, like a shell. I do this each time. Each time I carry the minds and the feelings of the all others I have interrogated with me. Once I speak the memories of the female Muhammad to Jason the memories will start to fade. The person’s essence stays longer. Forever? I hope Jason comes soon, because the memories now exist heavy in me, provoking me.
The guards come, look at the mummy, and look at me. One gasps. Yet, what can they imagine I have done? They have orders not to engage me. They have orders to remove the mummy and notify Jason. Yet they want to speak to me. They think I, this small woman they see before them, has done something.
One guard goes to the mummy’s feet and crouches. The other, the one wearing a gold watch, remains standing and stares at me. The crouched guard says something in their language to the guard wearing the watch. He says something back, but he says it while looking at me.
The crouched guard shakes his head, says something that undoubtedly means No!
The guard with the watch ignores him. He thinks I have done something. He knows it.
“Up!” he says to me in English. I stand. I anticipate a beating.
In halting English, he orders me to lift from the mummy’s shoulders. He orders the other guard to drop the feet. He makes me drag the mummy from the cell.
This small female body finds the mummy of the too-large Saudi heavy to move. Dry, not as heavy as a still-inhabited body, but heavy enough. The guard makes me drag the mummy down the long long hall, then down another, and down to a cellar. There, a great iron furnace blazes. The guard has me force the mummy into it. We wait while the mummy burns. For the first time I witness a mummy’s disposal. The fire reminds me of sunlight.
After the blaze consumes the mummy, I think we will leave. Instead, the guard with the gold watch motions his fellow out, but gestures that I remain. The guards argue, but the guard with the watch possesses the stronger will. The other leaves.
When we stand alone, the guard speaks again in English. “I see you in there, monster.”
I say nothing.
“Surprised? Monster? Surprised?”
I say nothing.
“I hear from rumors. Stories. You are real. I see you.”
“I exist,” I tell him.
“Exist. Yes, you exist.”
He comes closer to my face. “Now you are an old woman, eh monster? Who next? Who knows, eh?” He yanks his mask up. His face appears more narrow than I had expected. He has, perhaps, about the same years Jason has, but possesses the teeth of an older man—brown, and gray gums the expel rot from his mouth. Bloodshot eyes. Blemishes.
His thick breath chokes me. “Who next monster? Me? You take me? You try?”
“I don’t know.”
He jerks his hand, as if to strike. I flinch, yet the blow doesn’t come. He stops his hand short, then laughs. “I touch?” he asks. “No. I no touch. If I touch, then next time I…” and he gestures toward the furnace. “I no touch you. You no touch me, understand?”
“You have nothing to fea—”
“Understand! Monster!”
“I understand.”
“If you try touch me….” He makes a slitting gesture with his thumb close to my throat. “Understand me now monster?”
“Yes.”
“Say yes sir!”
“Yes sir.”
“You smart, eh? Back to your cell, smart monster. Wait for your CIA man.” He laughed. “You’re old woman now!”
He returns me to my cell.
I lay on the less-clean mattress. After awhile the guards put in the DVD of Ripley, her friend Newt, and the alien. I delight in listening to the sounds that begin this movie, knowing soon will come the part I like best, where Ripley saves Newt from the alien that threatens their way of life and has killed many Marines.
This time, as the DVD plays, the guards do not watch in silence. At least one does not. He whoops and hollers at the movie. He jeers at the alien in English. “Kill the monster!” He shouts and laughs. “Die damn you. Die!”
I do not rise to watch the DVD’s end through the window in the cell door this time. I don’t like this movie anymore.
***
In the morning I wake to Jason’s footsteps coming down the hall. My heart leaps. I leap. On my feet I await him.
The guard’s masked face appears in the window. Behind him Jason looks down, studying the case file most likely. The guard unlocks the door, pushes it open, stands aside. He still wears his gold watch. Jason looks up at me.
When Jason sees me, he starts. He looks at the guard, then back into the file. He almost steps back into the hall. He looks at the empty cell across the hall. These reflexive actions lasts but a moment. He tempers his expression.
“It’s you?” he asks. Then, still in English, to the guard he says, “Step out.” The guard steps out. “Excuse me a minute,” Jason says to me. Then he walks with the guard partway back down the hallway. In quiet tones, Jason questions him about the last detainee, the woman called Muhammad. I hear her name spoken. The guard answers as best he can with his English. He confirms indeed the last detainee “was” female, confirms the removal of the mummy.
Jason sends the guard away and returns to my cell, closing the door behind him.
He smiles at me, but the smile does not spread to his eyes.
He sets the alarm on his wristwatch. “I’m taken aback Ba’al. Frankly I….” Again, he looks down at the file in his hands. He flips over a page. Then he does something he never has done before. Jason turns the file around and shows me. “Do you recognize him?” Jason asks, referencing a photo of a man’s face.
I do not.
“You see the name?”
I do. This man has the forename Muhammad and also the same family name as the female Muhammad.
“Tell me about this woman Ba’al.”
“She took a man’s name.”
“Okay. Why?”
“For her work. She made documentary films. She chose the Islamic prophet’s name to incite, to inspire change. She felt complex about Islam, about Islam and women. She traveled, she wrote, she spoke, she argued. She found many friends, but many others felt she betrayed her culture. She raised money for several middle-Eastern charities; she guesses work with these charities caused her rendition, but has no knowledge of possible terrorist connects to these charities.”
“She bears no relation to this man? Here. Read the file.” Jason tells me.
Again I look at the photo, read about the man: a Yemeni driver detained in Basra. The woman who called herself Muhammad hailed from Iran, lived in Switzerland from age eleven, later Montreal, then Toronto. I look hard into her self within me.
“She does not know this man.”
“All right. Good work. Good work….”
Jason appears distressed. He does not act like himself. We do not usually debrief this way. We talk deep and slow about the detainees who come to me.
“I feel as if you want to leave, Jason. Have I offended you? I have failed again.”
Jason looks at the ground. “No. This is not…. This is…. Need to get back to Washington. I… This has to be sorted out.”
“But, your watch alarm has not gone off yet.”
Jason looks at the walls.
“I know. It’s unavoidable. This…is a…situation. I’ll be back. Don’t….” He stops. I feel wetness on my face. I can’t help it, and raise my hands to hide.
“Don’t be upset,” Jason says. I’m not angry with you. You must understand. He hits the file with a forefinger. This man was tasked to us. He’s somewhere in the system. This woman was sent here by mistake, because they have the same name.”
“Someone has not done his job.” I say.
Jason looks at the file. “A high-value detainee. I was promised. I was promised.”
Tears burst from me.
“What is it?” says Jason, stunned.
“Why did you name me Ba’al?”
“Why did I name…. What?”
She held an idea what my name means, it exists in my mind now, I want it out. “Jason, does the name Ba’al mean what she believed it means?”
“What did she believe?”
“Men give the name Ba’al to a god. But a false god, the god of a false people, the god of an enemy….”
“I didn’t know you so well then, it’s just a name. I’ll give you another. We can talk about it.”
“You haven’t answered. Does my name mean that?”
“Yes. That is what it means.”
“I do not exist as a soldier, not like Ripley, I exist a monster.”
“Ripley?”
I explain the movie. I tell Jason about the furnace, the guard’s words. Jason breathes and listens.
“All right, here is what I want you to do. Obviously we are going to change sites as soon as I can manage it. Until then, no more movies. No wonder you’re upset.”
I keep my face hidden behind my hands. Jason clasps my wrists to separate them.
“You know what you remind me of right now?” Jason asks.
I shake my head. “The way I first found you. I promised to take care of you didn’t I?”
“You do take care of me.”
“It will be okay. I don’t want you to be worried. Will you be okay now?”
“I don’t know. I will strive for this condition.”
“Condition?”
“This condition of okay-ness.”
“You and your E-prime! You make me smile. It’s called that…the way you speak, never using the verb ‘to be.’ E-Prime. That is the term for it.” He reaches into his back pocket and pulls out some folded pages. “Here, I was thinking of you, and I had this urge to look online before leaving home. I printed out some stuff. I thought we could discuss it today if there was time; or should I say, if time allowed? It makes perfect sense the way you speak, for you. Here.” He tries to press the papers into my hands. “Takes these, read these. When I come back, we’ll talk. Okay?”
I nod.
He takes my hand and folds the papers into it. A tear rolls off my nose and falls upon the flesh between Jason’s thumb and index finger.
“Oh no,” I say.
Jason jumps back. “No! It’s all right!”
He takes a small bottle of sanitizer from a pocket and fills his palm with it. He rubs and rubs. “It’s all right, see? All right.”
I breathe. “Do you still believe in God, Jason?”
He drops his hands to his sides. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“God still exists everywhere. We believe, don’t we?”
“We believe.”
“She does not believe in God, Jason.”
“Well….”
“She does not believe. I thought when she came to me she would find God within me. She has found nothing. God does not exist in me. How can He?”
“How can’t he? Ba’al, your faith is being tested by this…individual.”
“I don’t feel God’s presence.”
“Yes you do! He’s always within. Let’s pray. Now.”
“I cannot find Him, because I never knew His love at all. I lied. God doesn’t exist in here. I tried to know Him through you. I lied.”
Jason swallows. “This isn’t you talking. Kneel with me.”
Jason kneels and holds his hands upward. I hesitate.
Jason looks up at me. “Listen to me. You are a miracle, you are unique. No one—no other being like you exists. In this dark time you came to us. To us. I refuse to allow that’s an accident. You have a purpose.”
“I haven’t helped. I have failed. Each time.”
“No! I haven’t…represented your unique ability well. We haven’t been given the right subjects. We need high-value detainees.” Then he thinks: How can I extract information from prisoners that don’t have it? Ba’al hasn’t failed. I have.
I hear him think this. I hear it.
I kneel. Jason prays aloud and when he finishes we sit together in fellowship.
After a time, eyes still closed, Jason says “I feel His presence.”
I rest my hands. “I see Him. I see Him in you. In your kindness and your faith, and your innocence.”
“I’m not innocent Ba’al. You’re the innoc—”
“No. But I know your innocence.”
“That’s kindness on your part.” He rubs the flesh on the back of his hand.
“No. I see it.” The tear has only sped a process that began with our first contact.
He checks his watch. “I have to… ”
“Go. You have shown me God again. I have no fear now. Go, you have shown me the Way.” I tell these lies for his sake.
He smiles, picks up the dossier, rises to leave. “I’ll sort this out, and I’ll see you soon, Ba’al.”
“Jason, tell G—” I almost say the name his mind has revealed to me. “Tell your superiors I thank them for the opportunity to serve.”
“They are the ones who owe you thanks.”
“Jason. Named for a hero.” Though the verb named leaves a false impression. Jason’s department, led by a man named Mitchell Gay, gave Jason the code name he bears.
“So they say.” He smiles reflexively. “Jason who sought the golden fleece.”
I see so much in his mind. “Jason who sowed the dragon’s teeth.”
“That too.”
He calls for the guard, who comes and unlocks the cell. Jason turns back to me. “See you soon,” he says. Before he leaves the floor he makes the guards move their DVD from the hallway.
I lie down under the flickering fluorescents and, like a DVD playing for our mutual eyes, I watch. A link has formed. Jason’s superior, Mitchell Gay, warned him this would happen.
I have heard about the world, recalled it through the memories of others; but until today I have never walked in it like this.
Jason returns to Washington on a military flight, experiencing delays and rerouting, then down to Langley by commercial airline. He thinks about Gay humiliating him at their last meeting, and what he will say to Gay about this screw-up with the female.
At Langley, he does not stop at his own office, but goes straight to Gay’s.
Gay leans back with his feet cased in snakeskin loafers and propped on his desk. Jason finds this distasteful. Jason wouldn’t deface so fine an wood grain with scuff marks. Nor would Jason wear snakeskin.
Jason hold the file of the Yemeni driver named Muhammad. He drops the file on Gay’s desk.
Hello, MacDonald,” says Gay, using the name given Jason in this outside world. Kyle MacDonald.
Jason says: “ The wrong damn detainee! A woman! What are we doing here?”
Gay says: “Really? What intelligence did you extract from this woman?”
Jason stammers. “What? Why…. None. She had no relevant intel.”
“Too bad,” says Gay. “I know how much work you put in this deal. Ya’ gave it your best shot, but it’s time to shut it down.”
Jason, despite his experience with Gay, has somehow still not expected this. “What!” says he. “No! I was promised the driver from Basra. The guy we know trained in Afghanistan.”
“Sorry, MacDonald, that captive is high-value.”
“How can you do this! You expect results and you don’t give me anyone I can get results from.”
“Your ‘special asset’ has too permanent an effect on detainees.”
“Ba’al’s intel will be reliable! He becomes them, and tells me everything..”
“How do you know?”
I feel Jason’s jaw goes slack. “I…. I….”
Gay says: “Maybe he’s not sharing all he’s getting.”
“Ba’al is loyal! We have a bond.”
“Been meaning to talk to you about that.”
“This isn’t about me!”
“Make sure it isn’t.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means you’re done. I’m boxing that thing. I’m gonna throw it down a volcano or someplace, and I don’t want you anywhere near it again.”
Jason stammers. He pauses, and clears his throat. “I’ll go over your head.”
“Listen. With a new administration coming in, I’m having to spend what’s left of this one tidying up on the chance changes are expected. Now you may decide to run down the hall to my boss—or to another department—and sing your creature’s praise. You may decide to do that. I’m sure you can find somebody above my pay grade to drool over your—your whatever-the-heck-you-got-there, and find something to use it for—or somebody who wants to cut it up, at least. I’m aware. I may be half as smart as you, but I’m twice as old, so consider a moment that I might be your bare equal as a man. I understand you were in the seminary before entering public service.”
“So?”
“How’d that work out for you?”
“I’m sure it’s in my file.”
Gay pulls his feet off the desk, sits up. “You want to talk files. I’m sure it is in your file, MacDonald.” He picks up the file Jason threw down, the driver’s file. “I’m also sure you need to learn what’s in a file might not even be worth lining an animal’s cage with. Even a really big animal’s cage.”
Without taking his eyes off Jason, Gay drops the driver’s file into a wastebasket.
“Why’d you quit the seminary, MacDonald?”
“I didn’t quit. I left.”
“Why did you quit the seminary, MacDonald?”
“The church is not…. The church is…is not….” Jason faltered.
“I’ll finish that thought for you. The church is flawed. Not what you thought it’d be. Ineffectual. Hypocritical. Maybe semi-evil at times. So, like many an ex- altar boy you sought a career in government intelligence. Yet, somehow I feel you find us lacking, too.”
Jason lowers his head.
“Fun as it is putting the screws to you for its own sake, MacDonald, I’m actually trying to do you a favor. You should get out your date book and circle today. Because you will want to look back twenty years from now—a dozen abandoned careers, a lifetime of disappoints from now - and say, ‘Well lookee here, that’s when that old sonofabitch told me I was full of shit.’ Because you are full of shit, son.”
He scratches his chin before concluding. “My advice is that you now say: ‘Yes sir, thank you sir,’ shoot back to your desk, fill out your expense report, and await further instructions. Reflect how we—that’s we—MacDonald, all fall short of God’s Glory.”
Jason stands a moment, jaw working.
He bends down to Gay’s wastebasket and takes the driver’s file out.
“All right, MacDonald. I won’t say I hope you know what’s best because I don’t cotton to false hopes.”
Jason twists the folder. He considers staying and refuting every ugly word Gay has spewed, but can’t find how. You don’t understand me, he wants to say.
But, he can’t say that.
He looks at the folder. “You knew,” he says. “There was no mix-up.”
“Stuff happens.”
“That woman was innocent.”
“Really? An innocent woman. A completely innocent Arab-Canadian woman taken into custody at a U.S. airport, interrogated for months at CIA black sites. Stripped. Waterboarded. Least that’s what her friends, her colleagues, and a few noisy members of the international press think. No one knows, we don’t confirm, but suspicions grow. Her MP starts making rumblings. Would be one heck of a movie, MacDonald. Shame she won’t be able to make it.”
“I never said anything about her being a moviemaker.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Jason leaves. Under bright fluorescents that never flicker, he walks down a long long hallway, toward the office of his boss’s boss. He stops, without entering. Maybe someone else. He goes to another hallway. Another man he knows. A smart man. Jason thought he would make a good mentor once. He goes there and again he stops outside the door. He has the file. He can move the special asset to another department, try again. Ba’al is unique. Supernatural. Perhaps an angel. At least extraterrestrial. No, nothing so mundane. Ba’al defies all we know, sent to us, sent to me in these times, to defy a banal world bereft of wonders. The word for that is miracle.
Jason grips the doorknob, tries to turn it, his guts churning at the same time. They will cut Ba’al up, or they will agree with Gay and box him, or they will weaponize him. Ba’al is not the problem. We are.
Still there’s nothing else to do.
Jason Stop.
Enough.
I stay his hand. I reach. Even so far apart, we connect. Jason tries again to turn the knob.
Stop.
I push. Jason lets his hand fall away.
In relief.
I bid Jason go to the airport. He travels the next thirty-six hours retracing his journey back here.
Jason surprises the guards. They had not expected him, certainly not weeping. The guards rise. Jason says nothing about the DVD player they have already moved back into the hallway. He orders them to let him into my cell.
They do, and lock the door behind them before going back to their station. The guards stay quiet there, disturbed, alert.
Jason collapses in the straw, perspiring, exhausted from isolated days traveling alone.
He looks at me. Defiant. “What are you? A demon?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long have you been alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where did you come from?”
“From the tomb in Abu Ghraib. The tomb you liberated me from. I remember nothing before.”
“Liberated you? Look around! You’re in a jail cell!”
“That seems true.”
“Did you possess me? I wanted so much to believe in you.”
I say nothing.
“What are you! I deluded myself we could do some good, if we kept going. We did no good.”
“You did do good. For me.”
“No. I’ve wronged you most. I led you down the same bad path as me.”
“You used me.”
Jason seemed to sink even further. “I’m sorry,” he says unable to meet my eyes. “You’re right. I did use you.”
I sit down next to him. “You used me—like you use each other. You made me feel like a person. That is being good to me.”
“If only,” he says. Then it strikes him. He brightens.
“Did you say is?”
“I did.”
“You’re learning! Still learning from us!”
“I am.”
He smiles. With exhaustion, the smile evaporates. He stares up at the flickering lights. “Those are annoying, I’m going to make sure you get a window, a proper window, at the next site—with direct sunlight.”
“Rest now,” I tell him, and put my hands over his face.
I have never forced transference; nevertheless, I find, at least in this case, it works. All our cumulative time together has helped.
Forcing all the others from myself also helps. I release them into the air.
If God exists, let Him seek His children, so long lost in me, there.
In Jason’s voice I call the guards. I lay the spent body of the woman called Mohammed on the cleaner mattress, face to the wall. Because of the rapid transference that empty shell remains wet and tender. Maybe the guards will believe I sleeps there, maybe not. If it fools them, then Jason and I, one body—one thing, will walk into the sun together.
However, I might instead confess to the guards what I have done. I still have a second to decide. Because whether we escape, or Mitchell Gay entombs us, throws us down a volcano, or if we’re dissected, dissembled, and scattered, or even if the panicked guards simply shove us into the furnace, doesn’t matter.
My friend Jason despised the failings of men and feared the rebuke of God. He proved too weak for this world, so he now lies sheltered within me. I am a place where men can’t use him and God will not follow. I have saved him from these monsters.
*****
Tom Greer smacked the car radio off. Every station was covering the broadcast from 7.7 light years away, but none—not one—had anything about his daughter, about April, yet. He fingered the barrel of the .38 cradled in the cup holder. He needed a piss, but didn’t dare get out to stand against a wall.
Tom watched the bank through a filthy windshield, deciding he should’ve jacked a cleaner Lincoln. Beige drapes drawn across the front entrance, the bank stood in a parking lot behind a boarded-up mall. Across Illinois Avenue, a smatter of businesses hung on despite the crumbling economy: a liquor store, a Subway, a dry cleaner with a broken revolving sign. None had opened yet this morning, not even the dry cleaner. Tom’s watch showed 7:59. That looked right, but then the watch had spent the past twenty years in a manila envelope in a storage locker in a correctional facility, so what did it know?
The bank would open at nine, but the manager should arrive by eight o’clock like he did every other morning.
At 8:10 Tom switched on the radio to see if they would mention his daughter April yet. I’m too old for this shit, he thought.
***
7.7 light years away, through the wormhole, Lt. Colonel Hank Lopez commanding, separated the landing module of starship Unity and fired its jets. Accompanied by Mission Specialist April Greer, and leaving Ugeto and White in orbit, Hank Lopez guided the lander through wispy clouds, above small oceans and low mountain ranges. Spectral analysis indicated vegetation scattered through the temperate zones. Hank set the lander down in an shallow valley. Through the generous view port, he and April Greer became the first human beings to see life on another world.
Despite its colorlessness, the valley displayed a mosaic of wonders. Frozen whites of permafrost swirled upon the ground, yet beds of long grasses thrived, their gray blades bending in the breeze. Low white shrubs, sprouting at discrete distances from one another, sported gray blooms. Beautiful, thought Hank, beautiful.
He wiped the view glass where it fogged. Speaking just audibly, he gave thanks.
April stayed solemn while he finished, which he appreciated. “I never took you for a religious man, Hank,” she said. NASA crews worked under informal protocol. April, a scientist not a military officer, reported to Commander Lopez, though she called him Hank as a friend.
“Not religious,” said Hank. “Grateful.” He had much to show gratitude for: safe arrival and the wormhole’s discovery, for two. The wormhole fell past Earth’s solar system at the right angle and velocity to spirit ship and crew partway across the spiral arm, not the angle and velocity to swallow sun and nine planets whole. He did not give thanks for that now. He gave thanks for pockets of life amid the colds of space.
“Imagine what tourists will do to this place.”
“We’re a long way from that!”
He didn’t answer.
Ugeto radioed down from orbit announcing an imminent network feed from Earth. Each signal took twenty minutes to reach the lander: twelve minutes from Houston to the wormhole, eight minutes from the wormhole to the new world.
April sifted some note cards. Hank repressed a smile. He’d spoken for broadcast occasionally, but nobody really wanted to interview him anyway. April straightened her flight suit. The public loved their Mission Specialist April Greer; NASA loved the publicity, and tele-journalists salivated over her story of triumph and tragedy.
A CNN broadcaster’s vibrato filled the lander: “Born in the slums of Chicago, she went on to win the gold for her nation in Madrid. At the height of athletic achievement, this young American turned away from swimming, and toward science, earning her doctorate in biochemistry by twenty-eight. Today, her drive to be first continues. Now the young champion embarks on mankind’s greatest adventure. April Greer, what are your thoughts this historic moment from the other side of the galaxy?”
April laughed and corrected the interviewer. “We haven’t come quite so far. The Milky Way’s a hundred light years across. I’m speaking to you less than eight light years from downtown Atlanta. Almost next door….”
***
Tom Greer couldn’t stand the waits between the messages from space or the time-filling babble of the announcers. He clicked the radio off again. The bank entrance had a white card taped to it which he couldn’t read because he’d tossed the wrong-perscription glasses issued to him in prison. The blurred card didn’t matter; banks closed only on holidays, guaranteed. He could get out and read the card, but if the bank manager turned up then, Tom would lose the advantage of surprise.
At twenty past he said fuck it. He expected he could climb out, read the sign, take a leak on the bank, and still no manager.
An SUV pulled into the parking lot. Out hopped an Asian guy Tom hadn’t seen before, keys in hand. Tom clutched the .38, then looped the empty duffel’s strap over his shoulder.
The bank’s entrance had three locks. The Asian guy squatted to unlock the base first. Second, he reached high for the top lock. When he turned the tumblers in the middle lock Tom jumped from the Lincoln. Three strides later he stabbed the gun muzzle in the guy’s spine.
Tom seized a fistful of windbreaker and pushed the guy inside. “Keep your hands behind your head, don’t look at me.” He made the guy re-lock the door, and disable the alarm. With wire cutters, Tom took care of the security cameras himself. It only took a second.
To the guy he said, “Stand against the wall. You will open the vault. I know about the twenty-minute delay, don’t tell me it won’t open. You’re late, so work fast before anybody shows up and I guarantee your safety. Start now.”
“I can’t open the vault.”
Tom watched sweat bead on the guy’s neck. He pushed the muzzle deeper. “Don’t tell me that. I’ve had a bad morning.” His bladder threatened to burst.
“I—I don’t work for the bank…. I’m with the cleaning company. Bank’s closed today.”
“On Friday. Nice try.”
“I came to clean! I’m supposed to come on weekends, but…the holiday.”
“Holiday?”
The guy resisted turning around. “Landing Day. For the landing.”
The guy wore chinos and, under the windbreaker, a polo shirt. No monkey suit for him. In the past few weeks Tom learned how people dressed now. Maybe bankers didn’t wear ties anymore.
“Where’s your janitor stuff?”
The guy nodded to a closet in a corner.
“What about the shiny four-wheeler outside?”
“Business is pretty good.”
About to piss himself, Tom couldn’t think. “Kneel down.”
“No. no!”
Tom loosened his grip on the windbreaker. “You’re okay. Keep your nose touching the wall.”
Tom looked around for one of those ashtrays filled with sand but they had no smoking signs posted instead. You couldn’t smoke anywhere but prison now.
Never mind, a tall green plant in a terra-cotta basin decorating the lobby would do as well. He went to it, unzipped and unleased a stream into the basin. The plant turned out to be plastic, the basin was solid with a few wood chips covering the top. Piss overflowed it and ran to the floor. Who cared? So fucking good. His eyes became slits. He ignored the hostage, who didn’t move.
When he finished, he went back to the door and snatched the white card. This Branch Will Close Friday, October 12, to Celebrate Landing Day. We Will Open Normal Business Hours Monday, October 15. Thank You for Your Patronage.
“Stand,” he told the guy.
The guy pressed himself up, nose to the wall. He shook pretty bad. He’d been thinking about his situation. A little piss sure spooked him. Tom tossed the white card, then plopped in a crappy orange chair by the loan-rejecting desk. He rested the .38 on his thigh and pushed air through his nostrils.
“What’s your name?”
“Lee.”
“What do you know about the set up, Lee?”
“The set up?”
“Ever try to get in the vault?”
“Of course not.”
“Here’s the thing Lee. I need money. I need money so I can disappear. You nor anybody like you will ever hear from me again. How do I get that money?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know!”
“If you force me to, I will kill you.” Why did they force him?
Lee’s legs wobbled, but he remained upright.
“You got a TV or radio here?”
Lee cheated left, perhaps to try and watch Tom unnoticed.
“Lee?”
“Take the keys to my SUV. It’s brand new.”
“Radio!”
“I…. I think there’s one behind the teller stations.”