Immobility

A SENSATION OF COMING BACK alive again, only not quite that, half life maybe. Still utter darkness, though perhaps a faint hint of light on the horizon. Scraps and bits of sound caught somewhere between brain and ears and slowly unthawing to become words, trickling slowly in, but in such a way that it is hard to be sure if they are words from now or words remembered from an earlier time, things imagined or things actually heard. The word food, or perhaps brood. Dying out or crying out, something of the sort, hard to say which exactly, if either. Claps? No, not that exactly, but Claps still sparked something, was close to something else. Clasp? Lapse?

The darkness bedappled now, but still nothing visible, figures not yet sufficiently separated from the ground to become distinct. A dripple, a strange sensation, intimations of shape and form and movement. Almost like being alive again.

And then, suddenly, sentences. Murky but comprehensible and properly sequenced—probably real for once rather than imagined. This:

“WELL, WE’LL HAVE TO USE HIM, then.”

A male voice, hoarse and loud.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

Another man, this one perhaps younger. The voice, at the very least smoother, more quiescent.

“Do we have any other choice?”

“How do we manage the situation?”

“I’ll come up with something.”

“What?” The voices getting softer now, slipping down in pitch, starting to fade.

“I don’t know.” A long silence. “I’ll figure something out. We’ll just do the best we can.”

“So, you want me to wake him?”

A hesitation so long that the conversation seemed over. And then finally:

“Yes, wake him.”

SLOW SHIFT TO WHITE NOISE. Probably a remembered conversation rather than something he was actually hearing, but from when? And who was speaking? Were they even talking about him? If they were talking about him and he was asleep, how could he have heard them? And if they weren’t, why did he continue to have the impression that they were?

Strange the things that seep their way down to you while you are dead, part of him thought. Or is it just my imagination? another part wondered. A story he was telling himself, a dream he was dreaming.

And who exactly do I mean by he? he wondered. Don’t I mean I? Who do I mean?

And then came a light so bright that, despite just having begun to find himself, he was lost again.

1

WHEN THEY FIRST WOKE HIM, he had the impression of the world becoming real again and he himself along with it. He did not remember having been stored. He could remember nothing about what his life had been before the Kollaps, and the days directly before they had stored him were foggy at best, little more than a few frozen images. He remembered tatters of the Kollaps itself, had a fleeting glimpse of himself panting and in flight, riots, gunfire, rubble. He remembered a bright blast, remembered awakening to find himself burned and naked as a newborn—or perhaps even more naked, since all the hair had been singed from his body or had simply fallen out. He remembered feeling amazed to be alive, but, well, he was alive, it was hard to question that, wasn’t it?

And then what? People: he had found them, or they had found him, hard to say which. A few men banded together, acting “rationally” instead of “like animals,” as one of them must have put it, attempting to found a new society, attempting to start over.

Not having learned better, he thought grimly, the first time.

Was it all coming back to him? He wasn’t sure. And how much of what was coming back was real?

What was his name again?

AT FIRST HE COULDN’T FEEL his body at all. He heard noise around him, the low rumble of ordinary mortals muttering to one another, the scuff of feet against a floor around what must be his receptacle. He tried to move his mouth and found he couldn’t, that he couldn’t even feel it, that he wasn’t even completely certain that he had a mouth. It made him nervous. He tried to lick his lips, but either nothing happened or something happened that he couldn’t feel.

His eyelids were closed, but there was the slightest gap between them. He could just see out, could see light, a slight blurriness of semi-differentiated figures, nothing more. He tried to will his eyes open further, failed. Nor could he move the eyes themselves: they stayed staring, fixed, his mind very clumsily processing the thin slit of reality available to them.

He tried to swallow, but couldn’t move his throat. Am I breathing? he wondered, but figured that no, he was in storage, he wasn’t breathing, wouldn’t breathe until he was fully awake. Assuming he understood the process properly, he was still frozen. He shouldn’t be experiencing anything at all yet, shouldn’t even be able to think. Why could he?

Horkai, he thought suddenly. Josef Horkai. That was his name. It came, flashing back and forth and painfully through him. He tried to keep hold of the name, tried to wrap it around himself and tie it in place with something else, some other fact, anything.

Horkai, he thought. Occupation? Before the Kollaps? Now?

Nothing came. Be patient, he told himself. Let things come as they will.

And then the name flopped away, vanished in darkness. He tried again to blink, and one eyelid closed fully and held there. The other remained as it was, slit open, but the pupil behind it began to slide, smearing away the little bit of blurred vision he had and coming to rest against the backlit inside of the lid.

He sensed something on the horizon, in the vague redness, coming toward him. His eyelid slid open a little, but he couldn’t tell if he had done it or if it had been done to him.

And then there was a roaring and what was coming arrived and turned out to be pain, madly beating its wings. He hurt like hell, every part of him, and since he could not tell where he ended and the rest of the world began, it felt like the entire world was awash in fire. And still he couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t take air into his lungs, nothing. It was terrible, as terrible as anything he had ever felt.

And then slowly it receded, melted away, leaving in its wake a slow twisting and turning of naked sensation that refused to drain off. He could feel parts of himself now, though those parts still felt awkward and dampened, as if wrapped in gauze. One of his eyes sprang open and he could see a blurred thumb and forefinger sheathed in latex holding the eyelids apart. Behind and past them, an arm and vague shapes, several of them, that he guessed to be human. Similar to human, anyway. And then suddenly a blazing circle of light.

“Pupil contracts,” he heard someone say. A male voice, hoarse, similar to the one he had heard earlier. “Vision’s probably okay.”

The blazing circle disappeared, its afterimage tracking across his vision and the figures resolved briefly into being. And then the thumb and forefinger let go and he saw only the inside of his eyelid again.

“What was that?” asked someone new, in a distracted voice.

None of the voices sounded familiar. Then again, why should they?

“I said,” the first voice said, louder this time, “that he’ll probably be able to see.”

“That’s not what you said.”

“Vision’s probably okay, I said. Amounts to the same thing.”

“Have it your way,” said the other. “Hand me the hypodermic.”

Silence. And then all at once the remnants of sensation that had been eddying seemed about to burst. All his nerves burned at once. He tried to scream but nothing came out.

He lay there immobile, certain he was dying, until, mercifully, like a candle, he was snuffed out.

2

“HOW ARE WE FEELING?” a voice asked.

His body felt distinct, like a body again, more or less, though tender, sore all over. He willed his eyelids to open, was surprised when they obeyed. His eyes, though, took a long time to adjust. Gradually a blurred figure became distinct, human. A middle-aged man wearing a soiled white technician’s coat.

“How are we feeling?” the man asked again, smiling, perhaps two feet away from his face.

He tried to speak, but his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth and wouldn’t move. He grunted.

The technician squinted and brought his face closer, his eyes lost in a web of wrinkles. Then his face relaxed, grew smooth.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” the technician said. He reached down, came back up with a bottle of something, a long glass tube running out one end of it. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve unstored someone.”

The technician forced the tube into his mouth. He felt it scrape against his lips, then burrow its way in between his palate and his tongue. It felt like layers of tissue were being torn off. Something was seeping out of the tube, a liquid of some sort, slightly bitter to the taste. Slowly, his tongue loosened, then became independent of the vault of the mouth. The liquid trickled its way deeper into his mouth, down his throat, down his windpipe as well. For a moment, he felt he was choking. He began to cough.

The technician withdrew the tube, helped him to turn his head to the side until the liquid had oozed out and the coughing had stopped. A strand of the fluid hung, black and ropy, from one corner of his mouth.

“There now,” said the technician, wiping it away. “All better.”

“Hardly,” he muttered.

His voice was cracked, his vocal cords having difficulty making the right sounds. The technician looked at him quizzically. He cupped his ear with one hand and leaned in. “You’ll have to repeat that,” he said.

“Who am I?” he asked.

The technician drew back. “Who are you?” he asked. “Yes, I should have asked that—part of the procedure, just to make sure you came out all right. So, yes, who are you?” the technician asked, and waited.

He shook his head. It felt like his brain was sloshing against the sides of his skull. “No,” he said, his voice a little firmer now. “I’m asking you to tell me.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I’ll give you a hint,” claimed the technician. “I’ll give you the first letter.”

“Just tell me,” he said.

“You start with an H,” said the technician, leaning closer, rubbing his hands. “It’s better this way. It needs to come back to you on its own. That’s in the manual.”

“Just tell me,” he said again.

“After H, the next letter is—,” the technician started to say to him, but by that time, almost without him knowing it, his hands had found their way to the technician’s throat and were squeezing, the man’s face darkening.

What am I doing? he wondered in amazement, and let go.

The technician stumbled backwards, hacking and coughing, until he slammed into the wall and slid slowly down.

“My name,” he said again.

“Hork eye,” the technician gasped.

Horkai, he thought. Yes, that sounded right. Plausible, at least. Close enough, anyway. For now.

THE TECHNICIAN STAYED pressed against the far wall, rubbing his throat, regarding him warily. Horkai had managed to prop himself up on his elbows, but it hadn’t been easy. With each movement he’d been struck by a new burst of pain, the last one so bad he had nearly passed out.

He was on a table. Plastic or plasticine, sturdy and long. Why can I remember what a table is when I can’t even remember my own name? he marveled. He brushed the tabletop with his fingers lightly, feeling its dimpling, but even that simple sensation was almost too much to bear.

In a moment, he told himself, once I’ve gathered myself, once I feel okay, I’ll swing my legs off the table and stand up. Only not quite yet.

“You could have killed me,” said the technician, his face pale and appalled.

“I’m sorry if things got out of hand,” said Horkai. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“If you didn’t mean to hurt me, why were you strangling me?”

Horkai closed his eyes. He shrugged, then winced.

“You’re dangerous. They were right to store you,” said the technician. “But they weren’t right to wake you up.”

Horkai didn’t bother to respond. “Tell me where I am,” he said.

“You’re here,” said the technician. “Where you’ve always been.”

“Where’s here?”

The technician didn’t answer.

“Shall I come over there and make you answer?” asked Horkai.

The technician smirked. “Empty threat,” he said. “Even I know you can’t manage that.”

Horkai pressed his lips together. Carefully, he rocked his weight onto one elbow, shifting from the opposite elbow to his hand. The pain made him groan. He rocked the other direction, forced himself onto that hand as well.

The technician looked worried. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said.

Horkai ignored him. He tested his arms. They were both weak, atrophied, but would, he thought, support him. He gathered his weight on his arms, swung his legs and body out off the table.

Only his legs wouldn’t hold, wouldn’t move at all, in fact. They splayed and collapsed, and his forehead glanced off the table next to his own just before he struck the floor hard, pain shooting through his ribs and hip.

He lay there on the floor, staring at a brushed metal table leg. He reached up and touched his head, brought his hand away and saw fingers grown slick with blood.

“You’re paralyzed, Horkai,” the technician said. “A paraplegic. Don’t you remember?” Horkai turned and saw that the technician was now standing. “I’d help you up,” the man said, “but I’m afraid to get close to you.” And then he left the room.

HE PATTED HIS FOREHEAD. As far as he could tell, the gash was not bad. The bleeding seemed to have stopped almost immediately. Indeed, after a moment, he had a hard time telling where exactly the gash itself was.

He pulled himself up to sit, still feeling pain deep within each movement, and straightened his legs as best he could. Then he lay back again and began to think.

What did he know? Very little. He had been stored—he knew that somehow, knew what that meant, but could not for some reason remember where he had been stored or why. Nor why they, whoever they were, had unthawed him. He knew his name, Horkai, or at least a name that sounded plausibly like it could be his own. He knew, looking at his arms, that for some reason his skin was exceptionally pale. He knew, looking at his body and running his hand over his head, that he was hairless, and remembered, or thought he remembered, losing his hair in a blast. There was a name for it, for the blast, or for the thing the blast had been part of, something he could remember: Kollaps. Why had that come to him seemingly more naturally than his own name? He could remember something about the Kollaps itself but very little about what he had done before or what he had done after, in the days just before being stored.

How long had he been stored? Was his brain sufficiently awake now that he could trust it? He closed his eyes, trying to capture and organize the bits and scraps that beat around his skull.

And why hadn’t he remembered he was a paraplegic? Even if his mind hadn’t remembered it, wouldn’t his body still have known? Wouldn’t it have done something to prevent him from throwing himself off the table?

He patted his leg, but couldn’t feel anything in it. He tried to move it, failed. Why, now that he’d been told he was paralyzed, didn’t it feel right? Was he in denial?

The problem, he began to realize, wasn’t just trying to assemble the little he thought he knew into a narrative—it came in determining which of the memories were real, which were things he’d dreamed or imagined.

3

HE MUST HAVE FALLEN ASLEEP, must have dozed off again. The next thing he was conscious of was the sound of male voices, the feel of their hands as they lifted him off the floor. He saw three of them, one holding his legs and one lifting each side of his body. Or, rather, four: the original technician had returned as well, though he kept his distance, standing back by the door.

Horkai winced at their touch, groaned.

“Awake, then?” asked one of them, a ruddy man with a wispy beard and a pockmarked face. He didn’t wait for a response.

They balanced him on the edge of the table a moment, muttering back and forth to one another, then gathered him up more securely. The ruddy man came around behind him. He worked his arms under Horkai’s arms and locked his hands over Horkai’s chest. The other two made a kind of chariot for his hips and legs. They were larger than the ruddy man. One was black haired and the other brown haired, but otherwise they were seemingly identical in appearance: brothers, maybe twins.

“Still getting your bearings?” the ruddy man asked from behind him, his breath warm against Horkai’s ear. “Can’t imagine what it’s like to be frozen for so long. Nor what it’s like waking up.”

“It’s terrible,” Horkai said.

“Of course it is,” said the ruddy man affably. “But you’re awake now,” he said. “Oleg, Olaf,” he said. “Might as well do this. He’s not getting any lighter. Down to the end of the table and off it on the count of three.”

Horkai braced himself, but it didn’t seem to lessen the pain when they lifted him. The ruddy man’s arms felt like they were cutting him in two, each line of contact like a band of fire. What’s wrong with me? he wondered. How can I make it stop?

“Knus, get the door for us, will you?” said the ruddy man, his voice abrupt with effort. “It’s the least you can do.”

“All right, Rasmus,” the technician said, and Horkai watched him pull the door open. The others, grunting, lumbered awkwardly across the room, maneuvering him through the door and out.

Beyond the door was an access hall. It was wide and long, the floor made of concrete that was weathered and cracked. The walls, concrete as well, were falling apart and roughly patched, holes covered with warped half sheets of plywood smeared with tar. The ceiling was also plywood, a series of layered sheets, the gaps filled with something that looked like tinfoil but had a bluish sheen. It was propped up here and there with lengths of pipe, some still gray with grease, others mottled with overlapping ovals of rust.

“Doesn’t look much like it used to, does it, Josef?” said Rasmus. “We’ve done our best to keep things going, but I’m the first to admit it hasn’t always been easy.”

“We’ve kept up the important things,” said either Olaf or Oleg.

“The things that matter,” said the other brother.

“Time, the great destroyer,” said the first. And both brothers laughed.

“How long has it been?” asked Horkai.

Rasmus’s steps stuttered, and Horkai dipped in the brothers’ arms as they tried to compensate, the jostling causing him a fresh burst of pain.

“Knus didn’t brief you?” asked Rasmus. “He was supposed to.”

Horkai had to wait a moment for the pain to subside before he could respond. “Knus and I had a bit of a misunderstanding,” he admitted.

“I heard you tried to kill him,” said Oleg or Olaf, raising an eyebrow.

“We all heard that,” said Rasmus. He smiled. “Should we be worried, Josef?”

He acted as if he were joking, but there was an undertone in his voice that made Horkai wonder. But why would they be nervous about me? he wondered. I’m paralyzed.

The hall ended in a sort of garage door painted brick red. The paint had peeled away in places to reveal bare metal. A large hand crank was to one side.

“Olaf, help me hold him,” said Rasmus. “Oleg, take care of the door.” Rasmus inclined his head to Horkai, gave a tight smile. “Josef, we’ll have to go outside. It’s not as bad as it was before—not here, anyway—and in any case, we won’t be out long. But we’ll still have to move quickly. There’s no reason to be nervous.”

“Why would I be nervous?” asked Horkai.

“Each minute out there is a day we won’t live,” said Olaf.

“That’s the spirit,” said Rasmus, but whether to him or to Olaf, Horkai couldn’t say.

He might have continued to question them, but at that moment the black-haired brother let go. Olaf grunted and planted his feet, while Rasmus tightened his arms around him and pulled back. Horkai screamed and passed out.

WHEN HE CAME CONSCIOUS AGAIN, it was to hear Olaf say:

“—not so tough now, is he?”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Rasmus responded.

Oleg had managed to roll the door up five feet or so. He rolled it up another foot, then turned around. Horkai groaned, as if just regaining consciousness.

“Awake? As time goes on, you’ll probably feel less pain,” Rasmus said.

“Probably?” Horkai said.

Rasmus smiled. “No promises,” he said. “To be honest, we don’t know all that much.”

“Why not?”

“Door’s open, time to go out,” said Rasmus. “Action not words, friend. Olaf, you’ll have to walk backwards. I’ll let you set the pace. Oleg, close up quickly and then catch up with us.”

They moved forward and through the opening. Outside was a ravaged landscape, ruin and rubble stretching in every direction, the ground choked in dust or ash. Remnants of buildings, mostly collapsed. The sky was bleak with haze, and a wind blew, hot and indifferent. All of it was pervaded by a strange, unearthly silence. Olaf, Horkai suddenly realized, was holding his breath. Looking up, he saw Rasmus had his mouth closed tight, too. He heard a crunch as the metal door slid down behind them, then Oleg’s footsteps as he came rapidly alongside Olaf, helping take Horkai’s weight.

They traveled maybe fifty yards, maybe slightly less, Olaf and Oleg moving backwards crablike and quick, Rasmus pushing them forward until they came to a web of metal girders and shattered glass. Beside it, behind a broken stretch of pediment, was a hole and within it a set of granite steps leading down into darkness. It was into this that they took him, down to a thick metal door and through it, down a winding rusted iron stairwell and into the remnants of an old library, mostly a wreck now.

The bottom level was lit by a strange glow, an artificial light of some kind that seemed to emanate from the walls themselves. The light was pale, just enough to see by but little more. He saw a crowd of perhaps two dozen people, all middle-aged, who began to whisper back and forth as they came in. Rasmus nodded to them, but quickly moved past and to a scorched wooden door on the other side of the chamber.

The room inside was the same, the walls aglow, though perhaps more feebly so. It contained a desk with a single chair behind it. Three chairs faced it.

They carefully deposited Horkai in the chair behind the desk, and he spread his palms flat on the desktop to keep from falling. Then they took the three chairs facing him.

“Comfortable?” Rasmus asked. In the dim light, he looked odd, his outline fuzzy, his eyes pooled in darkness and barely visible.

“That’s not exactly the word,” said Horkai, his discomfort only slowly receding.

Rasmus nodded. He looked to Oleg, then turned to look at Olaf. “Where should I start?” he asked. And then he looked at Horkai. “Knus didn’t tell you anything?”

“Who is Knus?”

“The person who woke you up,” said Oleg. “The one you tried to kill.”

“Can’t you keep anything in your head?” said Olaf.

“Now, boys,” said Rasmus. “He’s been asleep a long time. It’ll likely take him a while to find his bearings.” He turned to Horkai expectantly.

Horkai started to shake his head, stopped abruptly from the pain. “He just tried to make me guess my name.”

“And did you guess it?”

“We didn’t exactly get that far,” said Horkai. “I don’t like guessing games.”

Rasmus sighed. “Knus was just following protocol,” he said. “He was doing his best to help.”

Horkai didn’t say anything. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of Oleg and Olaf smirking at each other. Or at least he thought it was a smirk; in the low light it was hard to be certain. Meanwhile Rasmus had his fingers tented beneath his chin and, attentive, was staring at him.

“I SUPPOSE YOU’RE WONDERING why we woke you, Josef,” he finally said.

“Among other things,” said Horkai.

“It’s simple,” said Oleg. “We need you.”

“For what?” asked Horkai.

“All in good time, Oleg,” said Rasmus. He turned to Horkai. “Yes,” he said, “that’s true. We do need you, Josef. But that’s hardly where we should begin.”

“Do I know you?” asked Horkai.

“Excuse me?” said Rasmus.

“Is that my name? Why do you keep calling me by it?” asked Horkai. “Are we on a first name basis? Do I know you?”

“No,” said Rasmus, dragging the word out. “I don’t exactly know you. Or rather, I was introduced to you years ago, but I don’t exactly remember that. It’s something my father told me about. You used to know my father, back when he was in his thirties. He talked about you sometimes. He trusted you.”

“What’s his name?”

“Lammert,” Rasmus said. And when Horkai didn’t answer added, “Last name, Visser. He knew you,” he said. “He found you.”

He turned the name over in his head. Lammert. Did the name say something to him? Could he picture a face? No, not exactly, but there was something there, some resonance, a glimmer. “Of course I remember Lammert,” he said to Rasmus, not lying exactly, but not exactly telling the truth either. Rasmus nodded, still watching him. “How is he?” Horkai asked.

“Dead,” said Rasmus. “But, then again, most people are. He’s been dead for a long time, ever since I was a child. He would have been sixty-three this year.”

“How long have I been stored?”

“Thirty years. Give or take.”

“Thirty years?”

Rasmus nodded. “That’s why your memory’s faulty and your nerves are off—they haven’t been in use for three decades.” He looked curiously at Horkai. “How much do you remember about storage?” he asked. “Is that part of your memory hazy, too? Storage isn’t meant to be long term, is normally just a few weeks or months, rarely more than a year at most.”

“Why would you keep me under for so long?”

Rasmus looked at him strangely. “What do you remember?” he asked.

“Most of it,” Horkai lied. Why did he feel compelled to lie?

“Such as?”

“Just begin from the beginning,” said Horkai cautiously. “As you say, I’ve been stored a long time. It won’t hurt me to hear even the parts I already know again.”

Rasmus looked at him for a long time, then slowly smiled. “All right,” he said. “As you wish.” Placing a large hand on each knee, he began to speak.

4

“DO YOU REMEMBER THE REASON you were stored?” Rasmus asked.

Horkai didn’t bother to answer. Rasmus swallowed. He seemed nervous somehow. Why? wondered Horkai. What am I failing to understand?

“Obviously there’s something wrong with you,” said Olaf.

“Your legs, for instance,” said Oleg.

Rasmus nodded. “The legs are a part of it,” he said. He licked his lips. “I learned all of this from my father,” he said, his eyes flicking momentarily away. “And many years ago at that, when I was very young. If I get some of the details wrong, that’s why.”

“All right,” said Horkai.

“At some point you were exposed,” said Rasmus. “I’m not talking about a minor event, about brief ambient exposure like we just went through outside. According to Lammert, you were close enough that the light must have shone right through your skin. Close enough that by all rights you should have died.”

“But you didn’t die,” said Olaf.

“At least not completely,” said Oleg.

“Be quiet, you two,” said Rasmus. “Let me do the talking.” He turned back to Horkai. “What did happen,” he said, “was that you lost all your hair, every last bit of it. On the side facing the blaze, your skin was charred to a crisp. And then you lay there. For how many days and nights, who can say? Until someone found you.”

“Your father,” said Horkai, thinking at the same time, Did this really happen? What really happened?

Rasmus nodded. “Lammert. He thought you were a corpse at first, but you moved. He was sheathed, but still couldn’t stay out long if he wanted to stay alive. But there you were, half your body blackened, exposed for days, unconscious, but still alive.”

“And then he—,” started Oleg.

“Shut up, Oleg,” said Rasmus, then turned back to Horkai. “He stood you up and shouldered you and carried you back is what he did. He installed you in a secure ward—we still had such things in those days,” he said, turning to Oleg and Olaf. “He attached you to an IV and waited for you to die.”

“Only I didn’t die,” said Horkai.

“Not exactly,” said Rasmus. “In a way, you didn’t die. In another way, you died over and over again. Your throat would fill with fluid. Your breath was at first sticky and then rattling and then it would stop completely. Sometimes for hours, apparently. And then, minutes later, hours later, seemingly dead, you suddenly would cough up dark clots of blood and start breathing again. It was terrible to watch, my father said. It was like death was toying with you, killing you and then bringing you back again. He used to describe how he watched you, how once he even went so far as to drag your body away to dispose of it, only to find, once he was already well on his way down the hall, that you were no longer dead.

“And then, after days and days of this, weeks of hesitation and fumbling along the border between life and death, something changed in you. It terrified him. Over the course of a few days, your ruined skin sloughed away to reveal unblemished, hairless pink flesh beneath. A day or two later, you opened your eyes and spoke, just as if nothing had happened.”

Horkai nodded. “What did you think?” he asked.

“Me?” said Rasmus. “I didn’t think anything. I wasn’t there. I was just a child.”

“What did your father think?” Horkai asked.

“My father was surprised,” said Rasmus. His cadence was like that of someone telling a well-rehearsed story. “He thought that at the very least all that exposure should have ruined your mind, that if nothing else, it should have made your brain sizzle in your skull and driven you mad.”

“But your mind wasn’t affected,” said Olaf.

“You were fine,” Rasmus admitted. “You seemed to be doing all right.” He looked down at his hands. “Had this happened now instead of then, you would have been in trouble. You would have been decapitated or burned. But my father wasn’t superstitious.”

“There were explanations,” said Olaf.

“Science can explain anything,” said Oleg.

“Or could,” brooded Rasmus. “Nowadays, who knows? Science doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not like it used to. It was designed not for this world but the world before it.” Rasmus grabbed hold of the chair’s arms, straightened up. “Where were we?” he asked. “Oh, yes. In time you seemed fine, okay, as impossible as that was. But even early on there were slight signs, nervous twitches, moments when you stumbled, when you lost feeling in your feet and toes.” He looked again at Horkai. “I learned this all secondhand, of course.”

“You can’t blame him if he has some of the details wrong,” said Olaf.

“It’s been thirty years, after all,” said Oleg.

“Shut up,” said Rasmus, turning to them. “You both talk too much.” He turned back to Horkai. “Does any of this ring a bell?” he said.

Horkai thought. Did it? No. The past was a blur, hard to make out. But, ever cautious, he nodded.

“I wasn’t there,” said Rasmus again. “Don’t blame me if a few of the details are a little off. And above all, don’t blame the messenger,” said Rasmus. He licked his lips. “There’s one more thing,” he said. “You survived a blast that you shouldn’t have survived, but you’re suffering from a degenerative disease. It started with tingling and numbness in your toes and then progressed to an absence of feeling in your feet. Then you lost control of your feet. Slowly it crept up your legs. Eventually you’ll be completely paralyzed, suffering from utter immobility.”

“Why was I stored?” he asked.

“For protection,” said Oleg.

“To save you,” said Olaf quickly.

“That’s right,” said Rasmus. “We’ve been storing you, for your own good, to save you from being paralyzed. We’ve kept you stored, waiting to make some progress toward curing you. Before we thought of storing you, we gave you injections in the spine to slow the progress of the nervous degeneration. It’s a necessary process, but also painful.”

“Exceptionally painful,” said Olaf.

“It couldn’t hurt more,” said Oleg.

“I’m afraid,” said Rasmus, “that for your own good we’ll have to give you an injection soon.”

Then there was silence, Rasmus waiting, staring expectantly at him.

“You’ve woken me up because you’ve found the cure?” asked Horkai.

The two brothers laughed.

“Not exactly,” said Rasmus. “I wish we had, Josef. I really do.”

“Then why wake me up at all?”

“Because we need you,” said Olaf.

“We have a problem,” said Oleg.

“There’s something we need you to do,” said Rasmus.

“What?”

“All in good time,” said Rasmus. “But first things first. He reached into his pocket, came out with a syringe. He broke the plastic casing off the needle. “I hate to do this, but it’s necessary. Let’s get it over with.”

BEFORE HE REALLY UNDERSTOOD what was happening, Olaf and Oleg each had him by an arm and had dragged him from the chair to fold him over the desk, pushing his face down flat against it. Rasmus’s hand was groping at his back, dragging up his shirt.

He felt a sharp stab of pain in the center of his spine; then Rasmus said, “We’re in.” A pressure began to build, which translated into flickers of pain running up and down his spine and growing stronger and suddenly bursting in his mind. And then he was screaming, bellowing into the desk’s metal top. Crazed with pain, he managed to get his hands under him and pushed off with all his might. The brothers were crying out now, hanging on to him as he was clutching at them to keep from falling, twisting between them. He caught a glimpse of Rasmus, a frightened expression on his face, the syringe hanging in his hand, its needle discolored with blood. He struck out once with his forehead and broke Oleg’s nose, then again in the other direction and both brothers collapsed, leaving him with nothing to hold on to. He came down hard and lay writhing on the floor.

IN TIME THE PAIN FADED. He lay there exhausted, panting. Rasmus was pressed against one wall, unhurt, looking down at him but keeping a safe distance. Oleg lay groaning and slumped on the floor, holding his face, blood oozing through the gaps of his fingers. Olaf was unconscious, a dark bruise already starting to show on one side of his face.

“I warned you it would hurt,” said Rasmus in the same tone one might use to scold a child.

“Seems like it might have hurt them almost as much as it hurt me,” said Horkai, trying to keep the pain out of his voice.

“He’s a monster,” whined Oleg, his voice muffled through his hand. “We shouldn’t have woken him.” It was strange for once not having one brother speaking immediately after the other.

“Hush,” said Rasmus. “He didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “He just didn’t know his own strength. It was the pain that did it, not him. Aren’t I right, Josef?”

“Probably,” said Horkai. He pushed his splayed legs straight, started to drag himself back to the wall.

“There’s no reason to be like that,” said Rasmus. “We’re on your side, Josef.”

“And what side is that?”

“The good guys,” said Rasmus, and offered his toothiest smile. “We’re the good guys.”

Olaf was groaning now. His brother crouched over him, shaking him slightly, dribbling blood on him.

“All for the good of the cause,” said Rasmus, following his gaze. “Though let’s try not to have the same thing happen next injection, hmmm?”

But Horkai didn’t answer. He was busy thinking. When he finally did speak, it was to ask, “If I’m really paralyzed from the waist down, why did I feel that in my legs?”

Rasmus just held his gaze. “You didn’t,” he claimed at last. “You just think you did.”

5

YOU DIDN’T. YOU JUST THINK you did.

They had left him alone in a room with a bed and little else. He was lying there in the dim light, trying but failing to fall asleep. You didn’t. You just think you did. Either Rasmus was telling the truth or he was lying. But he didn’t know Rasmus well enough to be able to read him properly.

If he was lying, it meant that he, Horkai, had actually felt something, that there was some feeling left somewhere in his legs. That might mean the nerves could be repaired, that there was hope he might regain his ability to walk. Or it might simply mean that though the legs were paralyzed, the paralysis was not as extensive as Rasmus had been led to believe, that Rasmus wasn’t so much lying as simply unaware. Which wasn’t to say that Horkai’s immobility wasn’t progressing, that he wouldn’t lose, as Rasmus said, more and more feeling and finally become completely paralyzed. Only that it hadn’t progressed as far as Rasmus believed.

So, one hopeful and one not-so-hopeful possibility. But if Rasmus was right and he hadn’t felt anything, though, it was more discouraging. It meant he couldn’t trust his own senses, couldn’t trust what he was feeling and, by extension, couldn’t trust what was going on in his own mind. The mind is a great deceiver. He might be experiencing a feeling that was real and he might not be—how exactly was he to know? Which ultimately made him wonder if the whole of his reality wasn’t suspect. Was there anything he could know for certain?

Perhaps I’m still in storage, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. Perhaps something has gone wrong and I’ve begun to thaw and I’m dreaming. Perhaps this is all a dream.

He pushed his thumb against his leg. He felt nothing in the leg itself, only in the thumb. He pinched the skin hard, and then harder still, until the skin was broken and the cut began to seep blood. Still nothing. And so he lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to find some reason to believe that the world exists.

BEFORE THAT, DIRECTLY AFTER THE INJECTION, he was with Rasmus, propped up again on his chair as if nothing had happened. Olaf and Oleg had left, doubtless to seek medical attention. His spine, where the needle had gone in, still throbbed slightly. It was not painful now, more a dull ache.

“Are you wondering why you’re here?” asked Rasmus.

“No,” said Horkai, still irritated. “I don’t much care. You’re the one who woke me. Tell me why or put me back in storage.”

A flicker of irritation passed over Rasmus’s face but was quickly smoothed over, hidden. “Of course,” he said. “Josef, there’s something we need that only you can give.”

“And what might that be?”

“Something’s been stolen from us. A cylinder. We need you to find it and bring it back.”

“Why me?”

“Why you? Because of what you used to be.”

“And what, in your estimation, was I?”

“You don’t remember?” said Rasmus, and shook his head. “Maybe it was a mistake to wake you after all. You were once a fixer,” he said.

“A fixer,” said Horkai.

“Doesn’t ring a bell? It means just what it says,” said Rasmus. “You were called upon when nobody else could solve a problem. You were willing to use any means necessary to make things right.”

Horkai waited for the words to sink in, hoping for memories to return to his mind. But nothing came. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t sound quite right.”

“I only know what my father told me,” said Rasmus quickly. “But why would he lie? You were a fixer, a detective of sorts. You are our last resort. The choice is yours: Either you can lend us a hand for a few days or we can put you back in storage. But if you don’t help us, the chances are good there won’t be anyone left to get you out of storage later on. We’re the ones who can keep you alive, and we’re the ones trying to find your cure. Do you want to risk losing us?”

“I’m listening,” said Horkai.

Rasmus smiled. “That’s all I can ask,” he said. He opened one of the side drawers of the desk, removed a rolled piece of canvas. He unfurled it, spreading it on the desk to reveal a crude map.

“This is us,” he said, pointing at a black circle, the word ovo written over it. “We’re all that’s left of what used to be there, our numbers spread through what’s still standing of some of the university’s research facilities. There’s the lake, just to the west, and the mountains, just to the east. You’ll follow the mountains north about thirty-eight miles, through the ruined towns, and pursue the remains of the freeway across what they used to call the Point of the Mountain. You’ll pass the old state penitentiary and then, near the bottom of the slope, the remnants of the highway. Take that up the canyon eight miles or so, and you’ll find it.”

“Find what?”

“The place where they keep the cylinder.”

“How will I recognize it?”

“The cylinder? Red letters on the side. It’ll almost certainly be kept in a subzero environment. At least let’s hope so. It’s no use to us if it isn’t.”

“No, the place, I mean.”

Rasmus grinned, showing the tips of his teeth. “You’ll recognize it because of the huge hole bored in the side of the mountain.”

“And how do I get in?”

“They don’t know you,” said Rasmus. “The rest of us they’ve seen. But you, you can pass, they’ll be willing to let you get close. They may even invite you in. After that, you’ll have to improvise.”

“What do you mean, improvise?”

Rasmus scratched the back of his skull, shrugged. “People have been murdered,” he said. “That’s what you risk,” he said.

Horkai nodded. “And once I get there, I just find this cylinder and take it?”

“You’re the fixer, Josef. Figure out how to make things right by any means necessary. Kill them if you have to. Kill them before they kill you. The cylinder is important, much more important than a life or two. Particularly if the lives in question are theirs.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” said Horkai. “Why did they take the cylinder?”

“I’ve told you everything we know,” said Rasmus.

After a long moment, Horkai said, “Another question.” He thumped one of his legs with his fist. “How am I to get there? I can’t walk?”

Rasmus shook his head. “You’ll be taken there,” he said.

“What’s in this cylinder?” asked Horkai.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Rasmus.

Horkai shook his head. “I won’t go after it unless I know.”

Rasmus hesitated for a long time. “Seed,” he finally said.

“What kind of seed. Wheat or something?”

“Yes, basically.”

“What makes it special?”

“It’s special because it’s been kept safe since before the Kollaps. It’s undamaged. We need it to start over.”

Horkai nodded. “Who’d they kill?”

“These people are ruthless,” Rasmus claimed. “When we had the cylinder, we had two technicians working on it. They were tied up and killed, their throats cut from ear to ear.”

“And you want me to find out who among them killed the technicians and bring them to justice?”

“That’s not what this is about,” said Rasmus, waving one hand. “Their deaths are something we have to live with. We don’t need revenge. What we need is the cylinder.”

No, thought Horkai, there’s still something wrong. Why would grain be kept in a subzero environment? It doesn’t make any sense.

Or maybe that was a method of storage, a way of preserving it that he simply wasn’t aware of? Hadn’t he heard stories of wheat grown from seeds found in the stomach of a man frozen in a glacier? Why did details like that come back to him and not the important things? Maybe there was a reason for freezing it, maybe even a reason Rasmus himself wasn’t sure about.

In any case, the choice was clear. Either he could go along with it and try to figure it out himself or he could simply go back into storage, to the nonlife he’d been living for the last thirty years. What other choice was there? Illness or no, he didn’t particularly want to be frozen again.

“All right,” he said. “I’m in.”

Rasmus smiled. “I thought you’d see it our way. Get some rest. You’ll leave in the morning.”