Read Online Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 by Penny Publications - Free Book Online

that moved both at Methusaleh's pace and an accelerated pace that made his motions more clear.
    Weston said "I'll be damned" early on, then held her silence.
    "So," said Jimmy when the presentation was complete, not sure whether he needed to say anything more.
    Weston spoke across her fist. "Why did no one notice this before?"
    Jimmy hesitated.
    "He got sloppy," Covey said. "He's old."
    "There goes your depression theory," Weston said to Jimmy, lowering her hand.
    "Yes, ma'am."
    "And there goes any notion that this man's not still a threat," Covey said, pushing away from the door. Jimmy noticed him adjust his protective vest, the man obviously thinking that force might be needed, that anything was possible.
    "He's stayed fit all this time," Weston said. "And he's stayed sharp. With what aim in mind? Escape? Overpowering the guards? Is there anything else we've missed?"
    She kept her head moving to include all three of them in her questioning. "Coded messages? To whom? Is there any possibility he's palmed anything? A utensil or a container from the MREs? Something from his bedding?"
    "We could take it all away," Covey said.
    "I'm not comfortable with that. That's not a path we're going down."
    Quarles said, "Pardon me, ma'am, but he walks through the scanner on the way to the yard, and we search the room during his showers."
    "I want body cavity searches," she said. Covey nodded. "We can do that."
    "I'm adding a fourth man to the security detail when he goes outside. Two dogs at all times, not just randomly. Keep them close to him. I also want some increased checks on our perimeter. And not a word about any change in front of him. Let him think he's got us fooled."
    "Won't the extra security indicate something?" Jimmy said.
    Weston, hands on hips, looked at the floor. "Yeah, probably. And we have to assume he's caught sight of you, so he knows something's different. But I can't maintain the status quo." She said to Jimmy, "Good work. Does this alter your approach, Lieutenant?"
    "Actually, this is helpful," said Jimmy. "It's... informative." He now had more words with which to approach the old man waiting at the passageway's end. Yes, what he had learned fit with the existing notions:
powerful, in control, hidden.
He was all of those, in ways they had not fully understood. The true mistake, Jimmy realized, was to see him constrained, managed, confined... in prison. He had never been imprisoned.
    Methusaleh lay on the floor, arms at his side. Jimmy used the computer to track down something he had read in high school. Enough of the phrasing came to him to enable a quick search. From Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience," he read:
    ... as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way.
    The background on Methusaleh suggested he had countless people to assist him down through the decades. Still strong, still planning, his goals intact, the man might assume that his work continued. Like Thoreau, who knew his ideas extended beyond the walls, he wouldn't think of himself as locked up. Further, Jimmy saw the exercise, the silence, as preparation: He was waiting for a chance. To do what?
    He read on.
    I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar.
    Jimmy looked about his own room. Dimmed, it felt smaller than the room on the viewscreen—smaller, even, from one moment to the next.
    He left the