Read Online Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 by Penny Publications - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Penny Publications
Tags: Asimov's #459 & #460
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room, went along the corridor past Weston's office, waved at the security camera by the front doors, and when the doors opened onto the front walk and the resting desert beyond the fence, he felt that at last he could take in breath. He stepped out of the building's shadow into the day's mild heat. Face toward the blank sky, he shut his eyes and turned sunward. Taking in another breath, he felt the sun's warmth enter him. Heat entering his nostrils, pink light all he saw, a necessary and expanding silence entered his cells, the vast sky finding a home in his body.
This lasted until the guard at the main gate, fifty meters off, sneezed dryly, the sound whipping across the distance and ringing metallically from the cement walls at Jimmy's back. He returned to his body and felt ready for another attempt at reaching the old man.
In the observation room, he found the prisoner gone. After an unsettling moment, he went to the security station. Quarles turned from the wide windows. "They told me you'd stepped out," he said.
"Needed some air," Jimmy said. Outside, Methusaleh stood at the hub of a wheel of four men and two dogs. He drifted to his knees like an object falling in low gravity. His head slowly pitched earthward.
Quarles cleared his throat. "In about an hour we're playing some ball. Sound good? Two on two." "Thanks. I think... I think I need to stay focused." "You change your mind, just show up. You think he's secretly exercising right now? Is that some kind of exercise where you put your head on the ground? He's not
standing
on his head."
Jimmy's own head still felt full of the warm, expansive space beyond the prison. Vaguely, not trying, not even willing it, he reached toward the old man, maintaining the idea of the passageway but not opening it just yet.
Quarles said, "I read about guys in Vietnam, prisoners of war? One guy had a Bible smuggled in and he committed to memory the entire book of Luke. Whole thing. Then he passed the Bible to somebody else and spent the next two years of prison reciting the book back to himself. This other guy memorized the names of all the prisoners in the compound and went through them in alphabetical order every night. Said he'd been trained to do that. And...
and
he'd reconstruct the seating charts from his classes from every school year. Maybe our guy does the same kind of thing."
Jimmy grinned at Quarles, who let one eyebrow nicker up. All the reading Methusaleh must have done. Jimmy imagined his tremendous library, books of every kind; he saw a hand pull a hard-bound book from a high shelf. A mind like his, what might he have committed to memory? His head might be thick with the words of others, providing comfort and encouragement, insight and wisdom. Or images, pictures of the sea depths, roiling with strange fish. The blade-like peaks of mountains. The surface of Mars.
Why had anyone thought these walls could hold him? He could be anywhere he wished.
Radically free, he thought. Here but elsewhere. Pieces of the passageway.
Late afternoon, Jimmy shut his eyes, set aside the physical attributes of his room, and entered the common space he'd already built. The passageway awaited him. He conjured up the prisoner in silhouette, seated and motionless. Jimmy entered the passageway and advanced, telling the prisoner everything he knew of him, probing for connection. When he inhaled, he inhaled their shared experience. Exhaling, he breathed out the words and images that belonged to the man himself, the keys to his character.
A great challenge was to bring no expectations to the process; otherwise, like someone desperately at prayer, Jimmy might hear what he wanted to hear, constructing for himself a voice from the other side of the typically uncrossable barrier from self to self.
The passageway faintly echoed. The mind of the other man whispered back. This was good. Jimmy only listened, hoping to catch a tone of assent on the other side, notes of acceptance, openness—an
This lasted until the guard at the main gate, fifty meters off, sneezed dryly, the sound whipping across the distance and ringing metallically from the cement walls at Jimmy's back. He returned to his body and felt ready for another attempt at reaching the old man.
In the observation room, he found the prisoner gone. After an unsettling moment, he went to the security station. Quarles turned from the wide windows. "They told me you'd stepped out," he said.
"Needed some air," Jimmy said. Outside, Methusaleh stood at the hub of a wheel of four men and two dogs. He drifted to his knees like an object falling in low gravity. His head slowly pitched earthward.
Quarles cleared his throat. "In about an hour we're playing some ball. Sound good? Two on two." "Thanks. I think... I think I need to stay focused." "You change your mind, just show up. You think he's secretly exercising right now? Is that some kind of exercise where you put your head on the ground? He's not
standing
on his head."
Jimmy's own head still felt full of the warm, expansive space beyond the prison. Vaguely, not trying, not even willing it, he reached toward the old man, maintaining the idea of the passageway but not opening it just yet.
Quarles said, "I read about guys in Vietnam, prisoners of war? One guy had a Bible smuggled in and he committed to memory the entire book of Luke. Whole thing. Then he passed the Bible to somebody else and spent the next two years of prison reciting the book back to himself. This other guy memorized the names of all the prisoners in the compound and went through them in alphabetical order every night. Said he'd been trained to do that. And...
and
he'd reconstruct the seating charts from his classes from every school year. Maybe our guy does the same kind of thing."
Jimmy grinned at Quarles, who let one eyebrow nicker up. All the reading Methusaleh must have done. Jimmy imagined his tremendous library, books of every kind; he saw a hand pull a hard-bound book from a high shelf. A mind like his, what might he have committed to memory? His head might be thick with the words of others, providing comfort and encouragement, insight and wisdom. Or images, pictures of the sea depths, roiling with strange fish. The blade-like peaks of mountains. The surface of Mars.
Why had anyone thought these walls could hold him? He could be anywhere he wished.
Radically free, he thought. Here but elsewhere. Pieces of the passageway.
Late afternoon, Jimmy shut his eyes, set aside the physical attributes of his room, and entered the common space he'd already built. The passageway awaited him. He conjured up the prisoner in silhouette, seated and motionless. Jimmy entered the passageway and advanced, telling the prisoner everything he knew of him, probing for connection. When he inhaled, he inhaled their shared experience. Exhaling, he breathed out the words and images that belonged to the man himself, the keys to his character.
A great challenge was to bring no expectations to the process; otherwise, like someone desperately at prayer, Jimmy might hear what he wanted to hear, constructing for himself a voice from the other side of the typically uncrossable barrier from self to self.
The passageway faintly echoed. The mind of the other man whispered back. This was good. Jimmy only listened, hoping to catch a tone of assent on the other side, notes of acceptance, openness—an
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