Absorption (28 page)

From long ago memories Brett knew the patrolmen would be there in a few minutes. The shot had been heard. He had no desire to save anyone present from the consequences of their actions, least of all his younger self. He hated Bookie now, and refused to identify with him by an effort of will. Still he felt an almost forgotten rage building, one he had never been able to put into words.

Jeff, Red, and Clyde stood on tiptoe, straining to see Jarvis’ handiwork behind the counter, one shock of red hair squeezed between two brown buzz cuts. Sharpie and Brett walked around. The corpse had no head to stare accusingly, only a mess of red and grey, with bone fragments and a few larger chunks of skull. When they had frittered away their few remaining minutes of freedom in blank shock, the patrolmen burst through the door. When Brett didn’t put his hands against the wall fast enough to be searched for weapons, he got shoved hard. What was the point of this memory? He had come to terms with the stupidity of his former self already. Yet he had slid back into his mind so easily, but what did that prove? This whole experience was controlled by the Oceanians, wasn’t it? He already knew how idiotic it had been not to do his own thinking and make his own choices, to go along with those around him. Surely that wasn’t the lesson anyone wanted to teach him, especially if they wanted him to become part of the hive mind. Why was he here?

Three weeks later, the young public defender told him, “It’s me you need to speak with.”

The little room allotted for the interview was mostly concrete. The two of them were separated by a metal grill. Brett wore prison fatigues, but the lawyer was formally dressed.

Time had gone by quickly since the arrest – or had it? Brett couldn’t remember many specific events from those weeks. The ones he did remember were old and faint. Perhaps his original memories rather than from the flashback? Could the public defender’s words mean more than the obvious? Brett didn’t know what to say.

Evidently the other man did. “All the other ‘Lords’ have told the same story. They knew he had the gun, but not that he planned to use it.”

Brett remained silent. To point out that Jarvis had acted on impulse would be to testify against Jarvis. No security camera had observed the shooting.

His court appointed lawyer continued speaking. “Nothing you say will make any difference to Jarvis. The court already has all the evidence it needs. Your testimony will show your remorse, and your cooperation will enable the judge to reduce your sentence.”

He said nothing. Bookie was responsible for the decision to follow Jarvis, responsible for everything he had done while ignoring his own responsibility to choose. It seemed terribly wrong to try and escape that by tattling on Jarvis. It would be doubling down on his mistake, trying to make Jarvis responsible instead of himself.

Brett had never spent much time thinking about responsibility, until the past few weeks.

The public defender said impatiently, “I have a lot of people to see, and you still don’t know why you’re here.”

Brett expected the man to argue further, but instead he raised his hands. The room dissolved.

Now Brett sat in a courtroom. Odd how quickly the experience had become dreamlike. Yet everything felt real enough. The wooden chair was hard and uncomfortable, and he felt as if he had been sitting for awhile.

His lawyer was addressing the judge. “Clearly, Your Honor, my client is too foolish to be held responsible for his actions.”

Brett wanted to protest, but he knew the bailiff would restrain him. There had to be some point to this. He was pretty sure the lawyer hadn’t said anything like that in real life. Even thinking that made him feel much less Bookie and much more Brett. Did the Oceanians mean to convince him to abandon the idea of individual responsibility?

While becoming an officer, Brett had studied the criminal justice system of Old Earth. He knew certain elements of common law on many English speaking worlds were based on it, but Old York’s system didn’t come quite as close as this. A dreamlike inconsistency, or did it mean something?

‘His’ lawyer wouldn’t shut up. “My client believes he’s learned something deep and profound about personal responsibility and individualism. And how has he made this profound philosophical leap? Has he studied the concepts? Has he requested books from the prison library?”

Now the lawyer’s voice filled with scorn. “No. Instead, he just took a bunch of concepts supplied by society which he had never really thought about and made them the keystone of a brand new personal philosophy without further consideration.”

Brett frowned. Well, this wasn’t quite as pointless as it had seemed. And they were coming to some sort of climax, which had to be good. No matter what was being done to the temporal lobe of his brain, this couldn’t last much longer unless something were seriously wrong.

“Your Honor, we need to teach him what being an individual really means.”

Which was actually what they had done. But …

He jumped to his feet. “You’re twisting it all around!”

The judge banged his gavel. “Contempt of court!”

He banged again. “Send him up the river!”

Was this really how it was supposed to end? Had some inner change occurred that might make it possible for him to join the hive mind now? Somehow Brett didn’t think so. At best, he had screwed up. At worst, had he condemned himself to fail to wake, to die dreaming of a dreary prison?

The judge thundered, “Up the river of time!”

The low coffee table was filled with alluring objects. Ashtrays bore grey cylinders of ash with interesting scents, and cigarette butts. Half empty glasses and open liquor bottles shined where the light caught them. A bottle of pills with the childproof cap lying next to it offered opportunity to learn as well.

Brett stood proudly. It was hard balancing on two legs, but instinct bade him imitate the giants who walked on two legs around him, and muscles yearned to be exercised. Standing allowed him to grasp, manipulate, and explore a whole new realm.

He heard a loud and angry voice. “Don’t touch that!”

Brett mostly understood the simple words, but he wasn’t trying to touch anything right now. He understood the tone even better. He could not have defined a hangover, but knew this was not one of the rare good times to go over for a kiss or hug, not a good time to go near his mother at all.

He wanted to jump up and down, exploring the wonderful new abilities his legs were acquiring every day, but experience had taught him not to make noise when the voice sounded like that. Inevitably his eyes were drawn to the invitingly graspable objects on the table, as his mother had anticipated.

With all the grasping he had practiced, he had never lifted a smooth glass bottle full of liquid. The weight and slippery texture caught him by surprise, and it slipped out of his hand. It didn’t fall far enough to break, but landed sideways on the table, with a river of liquid flowing out onto the carpet.

The voice was louder now. “You understood me. I told you three minutes ago. You didn’t forget. Why are you always out of control?”

The ideas were too complicated now, but the anger was familiar. Brett wanted to escape but there was no hiding place she could not reach. He wasn’t even tall enough to grasp a doorknob.

Did he understand what a doorknob was? Then he had escaped in a sense, into the mind of full grown Brett to whom the beating and even the bruises would be endurable. He clung to the grown up self he had almost lost. He tried to explain to his mother that, yes, he had understood her original sentences, but the part of his brain that wanted to explore and manipulate had overpowered the verbal part, while the prefrontal cortex was still too underdeveloped to choose between them, but no words came.

Brett ran behind the couch, although he knew his mother would only have a little trouble squeezing in far enough to grab him. He clung to the nonsensical thoughts because they allowed a little bit of him to escape from the frantic fear of the young child he was now to the adult he had been. Or was that reversed.

There was no way his mother could have accepted his undeliverable explanation. She was angry at being disobeyed, or maybe she was just angry and didn’t know quite why. But there was also an ancient rule she had always obeyed unthinkingly, a rule hard to put into words because it underlay language. She wasn’t allowed to accept such an explanation. By punishing him for the actions initiated by any part of his brain, she taught him the meaning of ‘I.’ Captain of my soul.

No, that wasn’t quite right. ‘Him’ implied there was already a him to learn. No, a young creature was being shaped into an individual. Only did the lesson have to be so hard?

She grasped the arm nearest to her and pulled. His whole weight was suspended from that arm and it hurt. He saw the river of funny smelling liquid was slowing to a trickle. Brett decided the ordeal was nearly over. He couldn’t go back much further. He hoped what he had learned would help him, but at times he had almost lost his Brettness.

Then the river flowed again, and he was cast into deep time.

Grug couldn’t sleep, though he heard the fire crackling reassuringly. The head fire-tender added wood periodically, and his apprentice would take over for him when he slept. The predators of the plains feared fire, and it was that which distinguished Anthroid from beast. The Cousins of the forest might use crude tools, but they too feared fire.

Still, Grug was wakeful. He heard one of the children crying, and it was Cool Water’s son, the one who looked like Grug. Cool Water was attempting to quiet him before he woke the rest of the band, but he insisted he was hungry.

They had eaten most of the edible roots on their side of the river, and thinned the ranks of the beasts which were more likely to fill their bellies than eat them. The weather had been dry, and most of the vegetation far from the river was brown. Too many children had been born in the good years when food was plentiful.

Still the boy cried. Grug rose silently from his place by the fire. The moon was bright, but he could have walked with only starlight to see by. Fording the river at night would be harder, but this would not be his first nighttime expedition.

As Grug walked towards the river, he saw fire burning, not too far on the other side of the river. It was unfair. Krok’s band was smaller, and there was more food on their side. All the same, to cross the river openly might mean not merely a fight, but war between their bands. If Grug crossed it during the night and returned before dawn they would be none the wiser, and Grug would manage to bring back a few roots. Crossing the river at night wouldn’t be too hard. It was shallow now, part of the reason there were so few fish.

Carefully scrabbling on his hands and knees, Grug found all the rocks of the ford. Only a couple of times did he dip an arm or leg into the icy water. Then he was scrambling up the far bank of the river. He had remembered every stone for the ford, but forgotten the scratchy bushes.

When he had passed them he heard an Anthroid voice. “Nobody not in Krok’s band dare enter his territory.”

Krok had been hiding in the bushes, waiting for him. Why today? Had he observed signs of hunger on the other side of the river? Had his sharp ears even picked up the noise of a child crying? Could his previous invasions have been detected?

More importantly, as Krok emerged into the moonlight, he was carrying a huge rock in both his hands. Krok was strong enough to throw it, but from this distance Grug would be able to dodge. A smaller rock might serve Krok better, but Grug didn’t suggest it.

“Sorry,” he said, and turned as if to ford the river again, knowing it would not be that easy.

Krok’s roar of rage must have woken both camps, but none would dare come to investigate. “Nobody defies Krok and lives to brag about it afterwards!”

Grug gave up the idea of the ford. He didn’t really want to be crossing the rocky path while Krok used him for a target. Yet if he stayed on this side of the river and fled, he was far from help. He had nowhere to go, and the enemy camp was between him and escape.

Krok taunted him. “Some say Grug is good at magic. Cast a spell on me now.”

Although Krok clearly felt himself ready for that, it offered a better chance of survival than anything else. Grug prepared himself to utter the sounds that sounded like Anthroid language but were not. They were softer, longer, more complex, hypnotic. Sometimes Grug thought the words really had meaning, in a language even he couldn’t understand. “You seem to think all the effort you’ve put into becoming alpha male makes you master of all and servant of none. Primatologists have studied primates like you, and they’ve determined when they grow old they usually have no allies, and often have to leave the troop. The ones who do best personally are the ones who groom females. Your behavior may maximize the spread of your genes, but it doesn’t benefit you personally. Your ego is really the slave of your chromosomes.”

At first it seemed to be working. Krok’s eyes unfocused and he walked forward slowly, as if in a dream. Grug kept talking, unwilling to break the spell. Then in one swift movement, Krok brought the rock down on his head. Stunned, Grug fell over. Krok lifted him and carried him down the riverbank.

Krok said, “I hear you swim good. Stay underwater, I have more rocks to throw.”

He pushed Grug in the river, upstream of the ford, so he had to swim upstream or be dashed against the rocks. The shock of cold revived him enough to avoid the fatal mistake of inhaling water. The muscular arms left him only one escape.