Husk (27 page)

“That's a load off my mind,” I said.

“The secret to success, young man. Reward the achievers! As for the others—” He threw his thumb over his shoulder, sticking out his tongue and blowing a wet raspberry to accentuate the move, spackling my face with spittle. “
Pbbbf!
Trash heap. Life's too short for failure. Far too short. Most people cannot appreciate how little time we get. But then, look who I'm talking to!” He cackled until he began to choke, whereupon Simon slapped his back several times with well-practiced virtuosity. A sizable planetoid of phlegm was expelled from the man's mouth and arced over my left shoulder. Comets of sputum broke off and collided with my cheek, the main mass splattering against hollow metal outside my view.

“Ah, thank you, Simon,” Wheels said when he had recovered. Simon expertly mopped up the spittle on the man's chin with a handkerchief, not bothering to award me the same courtesy. “I don't have much opportunity to laugh these days, so when it happens, I have a tendency to overindulge.”

He leaned back in his chair and took me in, taking a few puffs from an air mask adjacent to his seat. We wordlessly stared at each other.

“If this is a staring contest,” I said at last, “I'm going to win.”

“I imagine, Sheldon, that you have some questions.”

“Just one.” I took a breath in, deep, and held it for a time, letting it collect strength in the rotting remnants of my lungs. Clenching my muscles, I threw the sound forward, up and out my mouth, as ripe and threatening and gruesome a scream of rage as I had ever attempted. I'd figure out a way of escape later, but at that moment I craved death. I imagined the walls out in the dark bulging and warping under the force. I wanted the man's eyes to liquefy and ooze down his cheeks, I wanted Simon's bowels to detonate as his spinal fluid boiled and leaked from his nostrils. For a full minute I stormed in my bindings, closing my eyes as I strained my arms to break their chains, pushing at the floor with my toes. I bellowed one final time, a demand for release that would lay waste to a city block, would kill civilizations, would crack the barrier between time and space, and then stopped, opening my eyes, preparing for the bloodbath.

I couldn't help but notice that the two of them were still conscious, observing me with clinical detachment, Simon stoic, even bored by my tirade. The man smiled at me, the smile never approaching his eyes. They were the eyes of someone long past true emotion. They were my eyes, glazed with death.

As the shriek echoed and died in the chamber, he turned his head and gave me a clear view of his ear. “Extraordinary things, these,” he said. I glimpsed a glimmer of chrome lodged deep in his earwell. “We did study you beforehand. In addition to the armor, some of my more clever employees were smart enough to craft these little darlings. Noise dampeners, tuned specifically to block out certain decibels and frequencies. Marvelous. I take it, Sheldon, you haven't taken the time to consider just what, exactly, your voice does to people, and why?”

“Does a bird ask why it sings?”

“No, of course you haven't. Introspection is for the intelligent. You are many things, Sheldon, but
intelligent
is not a word I'd use. We do have some theories. Some of my advisors actually believe your croak might just be the voice of God himself. Or maybe the devil. Audio analysis shows that your lovely voice can actually be separated into seven individual voices overlapping each other. I've heard them. I've heard and seen many things over a lifetime and a half, but I can honestly say, I've rarely been more scared than listening to the separate elements of your septuplet of voices.” The man allowed a shiver to cross his spine, shaking his entire body in the process. “Damned spooky, in a way none of us can explain.

“But laying aside possible supernatural underpinnings, your voice has practical applications. Military applications. We're working on replicating it. A device for soldiers, worn about the throat. I don't pretend to understand the mechanics — it modulates their voices into alternate registers or some such nonsense. I admit the results thus far are not promising. We have the sound, but there's an ingredient missing from the recipe. We desire to cripple our enemies with shock and awe, as you do, but the most we've been able to achieve in our test subjects is a tolerable headache.”

“Vulcan neck pinch,” I said. “Can't be taught to humans.”

“
Star Trek
, sir,” said Simon in response to the man's furrowed brow. “The television show?”

“I am aware of
Star Trek
, Simon,” said the gent with patient irritation. “I am old, not ignorant. Never cared for such tripe myself. A waste of valuable brain matter, fantasy. For me, hard work and the Bible is all that's necessary to get me through life.”

“Yeah, the Bible,” I said. “No fantasy in there. Nothing but facts and figures.”

In a swift movement that belied his condition, the gentleman withdrew a small revolver from beneath the folds of his jacket and shot me twice in the left leg, the shin, the bullets sliding clean into the bone and out the other side, thrusting mingled shards of tibia and fibula out through the skin and onto the floor behind me. Bioformaldehyde oozed out and pooled beneath my feet, and a token charley horse radiated from the wounds. I looked down at the damage, then back to the infirm geezer calmly aiming the smoking weapon at my other leg. “Something I said?”

“I am your friend, but I will not be spoken to with such insolence,” he said, voice crusted in anger. “It offends me. Now, play nice, Sheldon, or I will have Simon here poke your eyes out.” Simon whipped out a butterfly knife and expertly danced it around his fingers before placing it underneath my sunglasses and laying its tip directly against the lens of my right eye. “I trust my point is understood. I do need you, Sheldon. Just not every part of you.”

“Give me a reason, freak.” Simon's threat rustled in my ear. “I need the practice.”

I kept my head still. “Nice moves with the knife, Simon. You learn that in the seminary?”

“Nuns, man,” he said, my vision distorting further as the blade depressed my cornea. “They will fuck you up.”

“Eye for an eye, got it,” I said. “You're reading the Bible. I get it. That turn the other cheek part. Probably comes later. Near the back. You should take notes.” The blade skimmed the edges of my view, threatening imminent puncture. “Fine, call off your goon. I'll behave.”

The knife withdrew. Simon sheathed the blade out of sight and stepped back, returning to taciturn mode.

“Why the hostility, Sheldon?” Wheels asked. “Surely you knew something like this was bound to happen eventually.”

“You killed everyone,” I said flatly. “You just came in. And slaughtered them.”

“Unhappily, that was necessary.”

“You killed the entire crew. The actors. The technicians. You killed Johnny Depp!”

“Hm?”

Simon leaned in. “
Pirates of the Caribbean
, sir.”

“Oh. Well, that's a shame, I rather enjoyed that one.”

“You killed Duane,” I said.

“That would be Duane Linwood, sir,” Simon said. “Caught in the raid.”

“Hmm. Duane, Duane. Doesn't ring a bell, but . . . oh yes. Your
bum boy
.” His lips narrowed into a slit of contempt. “With all your many faults, you had to be faggy as well.” He looked up to Simon, grinning. His skin stretched tighter. I could see the muscles beneath, working his jaw. “You remember, Simon, how they all crowed to me, ‘He's the messiah!'” He chortled again, laughing around the coughs. “Oh my boy, if only you had played your cards right.” He drove his chair closer until we were side-by-side and placed a palsied hand on my knee. “You could be running this world right now. Every religion, Sheldon. The churches, the synagogues, the mosques — the Vatican itself would have fallen to your every whim. You could have changed the face of the planet. I said to them, ‘This looks like the Second Coming to you? A fag atheist Canadian actor?' They let me alone after that. They would have twisted their beliefs to accommodate a Canadian, they would have found a way to justify worshipping an atheist. You could have been a
woman
, and they'd have reread their texts to allow for it. They would have swallowed you whole and asked for gravy. But a queer? A cockgobbler?” He patted my knee. “Not one of them could imagine pledging fealty to a son of God who enjoyed getting fisted. Imagine how the next Testament would read.”

He wheeled back and repositioned himself in front of me. “But still, my apologies for the death of your friend. I had hoped that this could have been done without bloodshed. But it is a sad fact that, in war, innocents must be sacrificed to ensure triumph.”

“We're at war?”

“I am. Of a sort. Ask away, ask your questions, Sheldon, I'm sure you're dying to know.” He laughed weakly at his joke.

“Where am I?” I asked.

“Right. The beginning then. You, Sheldon, currently reside in the great state of Utah. More precisely, five hundred feet below it. I was born and raised hereabouts, and as such I have learned a great deal about the history of the area. This room you are in is part of an old government bunker complex, built beneath the Uinta Mountains in the fifties in the event of nuclear attack by the communists. Not many even remember its existence anymore. I pulled a few strings to purchase the whole structure from the military for a song. You'd be surprised how often a few dollars trumps national security, especially in a recession. You see, people have always lacked the ability to perceive the world on a long-term basis. Short-term results are the only thing people care about anymore. Not me, though.” He pointed two fingers at his eyes, and then swung the fingers out, aiming them at the blackness beyond. “I am not interested in the short term. Most cannot grasp anything beyond the next twenty minutes, but me? I see through time. It comes with age. I see where this society is headed. And I do not like it. People need to be led, like cattle if need be, with spikes through their nostrils and chains linking them all together. Long-term plans, my boy. For me, it's all about the next twenty centuries, not the next twenty minutes.”

“And who exactly are you?” I asked.

“Oh my heavens, I am sorry. I was so excited to meet you, I plum forgot about proper introductions.” He pulled himself upright, fighting against gravity and age. Several noticeable pops emanated from his chest and back as he did so. He gasped, wincing. Simon calmly twisted a small dial on the side of one of his monitors. The man waited a few moments until the pain subsided. “My name . . . is Lambertus Dixon.”

I frowned. “That means nothing to me.”

He coughed out another laugh. “Well, that's a relief. I'd be mortified if it did. Sheldon, if I may be so humble as to boast, I am the
they
in
that's what they say
. I am behind near every political, social, and economic decision made in the civilized world. There is not one facet of this entire planet that I do not have a hand in — agriculture, chemistry, nuclear power, bio-warfare, daycare centers, shopping malls, newspapers, furniture repair, space travel, coffee shops, publishers, education, oil, entertainment, telecommunications.”

“Quite a list. I still don't get it.”

“Once, so long ago it barely registers as memory, I started a company, a modest little investment firm that I run to this day. And over the years, I have managed the not insignificant feat of becoming, with all due modesty, the wealthiest person on the planet.”

“Why have I never heard of you?”

“A valid question. Perhaps you do have some wit about you after all. I have learned many things over my time, but the most valuable advice I've ever received was given to me by my father when I was barely out of short pants. He imparted to me this wisdom, the only intelligent thing he ever said. ‘It's not the man in power, it's the man behind him.' My father was nowhere near astute enough to succeed on his own advice, but I was. What he never realized is, you cannot start at the top. That's why he died penniless. I built myself up, slowly at first, moving my firm to New York, working on a municipal level, keeping my eye always focused on the next move. I read the news. I became known as someone who could predict certain events. It only required some basic knowledge of human character, but I was soon consulted on larger and larger issues. I became respected for my opinions. I offered advice, for free at first, then for money, and then for favors. My business grew, but my fame did not. I made it a mission to keep my name beneath the public radar, a figure existing only in rumor. I never advertised my services. Those who needed me found me, and that was enough. And soon, I was more powerful than anyone could ever have anticipated. I wasn't lurking in the shadows of great men, I was the shadow itself. Had we time, Sheldon, we could go through the history books together. I assure you there is not one significant event in the twentieth century that I did not have a hand in.”

I did a few math problems in my head. “Exactly how old are you?”

He preened in his chair. “I will turn one hundred and forty-seven years old next March.”

“Bullshit.”

“Look at me, Sheldon.” He swirled his index finger in the air. “Look at all this technology I am beholden to. I have not left this chair under my own power in many years. Considering your own refusal of death, is it so hard to believe a man of my means might find alternative methods of cheating the Reaper? In a way, you and I are kin, brothers in our plight. You found one way to dig yourself out of the grave, I've found another.”

“So why all this? Why didn't you just take me? Why did you let all this happen?”

“In due time. I do have a few things to show you, things that will help you keep all this in perspective. Believe it or not, I have always had your best interests at heart. In fact, I am your benefactor.”