Dan Simmons - The Hollow Man

Norm Sr. nodded. “You need any tackle? Bait? A license? Or you got that already?”

Bremen licked his lips, feeling something returning to the insides of his skull. His scoured, bruised skull. “I need everything,” he said, almost in a whisper.

Norm Sr. grinned. “Well, mister, you got the money for it.” He began moving around, offering Bremen choices on tackle, bait, and rental rods. Bremen wanted no choices; he took the first of everything that Norm Sr. offered. The stack on the countertop grew.

Bremen went back to the cooler and fished around for a second bottle, feeling somehow liberated at the thought of that also going on his growing tab.

“You need a place to stay? It’s easier if you stay out on one of the islands if you’re gonna fish the lake.”

Was that swamp he’d mistaken for the Everglades a lake? “A place to stay?” Bremen repeated, seeing in the reflecting glass of Norm Sr.’s slow thoughts that the man was sure that he was retarded in his grief. “Yes. I’d like to stay here a few days.”

Norm Sr. turned back to the silent, seated man. Bremen opened his thoughts to the dark figure there, but almost no language came through. The man’s thoughts churned like an infinitely slow washing machine turning a few rags and bundles of images, but almost no words at all. Bremen almost gasped at the newness of this.

“Verge, didn’t that Chicago fella check out of Copely Isle Two?”

Verge nodded, and in a sudden shift of light from the only window, Bremen could see now that he was an old man, toothless, liver spots almost glowing in the errant touch of daylight.

Norm Sr. turned back. “Verge don’t talk so good after his last stroke … aphasia is what Doc Myers calls it … but his mind’s all right. We got an opening on one of the island cabins. Forty-two dollars a day, plus rental of one of the boats an’ outboards. Or Verge could take you out … no charge for that. Good spots right from the island.”

Bremen nodded. Yes. Yes to everything.

Norm Sr. returned the nod. “Okay, minimum three nights’ stay, so there’s a hundred-and-ten-dollar deposit. You gonna stay three nights?”

Bremen nodded. Yes.

Norm Sr. turned to a surprisingly modern electronic cash register and began totaling the bill. Bremen pulled several fifties from his wad of bills, shoved the rest into his pocket.

“Oh …” said Norm Sr., rubbing his cheek. Bremen could sense the reluctance to ask a personal question. “I imagine you got clothes for fishin’, but if … ah … if you need somethin’ else to wear. Or groceries …”

“Just a minute,” said Bremen, and left the store. He walked up the narrow trail, past where he had vomited, back to the rental Beretta. There was a single piece of luggage on the passenger seat: his old gym bag. Bremen had no recollection of checking it through, but there was a claim check on it. He lifted it, felt the uneasy emptiness except for a single lump of weight, and unzipped it.

Inside, wrapped in a red bandanna that Gail had given him the previous summer, was a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver. It had been a gift from Gail’s policeman brother the year they had lived in Germantown and there had been break-ins up and down their block. Neither Bremen nor Gail had ever fired it. He had always meant to throw it away—it and the box of shells Carl had given them with the pistol—but instead had left it locked in the lower right-hand drawer of his desk.

Bremen had no memory of packing the thing. He lifted the pistol, unwrapped the bandanna, knowing that at least he would not have loaded it.

It was loaded. The tips of five slugs were partially visible in the round cradles of their chambers, gray-curved and pregnant with death. Bremen wrapped the pistol, set it in the bag, and zipped the bag shut. He carried it back to the store.

Norm Sr. raised his eyebrows.

“I guess I brought the wrong clothes for fishing,” said Bremen, trying a grin. “I’ll look on the racks over there.”

The man behind the counter nodded.

“And some groceries,” said Bremen. “I’ll need three days’ worth, I guess.”

Norm Sr. walked over to shelves near the front of the store and began removing cans. “The cabin’s got an old stove,” he said. “But most guys just use the hot plate. Soup an’ beans an’ stuff okay?” He seemed to sense that Bremen was not up to making decisions himself.

“Yeah,” said Bremen, finding a pair of work pants and a khaki shirt only one size away from his own. He carried them over to the counter and looked at his feet, frowning at his polished penny loafers. One glance around told him that this miraculous store did not stock boots or sneakers.

Norm Sr. retotaled the bill and Bremen peeled off twenties, thinking that it had been many years since he had been so pleased to make a purchase. Norm Sr. dumped the goods in a cardboard box, cartons of live bait going in next to bread and white-paper-wrapped packages of cold cuts, and handed Bremen the fiberglass rod he’d chosen for him.

“Verge’s got the outboard warmed up. That is, if you’re ready to go on out …”

“I’m ready,” said Bremen.

“You might wanna move your car down from the road. Park it out behind the store.”

Bremen did something that surprised even himself. He handed Norm Sr. the keys, knowing beyond certainty that the car would be safe with the man. “Would you mind …?” Bremen could not conceal his eagerness to get going.

Norm Sr. raised his eyebrows a second, then smiled. “No problem. I’ll do it right away. Keys’ll be here when you’re ready to leave.”

Bremen followed him out the back door, onto a short dock that had been invisible from the front of the store. The old man sat at the rear of a small boat, grinning up toothlessly.

Bremen felt a sort of unhappiness unfold in his chest, rather like a tropical bird stretching its wings after sleep, revealing bright plumage. For a terrible second Bremen was afraid that he might cry.

Norm Sr. handed the carton of goods down to Verge and waited while Bremen clumsily stepped into the center of the boat, laying his fiberglass rod carefully along the thwarts.

Norm Sr. tugged at his nylon cap. “You all have a good time out there, hear?”

“Yes,” whispered Bremen, sitting back on the rough seat and smelling the lake and the bite of motor oil and even the hint of kerosene on his clothes. “Yes. Yes.”

Probably no one alive understands how the mind actually works as well as Jeremy. Besides having access to other minds since he was thirteen years old, Jeremy has blundered onto research that shows the actual mechanism of thought. Or at least a very good metaphor for it.

It is five years before Gail’s death, Jeremy has finally finished his thesis on wavefront analysis, when a paper by Jacob Goldmann arrives on his Haverford desk. A note from his old roommate Chuck Gilpen is appended: Thought you might like to see someone else’s approach to this stuff .

Jeremy comes home so excited that he can hardly talk. Gernisavien glares at him and runs from the room. Gail pours him a cold drink and sits him down at the kitchen table. “Slower,” she says. “Talk more slowly.”

“Okay,” gasps Jeremy, almost choking on the iced tea. “You know my thesis? The wavefront stuff?”

Gail rolls her eyes. How can she not know his thesis? It has filled their lives and stolen their spare time for four years now. “Yes,” she says patiently.

“Well, it’s all obsolete,” says Jeremy with an incongruous smile. “Chuck Gilpen sent me some stuff today by a guy named Goldmann up in Cambridge. All my Fourier analysis is obsolete.”

“Oh, Jerry …” begins Gail, real sorrow in her voice.