Ben Marcus - The Flame Alphabet

The exertion triggered something in LeBov and he fell to the floor, coughing. Around him crowded his technicians, and by wagon one of them dragged in something covered by a blanket. It wriggled under there, groaned. A wet spot soaked up through the wool.

I thought of Claire waking up tomorrow morning thinking This is the day , stepping over the badly slept bodies of her cohorts, and then getting led down hallways and corridors and through rooms and out, finally, into the sickening light of the courtyard, where she could finally, she just knew, run to Esther and hug her close, and even if they could not speak, couldn’t they be near each other, maybe find a shelter somewhere to enjoy each other’s company in silence? Why, after all, would anyone want to keep Esther from her?

But instead there’d be no children greeting her in the courtyard, just a table and chair, and Claire would take a seat as the technicians approached her with a foil envelope.

What would be inside it? she’d wonder, as the faceless technicians opened the seal and removed the contents, page after page, to place before her eyes, retreating quickly to the safety of their shielded rooms.

Now what could this be? Claire might wonder, picking up the materials.

This is when I agreed to help. I would join the crew at the hole, help them fix the transmission, if I could, and leave them to eavesdrop on messages—the old Jewish services that no longer worked—that were none of their business.

It took some time but we worked out the details, polishing LeBov’s blackmail until it had a disgusting shine to it.

“I’ll need some assurances,” I said.

“Of course you will.”

“Something I can count on.”

“What, Sam, do you want something in writing?”

His smile revealed a slick, black film that had crept all over his teeth.

I didn’t, no. I didn’t want anything in writing ever again.

We were about to part when I asked LeBov a question, something that had been on my mind.

He sat on the floor, breathing through a respirator. The mask fed into a dark wooden box resting in the wagon.

“When I first met you,” I started.

“Memory lane?” LeBov asked, removing his mask. “You want to talk about the old days?” He checked his watch, then signaled to a technician, who appeared to convulse at the signal, folding his body inward as if he’d absorbed a cannonball, like one of those old-fashioned performers.

“When I first met you,” I continued, “you were getting sick in the bushes. Vomiting. You were sick.”

“Oh, the good times.” LeBov took a desperate breath from his mask.

“But were you actually sick? Was that real?”

LeBov dropped the mask, hacked into his towel.

“That’s mirroring. I learned it in fucking first grade. You adopt the behavior of your opponent, then escalate it. Saw it on one of those film strips about insects. If he’s susceptible, you gain his trust and he thinks he’s found an ally for life. Finally someone who suffers like me! A friend! Works pretty well on Jews, who usually think they’re unique. Maybe even in kindergarten I learned that. With Mrs. Krutz. She was a fucking genius, actually. Mrs. Krutz once …”

“You didn’t gain my trust. I was already suspicious of you. I felt sorry for you. But up at Tower Ledge, that couple you were harassing? What did you want from them? What happened to them?”

“Which couple? There were so many.”

I told him which couple. I told him when.

“Oh, I ate them alive, probably. Isn’t that what you think? I cooked those bastards in a sauce. Can you picture that? This is ridiculous. Your questions are the questions of a two-year-old.”

“Did they have a listener that you wanted?”

“I already had their listener. Spent some time alone with it. Punched it into shape. Have you ever punched one? It’s amazing. It’s like punching a baby. You know? I mean it’s just like that. Their listener is nailed to the wall now. A hand-forged copper nail, in case there’s any residual current in it. That part was easy. They kept their listener in a cigar box because, believe it or not, they never went out to tie it off on a cable. Bad Jews. Very bad. They’d stopped going to synagogue. But their boys , those were harder to acquire. Negotiations were more… demanding.”

“Were they your first?”

“My first? My first what ? Mother was my first, and then Father. And after that my brother Stewart. They were my first . Then I went back for seconds. Because I was still hungry . Do you think the demon speech began out of nowhere a few months ago and swept through town all of a sudden? A little suburban catastrophe? Is that really what you think? You think I fucking work alone ? You think there’s not a human machine the size of the world that didn’t anticipate this transition ?”

“You know,” I said, “rhetorical questions, even with your fucking potion, make me sick to my stomach.”

LeBov fell to coughing again, and when he returned the mask to his mouth and continued to cough, the sound of his hacking was rendered hollow, echoing as if from outside the halls of Forsythe, like a secret code in the forest being shared among animals.

With LeBov in distress, attended by faceless, hose-wielding technicians, I was released too early back into the facility that afternoon. Before I was escorted away, LeBov started to seize, then yelled something through cupped hands, his hands shaping his cry into a curious acoustical object, as if he’d built a bird from pure sound. I grew suddenly light-headed, and one of the technicians fell to the floor, twitching.

It might have been wiser had they returned me to the holding room and wrapped the blanket over my head until the dosage expired. Instead, I was at large in the halls of Forsythe, where I enjoyed strong minutes of language power before the fluid wore off, a protection that surged into my evening encounter with Marta, which I will relate in a moment. First I hurried back to my office so I could work on the Hebrew letter in full view, without the pinhole device, without the impediment of the self-disguising paper that denied nearly everything of an object. None of those cautions were needed today. These were the working conditions I had craved, and I didn’t want them to go to waste.

It was a poor decision.

At my desk, with my language immunity still juicing through me, I surveyed the whole letter, if that’s even an accurate way to describe it; this wasn’t a letter anymore but a gristled cluster of cells, nearly bone-like, smitten around the rim with hair. It required the moisture and warmth of a hand to activate, at least if I would have my way, and I started to deploy it into communicative service, producing with it a script of a distinctly personal nature . As a complete object, liberated from its concealing medical tape and propped against a plywood backdrop, the letter repulsed me, but I took no interest in my own reaction. My own reaction, my own interpretation, my own feelings, for that matter, held little useful meaning for me.

Whoever said that had been right.

Without language my inner life, if such a phrase indicates anything anymore, was merely anecdotal, hearsay. It was not even that. It was the noisings one might detect if a microphone were held against a stone in the woods. Too much effort is required to divine activity within things like persons. There is a reason this subjective material is trapped inside people and cannot be let out. As such, my thoughts, when I bothered to have them, bored me, especially if I could no longer unleash them into the world with my mouth and effect some kind of response from people, so I ignored them and set to work.