Brian Evenson - Immobility

Perhaps I’m still in storage, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking. Perhaps something has gone wrong and I’ve begun to thaw and I’m dreaming. Perhaps this is all a dream.

He pushed his thumb against his leg. He felt nothing in the leg itself, only in the thumb. He pinched the skin hard, and then harder still, until the skin was broken and the cut began to seep blood. Still nothing. And so he lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to find some reason to believe that the world exists.

BEFORE THAT, DIRECTLY AFTER THE INJECTION, he was with Rasmus, propped up again on his chair as if nothing had happened. Olaf and Oleg had left, doubtless to seek medical attention. His spine, where the needle had gone in, still throbbed slightly. It was not painful now, more a dull ache.

“Are you wondering why you’re here?” asked Rasmus.

“No,” said Horkai, still irritated. “I don’t much care. You’re the one who woke me. Tell me why or put me back in storage.”

A flicker of irritation passed over Rasmus’s face but was quickly smoothed over, hidden. “Of course,” he said. “Josef, there’s something we need that only you can give.”

“And what might that be?”

“Something’s been stolen from us. A cylinder. We need you to find it and bring it back.”

“Why me?”

“Why you? Because of what you used to be.”

“And what, in your estimation, was I?”

“You don’t remember?” said Rasmus, and shook his head. “Maybe it was a mistake to wake you after all. You were once a fixer,” he said.

“A fixer,” said Horkai.

“Doesn’t ring a bell? It means just what it says,” said Rasmus. “You were called upon when nobody else could solve a problem. You were willing to use any means necessary to make things right.”

Horkai waited for the words to sink in, hoping for memories to return to his mind. But nothing came. “No,” he said. “It doesn’t sound quite right.”

“I only know what my father told me,” said Rasmus quickly. “But why would he lie? You were a fixer, a detective of sorts. You are our last resort. The choice is yours: Either you can lend us a hand for a few days or we can put you back in storage. But if you don’t help us, the chances are good there won’t be anyone left to get you out of storage later on. We’re the ones who can keep you alive, and we’re the ones trying to find your cure. Do you want to risk losing us?”

“I’m listening,” said Horkai.

Rasmus smiled. “That’s all I can ask,” he said. He opened one of the side drawers of the desk, removed a rolled piece of canvas. He unfurled it, spreading it on the desk to reveal a crude map.

“This is us,” he said, pointing at a black circle, the word ovo written over it. “We’re all that’s left of what used to be there, our numbers spread through what’s still standing of some of the university’s research facilities. There’s the lake, just to the west, and the mountains, just to the east. You’ll follow the mountains north about thirty-eight miles, through the ruined towns, and pursue the remains of the freeway across what they used to call the Point of the Mountain. You’ll pass the old state penitentiary and then, near the bottom of the slope, the remnants of the highway. Take that up the canyon eight miles or so, and you’ll find it.”

“Find what?”

“The place where they keep the cylinder.”

“How will I recognize it?”

“The cylinder? Red letters on the side. It’ll almost certainly be kept in a subzero environment. At least let’s hope so. It’s no use to us if it isn’t.”

“No, the place, I mean.”

Rasmus grinned, showing the tips of his teeth. “You’ll recognize it because of the huge hole bored in the side of the mountain.”

“And how do I get in?”

“They don’t know you,” said Rasmus. “The rest of us they’ve seen. But you, you can pass, they’ll be willing to let you get close. They may even invite you in. After that, you’ll have to improvise.”

“What do you mean, improvise?”

Rasmus scratched the back of his skull, shrugged. “People have been murdered,” he said. “That’s what you risk,” he said.

Horkai nodded. “And once I get there, I just find this cylinder and take it?”

“You’re the fixer, Josef. Figure out how to make things right by any means necessary. Kill them if you have to. Kill them before they kill you. The cylinder is important, much more important than a life or two. Particularly if the lives in question are theirs.”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” said Horkai. “Why did they take the cylinder?”

“I’ve told you everything we know,” said Rasmus.

After a long moment, Horkai said, “Another question.” He thumped one of his legs with his fist. “How am I to get there? I can’t walk?”

Rasmus shook his head. “You’ll be taken there,” he said.

“What’s in this cylinder?” asked Horkai.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Rasmus.

Horkai shook his head. “I won’t go after it unless I know.”

Rasmus hesitated for a long time. “Seed,” he finally said.

“What kind of seed. Wheat or something?”

“Yes, basically.”

“What makes it special?”

“It’s special because it’s been kept safe since before the Kollaps. It’s undamaged. We need it to start over.”

Horkai nodded. “Who’d they kill?”

“These people are ruthless,” Rasmus claimed. “When we had the cylinder, we had two technicians working on it. They were tied up and killed, their throats cut from ear to ear.”

“And you want me to find out who among them killed the technicians and bring them to justice?”

“That’s not what this is about,” said Rasmus, waving one hand. “Their deaths are something we have to live with. We don’t need revenge. What we need is the cylinder.”

No, thought Horkai, there’s still something wrong. Why would grain be kept in a subzero environment? It doesn’t make any sense.

Or maybe that was a method of storage, a way of preserving it that he simply wasn’t aware of? Hadn’t he heard stories of wheat grown from seeds found in the stomach of a man frozen in a glacier? Why did details like that come back to him and not the important things? Maybe there was a reason for freezing it, maybe even a reason Rasmus himself wasn’t sure about.

In any case, the choice was clear. Either he could go along with it and try to figure it out himself or he could simply go back into storage, to the nonlife he’d been living for the last thirty years. What other choice was there? Illness or no, he didn’t particularly want to be frozen again.

“All right,” he said. “I’m in.”

Rasmus smiled. “I thought you’d see it our way. Get some rest. You’ll leave in the morning.”

MORNING AND AWAKE AGAIN and after a moment of panic relieved to find he was still himself, still able to remember his name. Horkai, Josef. His doubts, his nightmares, held at a distance, at least for now.

He lay on the narrow bed, staring at the bare and glowing concrete walls crumbling in places to reveal a network of dark rebar. What had the room been before? A large supply closet, maybe, or a small office. What time was it? In the artificial light, it was impossible to tell. He reached over and ran his finger along the wall; when it returned, it had picked up some of the luminescence. Some sort of phosphorescent bacteria or mold.

He pulled himself to sitting, then forced his dangling legs to hang off the side of the bed. There was, beside his bed, a kind of makeshift desk: a metal shelf attached to the wall at hip level, a chair slid beneath it. He sidled down the bed until he was closer to it, could make out in the poor light a pad of paper and a dark stick, perhaps a pencil. There was nothing else in the room, not a single book.