Prophet, p.9
Prophet, page 9
“Can I ask something, Rao?”
“What?”
“Caldwell said that nostalgia was a kind of knee-jerk response to psychic trauma.”
“She didn’t say knee-jerk, Adam, or psychic trauma, but good point. How about this: the substance causes psychic trauma to people exposed to it. True. That’s a definite yes. The effect of the psychic trauma is to make people nostalgic.” He tilts his head, listens. That one is a very near truth that isn’t quite the right shape, exerts a pressure like the feeling in his sinuses when a plane ascends, and he’s still not sure why his brain thinks that listening will take him any closer when this occurs. It never does. He thinks the word “nostalgia” isn’t the right one. But it’s close enough. He’s going to put that one down as true.
Vagueness and indeterminacy are sensations that Rao can worry at until they scratch at him unpleasantly, even when he knows that a statement he generates can’t be reduced to truth or falsehood. On a run like this, he constantly falls into the trap of convincing himself that truths can always be found if he could just find the right way to ask for them. The longer a run goes on, the more he feels that his questions aren’t precise enough, that the words he’s choosing are the wrong ones. Sometimes he’ll slip into Russian or Hindi or Dundhari, Spanish or French. Not because words in those languages connect more accurately with reality but because the sentences are angled differently, are new ways to engage with it.
Truth runs are always exhausting. He knows that someone brighter than him—someone with a clearer mind—could do them better. They always remind him of his inadequacies. They make him tired and frustrated. They make him hate himself. Right now he knows he’s too much of a mess to go much further. Has a good idea where he’ll end up if he does, and then he’ll be no good to anyone.
He stretches, runs both hands savagely through his hair. “This is hard. It’s a conceptual minefield and right now I’m too freaked out to think clearly. Let’s get back to it in a bit. I’ll take a look at the vial instead.” He takes three long gulps of tepid coffee, leans to squint at the burned label in the photograph, mutters under his breath. “Two words,” he says. “This could take a while. You can go and lie down or have a wank or whatever. Chuck me that paper and pen?” Adam hands them to him, then sits back, starts doing the expressionless sniper thing, behaving like he’s not really there. It’s one of Adam’s specialities, making himself unremarkable to the point of invisibility even when someone’s looking right at him. It should be infuriating, but it’s surprisingly easy to ignore. Rao supposes that’s the point.
It doesn’t take long. Six minutes later he takes a fresh sheet, scrawls on it, pushes it across the table to Adam.
EOS PROPHET
“Shit,” Adam breathes. Rao, fascinated, watches his face drain of all colour.
“The fuck, Adam. You look like you’ve just read your own death sentence. What is it?”
Adam’s throat works a couple of times. “Us,” he says eventually.
“What d’you mean, ‘us’?”
“Sounds like a project nickname.”
“A nickname?”
“That’s the correct term.”
“Correct for who?”
“Defense.”
“So it’s a military project. Can’t you look it up, find out what it is?”
Adam meets his eyes.
“Ok, so it’s a black project.”
“Likely an SAP, yes.”
“In English, love?”
“Special Access Program. There are,” he goes on, speaking quietly and more hesitantly than Rao’s ever heard him before, “various different categories of classified initiatives.”
“Well, shall we find out what kind this is?”
Adam doesn’t respond for a long while. Then he nods. “Worst case, this could be an unacknowledged Special Access Program.”
Rao tests the supposition, nods.
“Yeah, that’s what it is.”
“Fuck.”
Another long silence.
“Does Miller know?”
Rao whispers under his breath, shakes his head. “She hasn’t a clue. Well. Isn’t this exciting. Make yourself some coffee. I’ll keep going.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll stop right now.”
“The fuck?”
“An unacknowledged SAP is a world of shit. The ramifications aren’t pretty. I need time to think.”
“Knowing more about what it is isn’t going to stop you thinking, Adam.”
“It might, Rao.”
It’s late. Rao is asleep, and Rao is dreaming. It’s the usual dream, and it starts in the usual place, just outside the door of his great-uncle’s business room back in the big house in Jaipur. The dream is a memory. In it, he’s small and uncomfortably full of dinner. It’s getting towards bedtime and this summons is unexpected. He’s not been allowed into this room before, though he’s sneaked in a few times just to thrill in the agony that someone might catch him. It’s a dark room, the windows always half shuttered, and it smells of pomade and jasmine and, on one of his secret visits, strongly of perfume. It must have been a visitor’s perfume because these rooms are where people come to buy things. Not the kind of people who go to the showroom but people who are very famous or very rich. That’s what his father had said. And it was true. He’d even seen a man come out of the room once that he’d seen twice before, not in real life, but on the big screen at the Raj Mandir.
He knocks on the door and a voice behind it tells him to come in. The bottom of the door brushes a little against the rug as it swings. He approaches the desk where his great-uncle sits. He is as stern as usual, his collar buttoned tight. And his father is there too, sitting this side of the desk, which is a relief, but the atmosphere is forbidding, like it always is when his great-uncle is there. His father is smoking a cigarette, and Rao stands there watching the smoke climb through shafts of setting sunlight that have come through the bottom of the blinds. He can hear pigeons cooing just outside the window, traffic. He’s worried. Has he done something? He must have done something to be called in here. He can’t think of any particular thing he’s done of late that would mean a big punishment, and he doesn’t forget things. Sometimes he doesn’t know that what he is doing is bad, that’s true. But still he can’t think of what it could be.
Then his father smiles at him, so he knows he is not in trouble. But the smile is odd, like his father’s worried. Rao feels a new tug of anxiety. Maybe he’s not doing this right. He links his hands behind his back and stands even taller.
His father nods at his great-uncle, and then turns and spreads three padded trays across the mahogany desk. They’re display trays, like the ones in the showroom in the city. They’re full of assorted jewellery, which is strange, because usually, he knows, they are all one thing. All rings, or all bracelets, or one kind of other thing.
Then his father turns back to Rao, his face very serious. His voice is low. Almost a whisper.
“Which, would you say, is the most interesting of these, Sunil?” he says.
Rao’s not sure what he means. He thinks he should be, but he isn’t. He whispers back. “You mean beautiful, papaji?”
“They are all beautiful in their different ways. I mean, which is the most interesting because it is different?”
Sunil nods. Points. It’s easy. There it is, on the second tray, a sapphire pendant whose gleaming stone isn’t a sapphire at all.
“This one?”
He nods. And he sees, then, his father and great-uncle trade a significant look. He didn’t know what it meant back then, but in these dreams he does, because that was the moment they discovered that Rao could ascertain fakes by sight alone, and things after it were not the same as they had been. Which is why, Rao presumes, he has this dream a lot. Sometimes he knows he’s having it, is aware and lucid inside it. When that happens, he always tries to point to a different jewel, but the dream never lets him. It’s a horrible feeling, his inability to change the narrative. The dream runs always like the dream always runs.
But this time it doesn’t. This time the dream veers off its usual course. Instead of nodding gravely, his uncle laughs. Hearing it, seeing him do it, is a shock. So much so, Rao wakes, all his senses tingling. The whole dream felt far more real than usual. He feels like he’s just been dragged back here from thirty years ago. Then he hears a low murmuring from the room next door. Adam. Adam’s talking. He must be on a call. And then, blinking in the dark, Rao hears it again. It’s not his uncle. It’s Adam. Adam is laughing.
CHAPTER 17
“What’s this?”
His dad kicks the box across the floor to him as he walks into his room. He winces because the impact could knock the optics out of alignment, maybe break the lenses. That’s his first thought: the telescope, the impact of his dad’s foot. Then he catches up with the scene.
There are worse ways to find out his dad searches his room.
“It’s a telescope,” he answers.
The telescope was his. It was his before he bought it. It was his the second he saw it in the faded print of the mail-order catalog. It was his the entire time he was saving for it. He mowed lawns. He did extra chores for his mom. He stood dutifully nearby while his dad worked on the RV, ready to pass whatever tool he needed. He spent so long outside doing things, working, finding chores and little jobs that his mom told him he was getting a tan just like normal kids.
His parents never asked why he wanted to work so hard for the money. They were distracted, he supposed, by the work ethic. That was the most important thing to them. He was showing dedication to something, putting in the time, and he wasn’t complaining about the tasks they laid out for him. All that showed something. Character, probably.
He’d ordered the telescope when his dad was out of town. It wasn’t planned, but it was better that way. He didn’t want to answer any questions, like Why a telescope?
Why not a telescope?
When it arrived, the box was a lot larger than he thought it would be. His mom stood on the porch with him, both of them staring at it.
“Did you tell your father that you were spending your money on something big?”
Of course he hadn’t. He should have. His aunt liked to say it was better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission, but she never sought either from his dad. The former was infinitely worse to beg for than the latter.
“It’ll fit under your bed,” his mom said. Looked at him evenly as she lit a cigarette with a match. “But I don’t know when you’ll get to use it.”
“I’ll figure it out,” he told her. Sounded like he believed himself.
“Good.”
He figured it out. He got to use the telescope twice while his dad was away. His eyes watered the first time he used it, which messed with his ability to focus. He was crying, but somehow that wasn’t bad. There was so much more above him than he’d expected. It wasn’t even the stars, more the darkness between them. Looking up there, seeing what there was, it made the band around his chest go away. Felt like being lost, but somewhere he wanted to be.
“That’s a telescope,” he answers.
“Don’t give me back talk.”
Back talk is answering questions when he isn’t supposed to, or knowing things too early, before his dad has a chance to teach them to him, or not wanting to do something his dad wants to do, or wanting to do something his dad doesn’t. Back talk is saying anything that isn’t right. He’s usually smarter than this, usually knows to shut up when he’s asked a question, especially when his dad is this mad. Why is he so mad?
“Who gave you this?”
He waits. Doesn’t answer right away. Isn’t going to be stupid again. Opens his mouth only after his dad gives him a nod, a go-ahead. “I bought it myself.”
“With what money?”
“I worked for the money, sir.”
They look at each other. He watches his father remember. He’d pressed notes into his son’s hand. Hadn’t thought about it at the time.
“Why are you hiding it?” his dad asks.
Good question. Because his mom told him to. Because he was scared about asking for permission and terrified to beg for forgiveness. Because he’d wanted to avoid this anger that came from nowhere and made no sense.
He doesn’t have an answer to give his dad. That’s enough.
“I hope it wasn’t expensive,” his dad says, picking up the box like it weighs nothing. “No one hides anything from me in my own house. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
They look at each other again. A beat of silence. An unasked question.
“The searches are random,” his dad tells him on the way out of the room with his telescope under his arm. “No secrets from me in my home. I’ll always know.”
A threat, a simple fact. Flat and absolute. He’ll always know.
CHAPTER 18
Back at IHOP for breakfast, Adam’s pouring coffee in a peculiarly talkative mood. “Do you know why IHOPs keep a pot of coffee on every table?”
“I see you’re making conversation, Adam.”
“So you don’t.”
“Come on then, out with it.”
Adam tears open a pot of vanilla creamer, dumps it into a mug, inspects the result, adds another. “Back in the fifties, there was a guy making films for the Federal Civil Defense Administration about surviving atomic attacks. Logistics, delivering essential emergency provisions. Coffee was one of the necessities. He got thinking and it ended up with him opening this place.” He pushes the mug across to Rao.
“Huh,” Rao says, picking up a sachet of sugar. “That can’t possibly be true.” It is. “Are you working right now, Adam?”
Adam regards him blankly. “I’m talking to you, so yes.”
Rao taps the sachet and tilts his head to watch the sugar fall. “No, besides all this. Are you on a job? Go on, tell me. I can help.”
“If I were, then you might help. That’s true. But I’m not.”
“So what was all that last night?” Rao says, stirring.
“Elaborate,” Adam says.
“All that laughing at two a.m. I heard you, Adam, so you can stop lying to me.”
“Laughter proves that I’m working because . . . ?”
“Because you don’t have any friends.”
Adam shakes his head. “I have friends, Rao.”
“With a sense of humour?”
“Some of them. This one does.”
“So what does this funny friend do?”
“Combat controller.”
“What’s that?” Rao knows what a combat controller is, but there’s no satisfaction in admitting it. There is considerable satisfaction, however, in the precise and irritated diction of Adam’s reply. “AFSO CCs are the MVPs in pretty much any theatre. Their training’s the most rigorous in existence. The instructors spend fifteen weeks pretty much trying to kill the recruits. They use CS gas for negative reinforcement. The washout rate’s over eighty percent. Survive that and you’re the best. Period.”
“Better than the SAS?”
Adam stirs his coffee. “Yes, Rao.”
Rao narrows his eyes, recalling all the times he’s heard the USAF dismissed as the lamest branch of the American military. Decides not to raise this particular point with Adam. It never goes down well. “So who is this guy?” he asks.
Adam rolls his eyes. “She’s not a guy.”
“Well fucking sorry for not working out that this friend is a woman. You can’t tell me that’s a piece that fits in the grand puzzle of Lieutenant Colonel Fucking Rubenstein.”
“Explain your logic.”
“Don’t women hate you?”
Adam twitches his lips. “No, women don’t hate me. Everyone dislikes me. There’s a subtle difference.”
“So what’s this guy who’s not a guy’s story?”
Adam drinks his coffee, considers. “We go back a long way. She’s just back stateside.”
“From where?”
“Afghanistan.”
“And what was she doing over there?”
“Rao. I wouldn’t tell you even if I had the specifics.”
Rao waves vaguely. “Not specifically. Generally.”
“CCs are attached to special ops,” Adam explains. “Delta, SAS, all sorts. They do everything special ops do and simultaneously provide terminal guidance and control for fire support.”
“So your not-guy calls in air strikes.”
“She directs air traffic for that purpose and others.” The fondness in his face shifts to something nearer awe. “The role’s complex as hell, Rao. Like playing chess, only—”
“Yeah, yeah.” Rao cuts Adam short. “So she’s an air traffic controller.”
“She’s qualified, yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“Hunter.”
“Just Hunter?”
“Hunter Wood.”
“Like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman.”
“Rao.”
“Hunter Wood, ATC.”
“You don’t want to call her that.”
“If I ever meet her, I will certainly be calling her that.”
Adam’s eyebrows rise. “Your funeral. She’s a master sergeant. She called because a guy who went through training with her has gone AWOL.”
“That’s what Special Forces do, Adam. They disappear. Like we need more problems right now. Your friend’s mate vanishing has nothing to do with what we’re working on.” He feels his jaw drop, slack. “What’s his name?”
Adam narrows his eyes. “Why do you need to—”
“Humour me.”
“Flores. Danny Flores.”
