Stevens
"Stevens crashed through the trees, thin branches tearing at his face and arms. He kept his eyes on the ground sweeping before him, the mossy rocks and tree roots and the needle-covered snow."
The old man's face tightens, thinking of it: he doesn't like Stevens. He tells himself that he shouldn't care, that his opinion doesn't matter, but in the end Stevens was a coward, and to the old man a coward is no better than a rat. That said, he knows that it's not up to him to judge Stevens' character (or the lack of it), and in any case he's never been one to let his personal feelings get in the way of telling an honest story. He reaches for his pint, takes a short swallow, and forces himself to go on.
"Stevens pulled up sharply as the woods gave way to the edge of a low cliff," he says. "He bent over almost double, panting and gasping for breath with his hands on his knees. Below him was the town. Faint columns of steam drifted up from the houses, each of them burnished gold in the winter sun. He waited until he caught his breath, and scrambled down the ledge to sit with his back against a rock."
His thoughts were scattered, useless things. Again and again he returned to the attack on the road, the bodies he'd left behind and how close he'd come to being killed himself. Most clearly he saw the egg, breaking open on the pavement with nothing inside of it, or almost nothing: a hollow breath of air, and silence. The sequence rang in his mind like struck metal.
He held his head in his hands and raked his fingers through his hair. He watched the egg fall and break, over and over again; he moaned, and then shouted, but the egg was always there. He opened his eyes to look at the town, but he could still see it, an off-white oval superimposed over the roads and buildings, falling and shattering in an endless loop.
As the sun began to set behind the western hills the day grew cold. In the gathering darkness Stevens came back to himself, the vision of the egg receding until it was no more than a troubling memory. He stood up, rubbing his hands over his arms and thighs to warm them. He left the ridge, keeping to the trees for as long as he could, reasoning that it would be better to enter the town without attracting too much attention. He went north, skirting the edge of the hills until he found himself in an all but unused strip of scrub land not far from Last Bridge.
By then he was shivering in his coat and working his fingers in his pockets to stave-off numbness. He walked toward the river and took a barren, lamp-lit road into Northside. At the first bar he came to he stopped and sat down at the counter, blowing heavily on his hands. A middle-aged waitress approached him.
"What have you got to eat?" Stevens asked.
She pointed to a jar of pickles on the shelf behind her.
"That's all?"
"Most people don't come here for the food," she answered.
"Where's the closest hotel?"
"You want a hotel in Northside?"
"I just need a place to sleep," he told her. The waitress shrugged.
"You can rent rooms by the night at Manor Apartments," she said, scrawling a simple map on the back of a napkin. Stevens stuffed the napkin in his pocket and ordered a beer, staying in the bar just long enough to warm up. He paid the waitress and once he was outside he took the crumpled map from his pocket, but the woman's drawing proved to be useless. Twice he stopped to ask for directions, once from the teenage boy working at a coffee stand and then from an elderly woman at a bus stop. By the time he reached the apartment, a three storey, red-brick building huddled next to a shuttered warehouse, he was nearly frozen.
The entrance was locked, and Stevens peered through the window into an unlit lobby. Pounding on the glass until his knuckles were sore, at last a man appeared to let him in. The man was tall, with deep-set eyes and an angular, pockmarked face. A ragged bathrobe hung from his shoulders. He gazed at Stevens warily, sucking on his teeth.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I need a room," Stevens said.
The man made an inarticulate sound and ushered Stevens into the building. In the lobby, he moved behind a wooden desk and told him to write his name down in a ledger. Stevens gave his name as Thompson, and paid a week's rent in advance. The man took his money without comment and led him to the second floor. The small room he showed him consisted of a single, wire-frame bed and a window that overlooked the warehouse. As soon as the man left him alone, Stevens fell onto the bed and slept for nearly 15 hours.
In the days that followed he confined himself to his room, leaving only long enough to search for food and alcohol. The rest of his time he spent sleeping; his body ached for sleep, as if he'd suffered a concussion in the attack or the sandwiches he bought from the nearby bakery had been drugged, and as he slept he dreamed. In these dreams (long, fragmentary cycles that could change shape at any moment) he was often not himself, but rather several people, none of whom he'd ever met but who he nevertheless felt intimately connected to. Disembodied, he watched as these people grappled with strange, nearly incomprehensible tasks, unaware that with each passing moment they edged themselves closer to an abyss. Waking was like breaching a surface of mud; Stevens gasped, spluttering into consciousness, nearly as tired as when he'd gone to bed.
At other times he dreamed of the egg. Not every night, at least not that he remembered, but often enough, and some mornings as he rose to sit on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, these dreams seemed to bleed into waking life; Stevens watched the egg fall and break apart on the scuffed, wooden floor of his room, just as clearly as he'd seen it on the ridge, and a part of him was convinced that this was not a memory, but a rather glimpse of the future. This vision clung to him throughout the day, and he moved about as if coated in some thick, translucent material, touching nothing, and never wholly present. He considered the possibility that he was losing his mind, but consoled himself with the naïve belief that if he was really going insane he wouldn't be able to tell.
Aside from all of this was the stress of his rapidly dwindling stack of money. He kept some cash in a locked box in his apartment, but Stevens was wary of returning to the capital. He had no way of knowing if his name would come up in connection with the attack on the Northern Road, but if anyone was looking for him, that would be the first place they'd start. He had credit cards, but he was reluctant to use those as well, and at the end of his second week in town he resigned himself to the thought of finding another job. With no contacts of his own and not knowing what else to do, he approached the building manager to ask if he knew anyone looking for help.
"Something that pays cash," Stevens told him.
"Cash," repeated the manager.
"Tax issues."
The manager glanced at him, stabbing out what was left of his cigarette in the ashtray on the desk.
"That why you're always carryin a gun?"
"What gun?" Stevens' voice was very low.
"The one you got stuffed in the back a'your pants."
Stevens said nothing, and the manager spread his hands.
"I'm not blind," he said mildly.
Stevens brought out the gun, and examined it, turning it over in his hand.
"This?" he said. Casually he pointed it at the manager. The older man smiled and spread his hands wider.
"No offense," he said.
"None taken," answered Stevens. He leaned forward, rapping the gun barrel on the edge of the counter.
"It'd be a mistake to tell anyone about this," he said.
"Who am I gonna tell?" the manager asked him. "Besides, I don't need the attention."
Slowly, the other man lowered his right hand, looking to Stevens for permission. Stevens shrugged with a casualness he didn't feel, his grip tightening on the gun handle. The manager reached under the counter and removed a shotgun which he set down between them on the desk.
"See?"
Stevens laughed.
"How about a drink?" the manager said, returning the shotgun to its hiding place. Stevens shrugged again and, slipping his own gun into the back of his pants, followed the other man into
a cramped office. Dozens of cardboard boxes were stacked against the walls, each of them filled with old ledgers, a dusty record of the building's previous tenants. The manager sat down at a desk, and indicated Stevens to take the seat opposite him. He moved to open one of the drawers, and Stevens tensed.
"Relax," said the manager, producing a bottle of whiskey. He took two glasses from the same drawer and poured a generous shot for them both. The two men drank without speaking. The manager regarded Stevens evenly, and at last he smiled, a single golden tooth flashing in the left side of his mouth.
"Tell you somethin," he said.
"What's that?" Stevens asked. He sat stiffly in his chair, very conscious of the hard, blunt outline of the gun at the small of his back. He felt hot, and the little room was bearing down on him like a cage. He had the uncomfortable sensation that he was dreaming. A drop of sweat crawled along his back, and he swallowed in a dry throat.
"Managin this shit hole is just my day job," the manager told him. His pitted face gleamed hugely under the room's single fluorescent lamp. Just beside his right eye was a black mole that appeared to be vibrating. Stevens stared at it, holding his breath.
"What else do you do?" he managed to ask. He watched as the manager took another swallow of whiskey, his throat muscles contracting heavily, and those along his jaw.
"I'm a delivery boy," he said.
"Delivering what?" Stevens barely registered the sound of his own voice. Again the manager reached into the desk, this time taking out a mid-sized envelope. He passed it to Stevens. Inside was a mass of what at first he took to be sand, although the texture and colour was wrong: it was much too fine, and tinted a deep, rusty orange. The envelope felt very light in his hand.
"What is it?" he said.
"Call it powder. Comes from the mines."
"What's it do?"
The manager made a brief motion of his shoulders.
"Let's you talk ta aliens," he said, and he laughed. Stevens set the envelope down on the table.
"It's a drug?"
"You could say that. It hasn't been around long. Shit's not even illegal, but lately we've started havin some problems. Seems that Institute a'yours back in the capital has taken an interest in the stuff. Me and the people I work for have been lookin for someone ta lend us a hand. How does that sound?"
Stevens said nothing, staring at the envelope lying on the table like a disembodied organ.
"It's good money for easy work," said the manager. Stevens looked up.
"How much money?" he asked.