Quantum Night

  “All right,” Namboothiri replied, returning the probes to the same spots on my skull.

  —

  Friday afternoon, June 29, 2001. The corridor outside the office of Dominic Adler. Knuckles rapped against the door, and words were spoken: “Dom, it’s me, Jim. Can I have a moment?”

  The door opened, revealing Dominic in russet slacks and a gray, short-sleeved shirt. “Hey, Jim. Come in. What’s up?” He gestured at a chair and turned to walk to his desk.

  Jim’s body surged in from behind, and Jim’s hands grasped Dom’s neck on either side. A crack! split the air as the neck was twisted ninety degrees to the left. Dominic’s body slumped to the floor.

  The front of Jim’s shoe impelled itself into Dom’s kidney, and sounds emanated once more from Jim’s mouth: “Take that, motherfucker.”

  —

  Without my asking him to, Namboothiri pulled the probes away once more. “You okay?”

  Breathing rapidly, my skin slick with sweat, I reached up to wipe my brow—and once again my hand was trembling. “Jim?” Namboothiri said. I scrunched my eyes shut, but the awful memory lingered. “Jim? What did you see?”

  I tried to compose myself then swiveled the chair to face him. “You’re a psychiatrist, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Which makes you an MD, right? A medical doctor?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong?”

  “So this conversation is privileged, correct? Even though I came to you without a referral, I’m still your patient, isn’t that right?”

  “Jim, my God, what did you see?”

  “Say it,” I snapped. “Say I’m your patient. Say this is privileged.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. You’re my patient. I can’t be compelled to divulge what we discuss.”

  I blew out air, took another moment, then: “Back in 2001 . . .” I shook my head, finding the words almost as impossible to speak as the thought was to think. “I killed a man.”

  “Oh . . . God. No, no.”

  “Broke his neck. Deliberately.”

  Different responses seemed to swirl on Namboothiri’s face, but at last he said: “Who was it?”

  “Dominic Adler. Menno Warkentin’s research partner.”

  “Was it—was it self-defense?”

  God, how I wished it had been! I’d killed that p-zed in the prairie field a short time ago, and that had indeed been self-defense. Even so, I’d barely been able to live with myself since, but this—this!

  I shook my head. “It was premeditated. And . . . brutal.”

  Namboothiri was quiet for a moment. “And do you know why you did it?”

  “The motive, you mean?”

  “No, not that,” said Namboothiri. “Do you know why?”

  I recalled the hairline scratches on my old brain scans. “The paralimbic damage you uncovered, I guess, but . . .” I sighed. “I never thought I could . . . I just . . .” Acid was clawing its way up my throat.

  “We can stop digging, if you want,” Namboothiri said.

  My heart was still beating rapidly. “No. I have to know the rest.”

  36

  TWO DECADES AGO

  LATE June was about as nice as Winnipeg ever got. This year the last snowfall had been in April, and the mosquitoes wouldn’t make their first appearance for another month. Menno Warkentin walked down the hallway, his black Bruno Magli shoes making soft impacts against the institutional tiles. During the academic year, the corridors had been bustling with overworked students and harried faculty rushing from place to place. But although there were some summer students, few were on hand here, the Friday night leading into the Canada Day long weekend.

  Menno entered the lab he shared with Dominic Adler and walked over to the worktable. Stacked on its surface were eight new sensor packs that would go on the Mark III helmet, and next to them, the old green transcranial-focused-ultrasound pucks. Those wouldn’t be included on the new unit, of course, but Dom kept running tests with them, trying to figure out why they’d caused people to black out; the DoD had goosed his grant by a hundred grand so he could pursue that.

  Menno looked around to see if there was any sign that Dom had been in the lab today. His usual spoor included open bottles of Dr Pepper with a flat inch left undrunk at the bottom, but there were none to be seen. Menno hit the power-bar switch that turned on the desktop computer and its bulky seventeen-inch VGA monitor. Windows 98 began its slow boot-up; he wondered if XP, due later this year, would be any faster.

  He heard the door opening. “Ah, Dom. I was hoping—” But it wasn’t Dominic. “Oh! Jim. I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were going to Lake Winnipeg for the long weekend.”

  A voice emanated from Jim’s mouth. “That’s what I told everybody. Never hurts to have an alibi.”

  Menno made a snort. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. You happen to pass Dom on the way in?”

  The mouth worked again: “He’s in his office.” Eyes swiveled toward the wall, where the faux Louisville slugger was held up by its two acrylic, U-shaped supports. A comment required; one made: “Chekhov’s gun.” The bat was taken down, the grip encircled by hands. The club was swung at empty air.

  “Dom’s pretty particular about that thing,” Menno said. “You should probably put it back.”

  More words were generated, empty, automatic: “Remember when the Blue Jays won those back-to-back World Series? I was eleven the first time and twelve the second. In Calgary, we don’t often root for anything related to Toronto, but we did then.”

  Jim started closing the distance between them, the bat held firmly, his heels making ticking-bomb clicks. Startled, Menno backed away. His rear was soon against the worktable, and—

  Shit!

  Jim swung the bat right at him. Menno moved with the same poor coordination he brought to his squash game, barely getting out of the way in time. “For God’s sake, Marchuk!”

  Jim wheeled around and swung once more. Menno ducked. “Help!” he shouted. “Somebody help!” But he’d been right earlier—the campus was dead. Backing the other way across the room now, he found himself stumbling onto a metal folding chair. He rolled off it just as the bat came smashing down onto the top of the chair’s back. Menno grabbed the chair’s legs and hefted it, using it as a shield to ward off additional swings. Jim tossed the bat aside so he could grab the chair’s frame and soon had wrested it free. He threw the chair aside; it folded up flat when it clattered to the floor.

  Menno tried to make it to the door, but the younger man was thinner and more agile; he easily positioned himself in front of it. Jim lunged, and Menno, to his own astonishment, managed to deke out of the way. As Jim sailed past, Menno tried a maneuver he’d seen on TV, interlacing his own fingers to form a two-fisted club and bringing it crashing down on the student’s back, driving him face-first into the floor.

  Menno turned to escape but found himself pitching forward—Jim had grabbed his ankles. As soon as he hit the ground, he rolled onto his back. Jim came toward him, picking up the folded chair, but it was an unwieldy weapon, and he tossed it aside again. Menno pulled his knees up toward his chest, then lashed out with a double kick as Jim came nearer, sending the student backward against the worktable, the neat stack of sensor modules scattering across its surface from the impact.

  There was excruciating pain in the small of Menno’s back; he’d perhaps broken his coccyx. He pushed himself up from the floor, while Jim tried to lift the computer monitor. It came up about a foot, then jerked to a halt, its video cable, screwed in at the back, anchoring it. But the heavy AT-style keyboard, the size of a window shutter, pulled free from its connection, and Jim came forward, whooshing it back and forth.

  Menno tried once more for the door, but Jim quickly blocked the way. He swung the keyboard repeatedly, and Menno felt the wind of its movement as he pivoted and dashed toward the worktab
le. He hated turning his back but did so for an instant, grabbing one of the TUS hockey pucks in each hand.

  Jim surged in, smashing the keyboard onto Menno’s head. Menno staggered for a moment; Jim tossed the keyboard aside and threw the professor to the ground. Menno landed flat on his back, arms splayed as if making a snow angel—but he’d held on to the pucks. Although they were normally activated by commands sent through the helmet, each one had a slider switch on its rim for manual testing; Menno desperately tried to find those switches with his thumbs.

  Straddling him, Jim grabbed Menno’s throat. Menno almost let go of the pucks so he could tear at the kid’s arms, but he knew the younger man was stronger. Instead, he rotated each puck in his hands, the way one turned thermostat knobs, and at last found the switch on the left one, sliding it forward.

  He felt his eyes bugging out and his larynx compressing as he continued rotating the right puck clockwise, working his grip around its circumference. The crazed student kept squeezing his throat, but at last Menno found the other switch, but—fuck!—that one seemed to be stuck. His vision was blurring and his lungs were on fire, and—

  —and it finally dawned on him that, given the way he was holding them, if the left puck’s switch moved up, then you had to slide the right one’s switch down, which, just as the pain was reaching unbearable levels, he did. He then slammed the pucks onto the sides of Jim’s head, clashing cymbals, and held them there like green earmuffs, until—

  —until his attacker’s eyes rolled up, and his arms went slack, and he came crashing down on top of Menno, who immediately pushed him off, leaving the boy unconscious on his side. The professor also lay there for a moment, gasping, then, slowly, he pulled himself to his feet. He was hunched over, still trying to recover, when the landline phone rang. He had no intention of answering it—he wasn’t even sure if he could speak yet—but the goddamned jangling just added to the pounding in his ears.

  He turned off the pucks, then looked down at Jim.

  Riiiiing!

  His first thought was to haul back and kick the bastard in the head—

  Riiiiing!

  —but that faded. He knew Jim Marchuk, and this wasn’t him: not the old, inquisitive A-student with the inner monologue—

  Riiiiing!

  —and not the new philosopher’s zombie without one.

  Riiiiing!

  This sudden outbreak of violence had to be the result of what Menno himself had recently done to the poor boy.

  Riiiiing!

  The phone finally stopped, thank God. Menno was too winded to run away, and, damn it, if he left the boy lying here, knocked into unconsciousness, whoever eventually found him would doubtless call 911, and at the hospital they’d do an MRI and see the damage to his paralimbic system—and people would wonder how those fresh laser-carved lesions had been made.

  Menno staggered over, found a chair, put the pucks in his lap, and closed his eyes for—

  —for how long he didn’t know, but he was awoken by the sound of movement. Oh, God! On the floor, Jim was rolling onto his back. And then the phone rang again, just twice, its bell signaling round two.

  37

  What the hell? Where am I? How did I get here?

  I looked at the window, and—

  Blue sky?

  Sunshine?

  Trees covered with leaves?

  But . . . but it’s January! How in the hell did I . . . ?

  My head hurt—but not from a hangover. I reached up to touch it, and—ouch! I’d banged it against something.

  I rolled the other way, and there was Professor Warkentin, looking like someone had just kicked the living crap out of him.

  I stared at him—really stared at him, locking my gaze on his fat face. Fucking guy was an asshole, pure and simple. An impediment. You could see it. Guy like that never should have been born. Waste of oxygen molecules. I wasn’t exactly sure why, but—

  —but it didn’t matter. It was time to do something about it.

  —

  Seeing Jim stirring, Menno grabbed the hockey pucks and got up, but the student, still on the ground, shot his arms out and yanked hard again on Menno’s ankles. Menno lost his balance, falling backward, crashing to the floor. One of the hockey pucks went flying although he managed to keep hold of the other one.

  Jim got up, dusted himself off, and scanned around the room. He spotted the baseball bat and picked it up from where it had landed, looking at it quizzically, as if he’d never seen it before. But then he turned and, gripping it with both hands, started coming toward Menno, who was still lying face-up. Menno rolled on his side, another jolt of pain going through him as he did so. The loose hockey puck was about four feet away. He started moving toward it.

  Jim swung again with the club but managed to hit the floor instead of the rapidly beetling Menno, and the bat broke in half. Jim briefly held its stem up in front of him, the splintered end like frozen torch flame, then tossed it aside; it banged against a whiteboard-covered wall and clattered to the floor.

  Menno scooped up the second puck, rolled over 180 degrees so that he was facing Jim again, and, with a sudden access of adrenaline, got to his feet and charged toward Jim, propelling him backward against the whiteboard, the dry-erase markers that had been stored on an aluminum shelf clattering to the floor. Menno slammed the pucks against Jim’s temples again, but—

  Fuck!

  He’d forgotten he’d turned them off. He quickly found the switch on the one in his right hand and thumbed it forward, but the other one had to be rotated single-handedly while he tried to reach its slider.

  Jim spun himself and Menno around and drove a punch into Menno’s solar plexus, propelling him backward, his spine slamming against the whiteboard. The younger man pressed an open left palm against the center of Menno’s chest, pinning him, and he brought his right hand up to the edge of Menno’s jaw.

  Menno was still trying to find the switch on the other puck. Jim’s thumb moved up, pressing hard into the lower part of Menno’s cheek, then he inched the digit farther upward, passing the side of Menno’s nose, then, repositioning it once more, and—

  Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

  —digging it into Menno’s eye.

  Menno brought his knee up into Jim’s groin. Jim grunted but continued to press in with his thumb and its hard, sharp nail. The pain from the marker ledge biting into Menno’s spine had seemed like agony—until he had this to compare it to, as—

  Jesus Fucking God.

  —as Jim’s thumb pierced his left eyeball.

  Menno gasped. In a lightning-fast move, Jim switched hands, pushing Menno against the wall with his right one now and lifting his left.

  Fighting nausea but still fumbling with the puck, Menno at last found its on switch. The pain was unbelievable, as—

  God damn it!

  —as Jim’s thumb burst through his other eyeball.

  Menno groped to get the pucks over the student’s temporal lobes and—

  Yes!

  Judging by the sound, Jim must have collapsed at once like a sack of potatoes, but Menno couldn’t see that—he couldn’t see anything. He stumbled forward and tripped over what he guessed was one of Jim’s legs, splayed out across the tiles. Menno managed to regain his balance, made his way to the door, fumbled in a gray nothingness for the knob, and staggered out into the corridor.

  —

  Kayla Huron walked down the empty corridor. It was a warm, sunny day, and she was wearing cutoff jeans and a white blouse tied off above her navel. Since she’d broken up with Jim, she was back on the market and didn’t mind advertising—and all that time at the gym had been paying off.

  Kayla had a summer job working in the physics department, which was perfect: the money she’d make would just about cover her third-year tuition.

  U of M’s Fort Garry campus wasn’t
that big; she’d caught sight of Jim a couple of times as he was coming out of the Tier Building—and had promptly hidden herself. She had zero interest in having contact with her many exes, and if she never saw James Marchuk again, it’d be too damn soon.

  As she made her way across campus, listening to NSYNC on her Walkman, she’d kicked back a full bottle of Snapple. Thanks to it, a pit stop was in order, and so she nipped into the nearest building, taking the wide stairs up to the main floor two at time. To her left, down at the end, was a man, but the women’s room was to her right, and so she began to head that way, but—

  But there had been something odd about the man. She turned around, and, yes, he was staggering, arms out in front as if groping along, and—

  And, by God, it was Professor Warkentin. Even at this distance, she was sure that’s who it was. “Professor?” she called out. “Are you okay?”

  He turned. “Help me,” he said weakly—or, at least, that’s what she thought she heard echoing down the corridor. She quickly jogged down to him, but found herself stopping short, her hand going to her mouth, when she saw blood streaming from his eyes . . .

  No, no. Not from his eyes; from his eye sockets.

  “My God, Professor, what happened? I—um. Where’s a pay phone? I can call 911.”

  “No! No.”

  “But sir!”

  “Please.” The syllable was a gasp; he was clearly in agony. “Just get me to my friend’s office.”

  “You need to see a doctor!”

  “Just do it. Do what I ask. Please.”

  “But—”

  “Please!”

  “Okay, okay. Which room?”

  “Along this corridor. Two or three from the end. On the left. Dominic Adler’s office.”

  Kayla’s grandfather had been blind; she knew how to lead someone by cupping their elbow, and she instinctively did just that.

  “Who are you?” Warkentin said.

  “A student,” Kayla said. “You taught me last year.” She quickly found the room he wanted. The door was closed. Kayla let go of Warkentin’s elbow and opened it, and—