Like now, the way John jogged the fifteen feet to him, rather than making him suffer through the walk. The way he spoke in their old way, “Howareyou?”
Not a pleasantry, Soren knew. A question on multiple levels. John asking if he was holding together.
A flash of memory, vivid as tri-d: John Smith at eleven, talking to him on the playground of Hawkesdown Academy. Passing him a Kleenex for his bleeding nose, broken by one of the older boys. Saying, “It’s better if I talk fast, isn’t it?”
Saying, “You’resmartbutyou’renotthinking.”
Saying, “Makeityourstrength.”
Saying, “Andnoonewilleverhityouagain.”
Teaching him about meditation, how to put aside the dizzying maelstrom of the future and exist only in the now. Teaching him that if he could control himself, he could use his terrible curse to do anything, use it against all the petty little ones who tried to hurt him. John understanding that the boy everyone thought broken was merely overwhelmed, knocked flat by every second.
People thought that time was a constant, because that was what their mind told them. But time was water. The stillest water vibrated and buzzed with energy.
John had taught him, and the next time the older boys came for Soren, he remembered. He became nothing but the moment. He did not plan. Did not anticipate. He merely watched them move in slow motion, and lazily, with a stolen scalpel, he cut the throat of the biggest one.
No one had ever come for him again. “I have more nothingness than ever.”
Smith understood. “That’sgood.”
“You need me.”
“Yes.”
“Out in the world.”
“I’msorry. Yes.”
“It’s important?”
“Crucial.” A pause. “Soren. It’s time.”
He stopped being the spider then and became the man again. For a moment, the future threatened to swamp him, the terrifying infinity of it, like being alone in the Pacific in the middle of a starless night, all that water and time around and below him, the deepest hole in the planet sucking him down into darkness.
Be nothing. Be not the spider nor the man nor the future nor the past. Be the moment. Be nothing. Just like John had taught him.
Soren would rise and go with his friend into the world. He would do . . .
“Anything.”
PERSONALS > CASUAL ENCOUNTERS > NORM/ABNORM
Treat Me Like the Filthy Twist I Am
18 yr old T4 male, slender, shaved. My father kicked me out—be my new daddy?
Norm Couple Seeking Abnorm Housegirl
We are: mid-40s, professional, fit, successful. You are: Tier 2 or 3 Reader. If you’re who we want, you already know what we want.
Married Abnorm Looking for NSA Fun
There’s a reason they call us gifted. Let’s get twist-ed.
Lonely at the Top
T1 physicist seeking other Tier Ones for conversation, friendship, more if we’re both feeling it. Age, race, gender unimportant.
Groupie Seeks Hot Abnorm Action
I know it’s wrong, and I don’t care. Must bring Treffert-Down test results and/or Academy diploma. I can host.
Knock Me Up
Attractive norm woman, 37, seeking T1 for night of passionate procreation. No condoms, no strings. Just drop your jeans and gimme those genes.
CHAPTER 4
Cooper wasn’t used to it. Not one little bit.
It’d been three weeks since he’d taken that unscheduled limousine ride. Twenty-one days as a special advisor to the president of the United States, all of them work days—he had a feeling that weekends would soon be a distant memory—spent in meetings and conferences, poring over reports and sitting in the Situation Room.
The Situation Room, for Christ’s sake. Twenty-one days wasn’t near long enough to get used to it. Cooper waved his pass at the guard hut on Pennsylvania, waited for the buzz of the door.
“Morning, Mr. Cooper.”
“Morning, Chet. I told you, it’s just Cooper.” He slipped off his jacket, set it atop his briefcase on the X-ray belt, then swiped his pass and typed his ID code into the machine. “How was your night?”
“Lost twenty dollars on the ’Skins to my son-in-law. Arms up, please.”
Cooper raised his arms as Chet ran a wand up and down his body, searching for traces of explosives and weaponized biologicals. The wand was newtech, developed in response to the public outcry over delays at airport security. Best Cooper could tell, it hadn’t sped anything up. “Bad enough he marries your little girl, he takes your money too?”
“Tell me.” The guard smiled, gestured to the opposite end of the X-ray machine. “You have a good day, Mr. Cooper.”
And just like that, he was through the fence and on the White House grounds. A long, curving driveway wound past the tri-d cameras at Pebble Beach, where the newsies waited day in and day out. Cooper put his jacket back on and walked, drinking in the building, the reality of it. The people’s house, the symbol of the best the nation could stand for, the epicenter of global power—his office.
Well, sort of. In actuality, his office was in the OEOB, the office building across the street. But he’d barely seen it; his working hours had been spent almost entirely in the West Wing.
A marine in dress uniform executed a precise right-face and held the door for Cooper. In the lobby, he checked his phone and saw he was on time, a few minutes shy of seven. He passed the Roosevelt Room, stepping aside for a general and two aides. The carpet was thick and soft, and everything glistened, the furniture freshly polished. He’d never put a lot of thought into pondering what the air in the White House might smell like, but even so he’d been surprised by the answer: flowers. It smelled like flowers, from the fresh arrangements brought in every day.
A right turn took him past the Cabinet Room—the Cabinet Room!—and a handful of paces later, he was stepping into the president’s outer office. Two assistants typed at keyboards projected onto antique desks, and their screens were polarized monoglass so thin that from the side, they vanished entirely. A funny juxtaposition of the old and the new.
Press Secretary Holden Archer was locked in conversation with Marla Keevers, the chief of staff looking smart and vicious in a gray suit. Both were seasoned politicians and gave little away, but to Cooper’s eyes, the subtle stiffening at his arrival spoke volumes.
Relax, guys. I’m not after your job.
Cooper put his hands in his pocket and turned his attention to a gilt-framed painting, the Statue of Liberty draped in impressionistic fog. Nice enough, he supposed, though if he’d seen it at a street fair, he wouldn’t have paid any attention.
“Mr. Cooper.”
He turned. “Mr. Secretary. Good morning.”
Though now the secretary of defense, Owen Leahy had come up through intelligence, and it showed. His posture suggested that not only would he not comment on the quality of the morning, he would neither confirm nor deny that it was in fact the a.m. There weren’t many people who gave off so little to Cooper’s eyes.
“Anything new on the Children of Darwin?” Cooper asked.
Leahy made a noncommittal face. “Have they found you an office yet?”
“Across the street.”