Asimov's Science Fiction: April/May 2014 Read Online Free PDF Page B

prisoner without break. Sipping his water so he wouldn't have to hit the john too often, Jimmy paced, stood, or sat before the prisoner's image, observing a man who barely moved, gathering material, not yet constructing the passageway.
    Methusaleh—as Jimmy now thought of him—got up once from his cross-legged pose, unfolding himself with a slowness either pained or stately—Jimmy couldn't judge—to relieve himself in the corner toilet. Allowing him some privacy, Jimmy looked away, though the audio pickup, which he hadn't realized was on until then, let him know when the man was done.
    Eyes on the prisoner, he turned on one of the computers, then sat. Methusaleh now lay prone on the floor. Jimmy accessed the few remaining digital documents regarding the prisoner. Reports from across the decades hailed the man as an expert in a host of academic fields, and possibly even a medical doctor and surgeon. No one could say what had been lost at the Canadian Arctic base, but the recovered snowmobile, and accounts of the rapid implosion and contained conflagration that had destroyed whatever lay within, suggested the man had access to and was likely the inventor of impressive technology. The report also mentioned an extensive tunnel system, though what little remained of it, once American troops had sent charges deep inside and sealed one end, seemed naturally occurring rather than the result of a construction project. Everything he touched had been made strange.
    An additional document, images of someone's handwritten notes, concerned the August 2001 removal of print materials from World Trade Center Tower One, an indication that the prisoner knew what was to come. A charitable organization had collected the personal library and sold the entire contents to collectors and academic institutions. Twenty thousand volumes. Would it be worthwhile to track them down and search their pages for coded clues?
    Jimmy considered the blank cell, the man staring upward at the unremarkable ceiling. He left his seat and came close to the screen, stepping quietly, faintly worried that, in the passageway, the two of them would be together and alone.
    General Weston entered late-afternoon, capless but otherwise fully attired in desert dress. Jimmy's green jacket draped his chair back, and he had rolled up his tan sleeves.
    "You settled in?" She smiled at the mattress. "Want us to install a latrine?"
    "I'll let you know, ma'am."
    Weston ambled between Jimmy and the screen, hands clasped behind her back as she considered the prisoner. Jimmy flipped over his essentially blank notepad; it was dotted with blue marks from him tapping his pen.
    "Did this man ever read?" Jimmy asked.
    "What do you mean? Like as a test?"
    "Books. A newspaper."
    "He's never requested a book—but he's never spoken. I suppose we could put some books in with him. What, you want to run an experiment? Give him a Bible, Koran, poetry,
Mein Kampf...
a romance novel? See what he picks up?"
    Jimmy stood and splayed his hands on the table; his rear end had gone numb from sitting. "I don't think he'd pick up anything. It's just... the man's supposedly some kind of super-genius."
    "That's the good word."
    "Highly
educated. Amassed a large personal library. And he doesn't feel the need to read? Ever?" Now he stood alongside Weston, though neither was looking at the other. As they watched, the prisoner sat up. He assumed a squatting position, head ducked down as if he might be sick. "Has he been traumatized? Maybe what interrogators have seen as
resistance,
such as his elective mutism, is depression."
    Weston pointed with her thumb. "Four years of
this,
according to all accounts. This absolute silence. But he moves when he's told to move. Eats his meals. Eats a fair amount, in fact. Brushes his teeth. Does this really look like depression to you? Or— I know this isn't a scientific term, but—does it look like despair?"
    The word entered Jimmy as if it had stepped into his chest. No, it