Chaingang

The beast-man has almost stopped breathing. This human who can hold his breath for four minutes, this monster who can bring his own powerful pulse-beat almost to a standstill—he closes his mind to the absolute blackness, imagining a black balloon dropped into an ocean of ink.

Imagine the balloon floating in the dark, inky sea. Now prick a tiny hole in the top of the balloon, and as it sinks, pour into it a stream of white milk. White pouring down into black, sinking, pouring, falling, the thump of his heartbeat now virtually stilled. His mind filling with bright, white milky essence. White as purest snow. Blank paper. And on the blankness of his receptor screen his presentient warning system keys a single word.

It prints a word across the blankness of his thoughts, bright red neon letters on dazzling white:

WATCHER

He feels the surveillance in the way that a hunter's prey will sometimes intuit another presence, perceiving intangible cross hairs of a silent gun. The awareness, the survival instinct, causes the hairs on the back of his massive neck and head to stand straight up. His hard, cold eyes blink open, and he looks in the direction of the observation window above. Where he senses human eyes watching.

Dr. Norman and the team from Walter Reed hover around an immense prone form, as they monitor the deep drugged state of the subject. One more time—after the brief recuperation period and final interview session—Alpha Group II will be employed as the insertion phase is accomplished.

“He's ready.” An anesthesiologist checks vital signs as they make certain the life-support units are functioning perfectly. It is warm in the maximum-security or. The chief surgeon asks for a wipe, and a nurse mops perspiration from the man's brow below his surgical cap.

“What I want to know is how it managed to swim this far inland.” An explosion of laughter. Norman's cheek muscles clench under his mask, but be has been forewarned. All great surgeons have their own style. This one indulges his flair for operating-room comedy. But he is the top man in the ultrahigh-tech field of laser implant work.

No blood from a cranial saw will paint Jackson Pollock—like artwork across the surgical gowns. The subject may not even discover that an incision has been made. Only the tiniest portion of the head is shaved, and care will be exercised that this will not be visible to the subject.

The small patch of bare skull is washed. Anointed with alcohol and other mysterious solutions. Meticulously dried.

The senior cutter examines the results, nods his approval, and holds out his gloved hand for the marking device. Takes it. Makes marks. Drops the object in a tray. The laser is in readiness.

“Let me see that X ray for a second.” He looks through it, makes a show of holding it to the light. “Yes. Just as I thought. This mammal has anthrax!” They all break up again. Dr. Norman grits his teeth.

“Okay.” Without further jocularity he burns his way in through the skull. “Jeezus!” he says. The stench is overpowering. Even through the tiny “window,” the subject's brain stinks.

Driven hard by a powerful wind, a loose bank of vapory clouds scuds swiftly across the sky of his mind. He feels his face in a gust of wind, misty rain, spray driven by the wind, and inside the beast's mind, his eyes open.

A row of corpses stiff as window mannequins, eyeless store-window dummies, their waxy faces liquefied and melting. Blue, Catch, Hardname, and Pluck, eyeless corpse mannequins, faces dripping, sit up and begin a centuries-old ritual, the ballet of pain.

Something alien courses through him.

Melting dummies jerk in the frenzied spasm of the devil dancers, tapping call to nightmare, epileptic seizure of the snake people, deathdance of the voodoo drums.

He has been drugged, he realizes.

The clouds churn and scumble, tossing into a cold, thick, white mist that keeps moving faster and faster, as window mannequins, time-compression film of dizzying sky.

The pull of the drug is strong.

Mortuary ritual and kinship in Bwaidoka, obesity as promiscuity viewed by therapeutic-statist praxeologists, Sudest Island Death Rites, themes that harden into book titles. Data retrieval. Wordstream.

A stream of vapor clouds his thought processes momentarily, as the voice cuts through the icy mist of drugs:

“—am your friend. You will be—” Identification of the voice. It is Dr. Norman, head of the program. Sodium Pentothal? Perhaps the new one he's been experimenting with; the one he calls Alpha Group II. An ice mass splinters, showering its shards through his mind.

“Daniel, it is Dr. Norman.'

Daniel. Dr. Norman. Names. The name is filed. Dr. Norman has spared him discomfort.

Dr. Norman is retrieved through the haze of drug-induced confusion. The Physical Precognate: Stimuli and Response Beyond Self. Other titles.

The voice has been identified.

Inside his mind he sees the doctor saying, “I recommend a thyroid function test for Mr. Bunkowski to see if he needs some thyroid replacement medication.” The nurse makes a joke, and the doctor sharply rebukes him. He sees Dr. Norman telling the suits about him. Saying a word he does not know.

“Daniel, it is Dr. Norman. Your friend. I have good news for you, Daniel. Can you hear me?'

A lion coughs, and he hears it through the blocks of ice that are freezing around his brain.

“Good. Very good. Daniel, soon you will be free again. The program is a success. Soon you will be free, as I promised. You will be free to do the things you like, my friend. The things you are so good at.'

He retrieves the alien word: Algolagnia. Sees the doctor telling an audience, “Occupant is algolagnic.” He knows now that this means he takes pleasure in inflicting pain.

“You must stay within the boundaries where you are safe. Daniel, you will be free to do the things you like. But for your own safety you must stay within twenty-five miles of the town where you will be set free. So long as you remain within a twenty-five-mile radius of the town, your actions will be protected. No outside harm will come to you. Do you understand?'

Wind blows over a mass grave. It is otherwise still in his mind.

The doctor. Another supervisor. Six correctional officers. Shackles. Cuffs with the security boxes over them. He listens for jailhouse noise. The slam of cell doors.

“You will also—'

Dead bodies wired inside sunken junkers.

“—want to exterminate—'

Bloated inhuman faces under the surface of a shallow stream.

“—particular subjects—'

A cat growling in the blackness of a jungle night.

“—as well as targets of opportunity—'

Haze. Loss of balance.

“—that you encounter.'

A prisoner buried under the heart of an icy monolith.

“A dossier has been prepared that will introduce you to—'

A sense of deep perspectives.

“—these targets.'

Blurring now as the powerful drugs hose him under.

“Daniel, you will—'

Going to black.

“—of interest. You can study—'

Dissolving on the words of Dr. Norman as he completes the ritual of repetition and reassurance.

The brain implant appears to have been successful, but Dr. Norman wonders how things will go with Daniel. His affection for the beast is deep. He wonders if Daniel has bonded to him as well. Yes. Surely he has.