“DO YOU REMEMBER THE REASON you were stored?” Rasmus asked.
Horkai didn’t bother to answer. Rasmus swallowed. He seemed nervous somehow.
“Obviously there’s something wrong with you,” said Olaf.
“Your legs, for instance,” said Oleg.
Rasmus nodded. “The legs are a part of it,” he said. He licked his lips. “I learned all of this from my father,” he said, his eyes flicking momentarily away. “And many years ago at that, when I was very young. If I get some of the details wrong, that’s why.”
“All right,” said Horkai.
“At some point you were exposed,” said Rasmus. “I’m not talking about a minor event, about brief ambient exposure like we just went through outside. According to Lammert, you were close enough that the light must have shone right through your skin. Close enough that by all rights you should have died.”
“But you didn’t die,” said Olaf.
“At least not completely,” said Oleg.
“Be quiet, you two,” said Rasmus. “Let me do the talking.” He turned back to Horkai. “What did happen,” he said, “was that you lost all your hair, every last bit of it. On the side facing the blaze, your skin was charred to a crisp. And then you lay there. For how many days and nights, who can say? Until someone found you.”
“Your father,” said Horkai, thinking at the same time,
Rasmus nodded. “Lammert. He thought you were a corpse at first, but you moved. He was sheathed, but still couldn’t stay out long if he wanted to stay alive. But there you were, half your body blackened, exposed for days, unconscious, but still alive.”
“And then he—,” started Oleg.
“Shut up, Oleg,” said Rasmus, then turned back to Horkai. “He stood you up and shouldered you and carried you back is what he did. He installed you in a secure ward—we still had such things in those days,” he said, turning to Oleg and Olaf. “He attached you to an IV and waited for you to die.”
“Only I didn’t die,” said Horkai.
“Not exactly,” said Rasmus. “In a way, you didn’t die. In another way, you died over and over again. Your throat would fill with fluid. Your breath was at first sticky and then rattling and then it would stop completely. Sometimes for hours, apparently. And then, minutes later, hours later, seemingly dead, you suddenly would cough up dark clots of blood and start breathing again. It was terrible to watch, my father said. It was like death was toying with you, killing you and then bringing you back again. He used to describe how he watched you, how once he even went so far as to drag your body away to dispose of it, only to find, once he was already well on his way down the hall, that you were no longer dead.
“And then, after days and days of this, weeks of hesitation and fumbling along the border between life and death, something changed in you. It terrified him. Over the course of a few days, your ruined skin sloughed away to reveal unblemished, hairless pink flesh beneath. A day or two later, you opened your eyes and spoke, just as if nothing had happened.”
Horkai nodded. “What did you think?” he asked.
“Me?” said Rasmus. “I didn’t think anything. I wasn’t there. I was just a child.”
“What did your father think?” Horkai asked.
“My father was surprised,” said Rasmus. His cadence was like that of someone telling a well-rehearsed story. “He thought that at the very least all that exposure should have ruined your mind, that if nothing else, it should have made your brain sizzle in your skull and driven you mad.”
“But your mind wasn’t affected,” said Olaf.
“You were fine,” Rasmus admitted. “You seemed to be doing all right.” He looked down at his hands. “Had this happened now instead of then, you would have been in trouble. You would have been decapitated or burned. But my father wasn’t superstitious.”
“There were explanations,” said Olaf.
“Science can explain anything,” said Oleg.
“Or could,” brooded Rasmus. “Nowadays, who knows? Science doesn’t really exist anymore, at least not like it used to. It was designed not for this world but the world before it.” Rasmus grabbed hold of the chair’s arms, straightened up. “Where were we?” he asked. “Oh, yes. In time you seemed fine, okay, as impossible as that was. But even early on there were slight signs, nervous twitches, moments when you stumbled, when you lost feeling in your feet and toes.” He looked again at Horkai. “I learned this all secondhand, of course.”
“You can’t blame him if he has some of the details wrong,” said Olaf.
“It’s been thirty years, after all,” said Oleg.
“Shut up,” said Rasmus, turning to them. “You both talk too much.” He turned back to Horkai. “Does any of this ring a bell?” he said.
Horkai thought. Did it? No. The past was a blur, hard to make out. But, ever cautious, he nodded.
“I wasn’t there,” said Rasmus again. “Don’t blame me if a few of the details are a little off. And above all, don’t blame the messenger,” said Rasmus. He licked his lips. “There’s one more thing,” he said. “You survived a blast that you shouldn’t have survived, but you’re suffering from a degenerative disease. It started with tingling and numbness in your toes and then progressed to an absence of feeling in your feet. Then you lost control of your feet. Slowly it crept up your legs. Eventually you’ll be completely paralyzed, suffering from utter immobility.”
“Why was I stored?” he asked.
“For protection,” said Oleg.
“To save you,” said Olaf quickly.
“That’s right,” said Rasmus. “We’ve been storing you, for your own good, to save you from being paralyzed. We’ve kept you stored, waiting to make some progress toward curing you. Before we thought of storing you, we gave you injections in the spine to slow the progress of the nervous degeneration. It’s a necessary process, but also painful.”
“Exceptionally painful,” said Olaf.
“It couldn’t hurt more,” said Oleg.
“I’m afraid,” said Rasmus, “that for your own good we’ll have to give you an injection soon.”
Then there was silence, Rasmus waiting, staring expectantly at him.
“You’ve woken me up because you’ve found the cure?” asked Horkai.
The two brothers laughed.
“Not exactly,” said Rasmus. “I wish we had, Josef. I really do.”
“Then why wake me up at all?”
“Because we need you,” said Olaf.
“We have a problem,” said Oleg.
“There’s something we need you to do,” said Rasmus.
“What?”
“All in good time,” said Rasmus. “But first things first. He reached into his pocket, came out with a syringe. He broke the plastic casing off the needle. “I hate to do this, but it’s necessary. Let’s get it over with.”
BEFORE HE REALLY UNDERSTOOD what was happening, Olaf and Oleg each had him by an arm and had dragged him from the chair to fold him over the desk, pushing his face down flat against it. Rasmus’s hand was groping at his back, dragging up his shirt.
He felt a sharp stab of pain in the center of his spine; then Rasmus said, “We’re in.” A pressure began to build, which translated into flickers of pain running up and down his spine and growing stronger and suddenly bursting in his mind. And then he was screaming, bellowing into the desk’s metal top. Crazed with pain, he managed to get his hands under him and pushed off with all his might. The brothers were crying out now, hanging on to him as he was clutching at them to keep from falling, twisting between them. He caught a glimpse of Rasmus, a frightened expression on his face, the syringe hanging in his hand, its needle discolored with blood. He struck out once with his forehead and broke Oleg’s nose, then again in the other direction and both brothers collapsed, leaving him with nothing to hold on to. He came down hard and lay writhing on the floor.
