Shuttered Sky

“I was in the neighborhood,” Tessic said, “so I thought I’d make a social call.”

“Your unannounced visits are becoming a nuisance.”

“Then ask me to leave.”

“Leave,” demanded Bussard.

“No!” Tessic burst out in hearty laughter at the sheer joy of being the only person in the entire installation who could tell Bussard no. Dillon snickered too, knowing that Bussard would not jolt him again while Tessic was here. Bussard had to suffer Tessic’s insubordination because he was the crucial linchpin in the loop. And besides, Tessic had more friends on the highest rungs of the military ladder than Bus­sard did. Enough to get him a season ticket to the greatest show on Earth. Having designed the chair, the cell, and half the military’s high­tech weaponry, Tessic’s perk was the right to come and go here as he pleased.

Tessic surfaced every once in a while for a few days at a time, sitting in on Dillon’s therapeutic sessions, even though he had no dis­cernible ailments himself. And when there was no one scheduled for Dillon’s time, Tessic became his only audience, engaging Dillon in conversations of politics, technology, baseball. Supervised small talk, really. Then he would leave, and Bussard would develop a heavy thumb, bearing down on the red button at the slightest provocation, punishing Dillon because he could not punish Tessic.

Now, as Bussard jostled Dillon over the heavy threshold of his cell, Tessic followed them, to Bussard’s further irritation.

Inside, Tessic sat down in the chair. “Why don’t you go?” he said to Bussard in a casual tone calculated to raise the general’s blood pres­sure. “I’ll lock up.”

“I don’t think so.” Bussard set Dillon in the center of the room. “I might have to stomach you, but I don’t take your orders. You stay, I stay.”

“Suit yourself. Pull up a chair.” But of course, there was no other chair.

Tessic leaned forward, peering into the eye slits in Dillon’s mask. “You surely must despise us all,” he said. “But you must remember, you asked for this seclusion. You wanted your power contained.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“Too late for that,” boomed Bussard from the threshold.

Tessic ignored him, and squinted his eyes to peer in the face mask, as if looking at Dillon through a fish tank. “The thin holes in the mask were designed to limit your perceptions of the people around you—and to prevent them from seeing your eyes. But still I see them. Perhaps nothing could close those eyes completely.”

“The door is due to close,” insisted Bussard, his impatience grow­ing.

“Who are you trying to fool, general? It won’t close until we have left.” Tessic turned to Dillon again, peering in through the metallic shell his Research and Development department had designed. “I want to know you,” Tessic said. “It is important to me that I do. I wish to know your hopes and your dreams. Your nightmares.”

Nightmares? thought Dillon. How about his waking visions? There was only one now, snared within the white noise the world offered him whenever he was out of his cell. It would unexpectedly swoop down the throat of the cooling tower with the wind. Suddenly he would see himself in a ruined room, standing beside a man in a plush leather recliner, a light shade of purple. There was a TV before them, with a bright image. A diving competition. The Olympics, perhaps. Three figures on a high diving board. A man, a woman, and a child. The absurdity of the vision could only be matched by its intensity, and a certainty that he should not be trapped in the Hesperia plant. That he needed to escape at all costs.

But he didn’t tell Tessic this, nor would he ever share it with Bussard.

“My nightmares?” Dillon said. “You’re in them. Everyone is.”

“Really. So we are all part of your nightmare?”

“No . . . but you’re all subject to it.”

“I see. That explains why you searched for sanctuary.” There was neither judgment nor doubt in Tessic’s voice—just a desire to under­stand. Perhaps, thought Dillon, so he could build an even more effec­tive prison for him. But to be honest, Dillon had never read that in Tessic’s intentions. “You cannot contain the breadth of your powers,” Tessic said. “But here, we do it for you.”

“I would rather learn to contain them myself.”

“What if you cannot? What if, like radiation, you forever need concrete and lead to rein you in?”

Dillon was uneasy with the thought. “Radiation doesn’t have a will. I do.”

Tessic chuckled. “Very Zen of you to think the power of your will can control a field of energy. But I’m more of a Western thinker.”

“It’s more than just an energy field. I can focus my powers when I need to. There are things I do by choice.”

“Yes, so the world has seen.”

The world. One benefit—perhaps the only one—of being here was that he was cut off from the world. He didn’t have to witness the ongoing effects of the choices he had made.

“What’s it like out there?” Dillon asked “How bad has it gotten?”

Tessic shrugged. “More than a depression, and less than Armaged­don. I still wonder why you set out to do this to the world.”

Why? Should he tell him about the parasite that hungered for de­struction? That the fall of Hoover Dam was intended to stem the destruction, like dynamite at an oil-well fire? That the attempt failed, and only made things worse? He might have told Tessic, but Bussard was listening intently to the whole conversation, and Dillon didn’t want to dish out any more information for him to broker.

“I didn’t intend it. . . but it comes with the territory,” Dillon said.

To Tessic’s credit, he accepted Dillon’s answer.

Dillon thought once more of the vision, and the uneasy feeling it gave him. He shifted his eyes, hoping to see how far away Bussard now stood, but all he could see when he moved his eyes was the dark blur of his own mask. He spoke quietly, hoping only Tessic would hear. “I can’t be kept here. There’s something I need to do.”

“What?”

“I would know if I were set free.”

Tessic sighed. “That’s impossible. You know that.”

Bussard moved into view. “Tessic, I’m losing my patience.”

“You never had any, General.” Tessic leaned closer to Dillon. “If there’s anything I can do to make your confinement more bearable, you let me know.”

A dozen things went though Dillon’s mind, but it was no use. Anything Dillon asked for would be vetoed by Bussard—because al­though Tessic could walk freely through the compound, that was really all he could do. A fly in the ointment—and all the power of one.

Dillon looked past Tessic to his tray of food. “I’d like someone to eat with,” Dillon said.

Bussard snorted at the suggestion, but Tessic nodded. “A dinner date, then.”

Dillon smiled and wondered if Tessic could see it though the small mouth slit. “I’ll see what I can do.” He left, and Bussard lingered a moment longer to scowl, then exited as well.

As soon as the sensors registered their exit, the vault door began its closing sequence, electrostatic pistons pulling it sealed. Dillon waited until he heard the familiar sound of the triple lock mechanism, then counted to five, and his exoskeletal chair popped open at the seam, releasing him at last. Such was the failsafe Tessic had designed—only one lock could be open at a time, and the vault door would not open again unless Dillon was seated and sealed in his chair.

Dillon stretched and shook his legs, forcing circulation to return. Tessic was a complicated man. A genius with far more going on inside than Bussard knew. Dillon longed to read him, and figure out what Tessic was about —it had to be more than money and power. But the mask muffled sounds and limited Dillon’s view. He could barely read anyone now.

He thought back to his first encounter with Tessic six months ago, when he had first been interned here. Dillon had been cocky even within the shell Tessic had forged for him. “You know, I can get out of this place any time I want,” he had told Tessic.

The man had just raised his eyebrows. “In that case I look forward to your escape.”

At that time, Dillon was arrogant enough to believe there was no security in this world he could not breach, pulling order out of chaos until all locks flew open. Tessic had proved him wrong.

And yet the man didn’t gloat over Dillon’s imprisonment the way Bussard did. He was neither proud nor