Tesseracts Fourteen: Strange Canadian Stories by John Robert Colombo & Brett Alexander Savory

Author:John Robert Colombo & Brett Alexander Savory
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
Published: 2011-10-06T00:00:00+00:00

Basements

David Nickle

Mr. Nu was in the basement of his small workman’s house on Larchmount when our firm’s team came for him. At first they thought he was barricaded down there — possibly sitting on a cache of weapons, or explosives, or biological agents. Possibly, on something worse.

They had swept the two above-ground floors and found nothing there — almost literally.

This by itself, put the team on guard — even without the incriminating weight of our firm’s considerable file on him, the paucity of personal effects in Mr. Nu’s dwelling was suggestive of a life led to a particular end, of a particularly quiet march … to a particular end.

The basement was only accessible by one staircase off the kitchen. Marisse, the team leader, was confident that he would not flee. But that was not a comfort, either. If Mr. Nu were of a desperate frame of mind — if he were under instructions to avoid capture at all cost — being cornered in the basement with no exit but one, might lead to acts similarly desperate.

These were thoughts upon which Marisse did not wish to dwell.

Later, before an ad-hoc panel of her superiors in the Peel Room at the Marriot, she faced questioning; “Why did you not send a team to the basement immediately? Why did you search the remainder of the house, when the infrared imaging indicated with some certainty that Mr. Nu was not in the kitchen or the bedroom or the upstairs bath?”

Marisse had no satisfactory answers. She grew quiet, almost sullen. On the hotel notepad, she doodled images of cubes, stacked upon one another in such a way as to make it impossible to tell whether the boxes were stacked like a giant pyramid, or a precarious overhang of packing crates. Benoit demanded that she respond as a professional, and she mumbled something softly, then leaned toward the microphone in the middle of the table, reached across and turned it away from her, and to Benoit. “You respond,” she said, and Benoit became angry enough that I had to intervene.

“Marisse completed the mission,” I said, sliding the note pad from Marisse and underneath my laptop.” Don’t forget that, Bennie.”

I caught her eye for a moment, attempting to draw out some connection and put her at ease; we had known each other for many years at that point, and sometimes confided in one another on matters personal and professional. But not tonight.

Tonight, nothing.

The apprehension, when it came, occurred without serious incident. This much we confirmed during the meetings at the Marriot. Marisse, her team, did complete the mission. No one was injured, not agent, nor civilian, nor the target: Mr. Nu.

Mr. Nu arrived at Sandhurst Circle with just the clothing he wore: a dark brown T-shirt, a pair of greenish cotton briefs and low white socks made from a material designed to transmit perspiration during exercise.

He had been there only a month when I attended the Marriot; a month and a day, when I made my way up the highway to Sandhurst itself.

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