Walter Mosley by The Wave

Author:The Wave [Wave, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Psychological Fiction, National Security, Fiction, Psychological, Science Fiction, Human-Alien Encounters, Suspense, Large Type Books, General, Prank Telephone Calls, Suspense Fiction
ISBN: 0446533637
Publisher: Aspect
Published: 2005-01-02T06:00:00+00:00

21

They showed me to a small apartment far removed from the scientific center and the seemingly endless number of cells for the XTs.

There was a bedroom, a toilet with a shower stall, and a combination kitchen-sitting room. The refrigerator contained a dozen eggs, a package of processed cheese slices, a pillowy loaf of white bread, some sliced ham, and a jar of grape jelly. In the cabinet was government-issue peanut butter, instant coffee, and a big bottle of nondairy creamer.

There were no books, no television, no radio. There was a desk next to my bed, which was only a cot. A desk drawer contained a ream of white typing paper and a yellow plastic disposable mechanical pencil. No more than five minutes after I entered into the apartment-cell, I began to write this history.

I wrote obsessively, putting down every experience, every word that I could remember. I had scrawled over the front and back of almost twenty sheets when somebody knocked. I hurriedly shoved the pages into the top drawer of the desk and said, “Yes?”

“May I come in, Mr. Porter?” David Wheeler asked pleasantly.

I opened the door and ushered my jailer into the room.

“Not much of a home, but you won’t be here long,” he said, looking around the bleak chamber. He sat on the small bed, and I settled back into my chair.

“It’s illegal for you to hold me like this, against my will,” I said.

“Not when it comes to Homeland Security,” he said with an ironic smile.

“You can hardly call amoebas terrorists.”

“What did she say to you?” he asked.

It might have seemed like a non sequitur, but I knew what he was talking about.

“Who?”

“That thing who called herself MaryBeth. You know what I mean, Errol.”

“No, David,” I said. “No, I don’t. She screamed and called us scum or something like that. But she didn’t say anything to me specifically.”

“She looked you in the eye.”

“Maybe she could tell that I didn’t want her to come to harm.”

“Maybe. What were you writing?”

“Are you having me watched?”

“Every room in this facility is monitored, Errol,” he said. “I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is. When you come to stay at my home, you’ll have a bit more privacy.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

Wheeler smiled. He held up his hands and hunched his shoulders, telling me that he understood but there was nothing that he or I could do about the situation.

In a flash, I understood the difference between human beings and the cellular life that made up the XTs’ reanimations. There was no inflection for those tiny beasts. They merged, shared completely. Such communication was a kind of surrender that had no use for subterfuge or misdirection. All knowledge for the XT was concrete and complete. All intelligence was also instinct. How amazing it must have been for them to discover a life-form that used primitive gestures and sounds to communicate. How lonely we must have seemed in our separateness.

“I just came by to ask you about that look,” David said.

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