The Hole

Watch out for that Jay G prick.

The Hole

We exercise in the “morning”.

We eat three meals per “day”.

We try to catch some shuteye at “night”.

Our basic senses are shot to pieces.

For six merciless months we’ve been festering here, locked in an endlessly looping trajectory behind the moon. The Hole, as we’ve come to know it, is a colorless, claustrophobic compartment fashioned out of some kind of sticky otherworldly metal. Our “furniture” is a cluster of waist-high platforms shaped like flat-capped mushrooms, made of that same dull metal. The processed air is always tepid and stale, the drinking water flat and viscous. Our only illumination comes from a series of dim amber overheads that darken during sleep intervals and brighten according to the whims of their operators.

It’s all one great, big, fat fait accompli: there’ll never be a way out of this sweltering roach motel--no rescue ships, no pardons, no escapes.

We’re kept alive for what’s in our heads:

Winston Smythe, Lancastrian biologist.

Austin Glaer, physicist out of Texas.

Jomo Parker, East African psychologist and mathematician.

And me: Michael Pierce, polyglot and supercargo; a reluctant half-path forced to leave his pregnant wife thanks to this accursed “gift” for the most elemental aspects of telepathy.

I’ve never met a Xhent.

Never seen one, never spoken to one.

No one has.

We must be radically different from these things; they seem unaware of sight and sound as we perceive them, and we’ve begun to suspect they lack even corporeality.

Still, something had to build and navigate this ship. Some kind of physical presence must conform to these platforms. We’ve discussed it all ad nauseam, and have to go with what we know:

a): It’s not just about mind reading anymore. It’s about mind control.

b): They’re trying to replicate us on every level.

c): They’re making explosive headway in their audiovisual constructs.

And d): Time is everything.

* * *

It’s always just me in the interrogation chamber, seated on one of those odd metallic platforms with my hands folded and my face a slack mask, dazedly watching these eerily murmuring anthropomorphic figures swimming about on the glassy concave wall. I’m constantly cross-examining myself: don’t those shapes resemble the guys, or at least prototypical humans? And aren’t those utterances coming damn close to approximating words? English words?

I feel guilty as hell--I know the Xhent have been dipping into my deepest memories. So the guys are deathly afraid of telling me anything that might leak back to this chamber, and won’t even think about their respective code pieces.

But there’s something these invisible freaks don’t know about us, something they won’t learn until we’ve smashed them all the way back to whatever foul hole they blew out of.

As proud men of Earth, we’re incapable of placing personal well-being above the needs of our planet.

Scratch an Earthling and you’ll find an army.

We’re indomitable.

* * *

But oh God--just to look out a porthole.

If only I could feel the sun, just see the Earth, I’d imagine the whole drama unfolding again, right before my eyes--

* * *

After all the weeks of waiting…a shower of lights exploding in the night, every blessed night, and then, one absolutely spectacular night, the whole sky lighting up like mad. That’s how it all came about.

An anomaly in the vicinity of Vesta.

A broadside of extraordinary data. Astrophysicists enlisted from every nation. Rumors, accusations, threats, and appeals. Until at last the hard news overtook the safe news.

We were on collision course with an asteroid swarm--a swarm that would forever reduce the world to rubble. As a species we had scraped our way to the loftiest of peaks, stopping at nothing. And now we were history.

But we weren’t going quietly.

What was it, only eight months ago?

I can still feel Christy, barely pregnant, clinging to my neck as we shot for the hills in our little two-seater, just above a wild rush of instant freaks and jabbering proselytizers.

The whole planet had gone mad, as though finally and joyously freed from the constraints of propriety. Rioting, looting, incest--what did it matter? Who’d be around to do the accounting? Yet even then there were whispers of a worldwide refusal to knuckle under.

A cyberspace-uprising of five billion desperate souls spurred a multinational plea for reason, then a cry for action, then a call to arms. Frenzied men took to the streets. Expanding civilian militias overran the airwaves. Threatened with mob rule, national leaders quickly allied to enlist the world’s top physicists and engineers.

Utilizing radical technology kept under wraps for decades, these once-faceless heroes rapidly produced an electromagnetic shield at the upper reaches of the exosphere to deflect all incoming bodies: an undetectable, mainframe-driven, infinitely variable Screen of charged particles surrounding the world like the rind on an orange.

And mankind’s headlong thrust for survival was a staggering success.

We all heaved a collective sigh of relief, embraced our kind like men, and actually celebrated science.

* * *

Came the second big surprise: turns out the swarm was driven by an ancient star-hopping species known as the Xhent. All those incoming asteroids were actually a fusillade, meant to knock us for a loop before they delivered the big one. Yet these Xhent weren’t interested in warring with humans; we were just in their way. What they wanted was the globe itself--there’s not a solid particle in the universe, provided it’s cool and stable enough to approach, that can’t be mined, refined, and hoarded.

Again the Screen worked like magic: impermeable to all objects over half a centimeter in breadth, yet perfectly transparent to our sweet heavenly wavelengths of sun, moon, and stars.

Unfortunately, this wave-only transparency made the Screen entirely penetrable by another wave phenomenon.

One still in its infancy among humans, but child’s play to the Xhent: that unique dynamic flow known as telepathy.

Arguably, Earthling telepaths are a rung up on the evolutionary ladder; open to moods and leanings, far less resistant than the man on the street. The Xhent soon learned they couldn’t manipulate the average stubborn human brain, even with the long-distance prowess born of untold generations of telepathic development.

This made paths their prime targets. Xhent patrols combed the planet daily from just outside the Screen, picking over the stampeding crowds like gourmands in a fish market.

We paths were not only targets for the Xhent, but for merciless witch hunts on the ground.

Vigilantes roamed freely, holding kangaroo courts and public executions with the implicit consent of police. Arson, firearms, and savage dogs were accepted means of smoking out suspects. Vagabonds and immigrants were lynched indiscriminately, streetwalkers and their johns burned alive.

Anyone not conforming to herd norms was immediately fingered as a sympathizer, as an enabler, or as an out-and-out Xhent puppet.

* * *

The most miserable days of my life.

Even for a half-path, a remote Xhentian probe is a crushing experience…disorientation, seizures, coma: telltale signs for any hysterical mob. Forced to desert Christy and our unborn child, I took to the neglected fields and still-smoking ruins, living like a mongrel on whatever would sustain me. Half my waking hours I was a deer in headlights--I’ve no idea how I ended up in a walled-off metropolis. But if not for my telepathic sensitivity, I’d certainly never have been granted governmental asylum.

Their tests proved what I’d spent my life denying: I was a “leaker”, a wholly receptive half-path gradually acquiring the ability to fully engage. They wheeled me out into a new world where, once again, science had come to the rescue. The Screen had been reinforced, from the Kármán Line to just below the shield itself, by tens of thousands of telepathy-boggling scramblers: miniature reverberating satellites hurtling throughout a maze of precisely programmed orbits.

With the Xhent repelled, a permanent alliance of nations was founded almost overnight. For the very first time, men and women saw their tiny blue globe as a precious oasis in a dark and pitiless desert.

Yet it was still open season on telepaths.

They scattered like cockroaches, building secret societies underground, learning to communicate through thought alone. I was luckier than most: the government’s protection plan, while providing for Christy at home, made me an unofficial prisoner with half a reason to go on.

But there was a catch.

There’s always a catch.

* * *

An Earthbound generator was designed to produce temporary escape corridors.

The Morse-like pulsations emitted by this generator comprise every exiting vessel’s unique pulse signature.

The twenty-four alphabetical characters that make up each signature are transmitted solely as code; taken literally they’re gibberish.

When Ground triggers a pulse signature, specific scramblers are rerouted to form the corridor, “short-circuiting” the Screen at stipulated coordinates to create an exit aperture.

Reentry is accomplished when the crew, having successfully completed all scans and voice recognition procedures, replicate the ship’s signature via light flashes from its stern. Only these precisely fulfilled criteria allow re-accessing the aperture.

Signatures, codes, and scans--unbelievably Top Secret.

No official in his right mind would ever allow a path near a restricted operator. We telepaths were pariahs, feared and despised the world over. But there just so happened to be a job opening for a depressed leaker languishing in protective custody.

That’s if conscription can be called a job.

* * *

Big-time global news: a tiny forsaken Xhent ship had been hiding behind the moon while the haughty armada retreated to destinations unknown. This oh-so shy behavior prompted we oh-so decent humans to attempt a parley, but Earthling-Xhent communication was so farcically primitive we could only exchange messages via a childish relay of yes-and-no flashes. Our indefatigable code breakers, having discovered the invaders’ name through the phonetical process of elimination, soon pieced together a history and agenda. And in this manner we learned of an unspecified health issue aboard the ditched little ship.

Abandonment: few affronts in mankind’s lexicon of lesser evils reverberate so profoundly. Everyone agreed that a small team should be sent up.

Anyway, that’s where we guys came in.

Our mini-sub, stocked with food, charts, and personal items, was shot up the corridor like a skyrocket on the Fourth. The three professional men had received memory implants, making each man responsible for a third of our vessel’s singular exit-reentry signature. I was left in the dark.

The idea: squirt us out and immediately close the aperture.

The rest, as they say, is history: the “abandoned” Xhent ship plucked our sub like an apple off a tree, and we four were promptly confined to the Hole…

* * *

“Wake up!” Glaer bawled.

My eyes popped open.

“I swear to God, Pierce, if I catch you sleeping on your feet again I’ll kill you.” He caught himself, smacked the wall with one hand and wiped the sweat off his face with the other. “Half the time I’d give my right arm to know what you’re thinking, all slouched against the wall like that. You maybe picking up on some vibes the rest of us can’t?”

I shut down my memories.

Over the past two months Glaer had gone from simple cabin fever to full-blown paranoia.

“What now?”

He pointed at a throbbing light beside the entry hatch. “It’s time.”

The other guys stepped right up. Parker said, “Don’t be a pantywaist, Piercey. You’re the only one in this pit who can dig up some muck. This time, when they start asking questions, we want you to ask right back. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“Oh, do ‘we’?”

I glanced at Smythe, who turned his big drooping eyes away. Back to his canvas--always cobalt fields under indigo skies. Smythe was in his blue period.

I ground my teeth. “We’ve been over this a zillion times. You know I’m a pig on a stick in there. Nobody says squat.”

“Just the same, Piercey. I’ve been having some really tough dreams lately. And not just those surreal dreams we all have in here--I know it now.” Parker tapped his skull. “Somebody’s been tippy-toeing around in the old brainpan. At night, when I’m tossing and turning, something starts carving and peeling.”

Glaer got in close. “Me too. I get this overwhelming feeling someone we’re supposed to trust is our worst enemy. How about you, Pierce? Any nightmares for you, buddy? Like maybe this place is bugged?”

“You said that last week. And the week before. Anyway, I’ve got better things to dream about than you guys.”

Smythe laid a hand on my forearm. “Listen, Michael. We all know he’s not talking about a mechanical bug. He’s trying to say that, by every indication, there are no secrets among friends.”

I shook off his hand. “I bleed blue and green, just like the rest of you.”

“But,” Glaer said, “you’re a path, damn you! You’re a mind reader.”

“I’m a half-path, man. I can’t interact; I’m just an open book for anyone who can. Remember? The Army stuck me up here as a gateway, so you three pros could study some bogus ‘disease’ on this ship. Now, we all know how that little gambit turned out, so back off!”

Smythe gently shook his head. “You just said it, son, You’re the go-to manual for our friends out there. I hate to be the one to say it, but that open book may be soaking up Hole conversations the way a sponge soaks up water. Even now our words may be attaching to your gray matter as read-only memories.”

“I had a feeling this was coming. So let’s all just clam up, okay? We’ll sit in here like monks. I’m sick of listening to you guys anyway.”

Now the hatch light was pulsing urgently.

“Look, Piercey. Nobody’s blaming you…but, damn it…the signature--”

Smythe snorted. “Not just the signature. He knows as well as anybody that reentry’s impossible without our scans. And I, for one, will cheerfully submit to immolation before I will submit to a scan.”

Glaer watched only me, his features alternating hot and cold. “Every night now,” he muttered, “I see you three in my dreams. I try to speak to you, but you just sit there with your eyes blank and your faces rigid.”

The hatch segments now began their slow counter-clockwise spiraling. Beyond the dilating eye I could see a few guide lights.

“Facsimiles!” Smythe burst out. “While we’re sleeping!” He gawked at us. “But even if a perfect likeness were to pass the code sequence, and the scans, it would still be required to make voice contact with Earth. And those are genuine people down there, not puppets. They will not be fooled by an artifice. A perfect human simulation could theoretically beat a military 3-D scanner and defeat voice recognition parameters. But a human personality’s a different thing altogether. It can’t be fabricated. I know; it’s been tried.”

“By humans,” Parker said. He let it sink in. “Just consider the notion of a personality being scanned by telepathy. Uncountable bytes of data, metaphorically speaking, of the most personal nature. Nuances. Foibles. Memories. Perfectly incorporated into that perfect simulation. A manufactured entity that could convince Ground it was the real thing.”

I shook my head. “Same old argument. Every transmitter needs a corresponding receiver. These freaks could never directly influence non-paths, even if they could breach the Screen.”

Staring hard, Glaer muttered vilely, “Same old rebuttal: once inside it wouldn’t matter. They’d get every available telepath to infiltrate every military organization, every resistance movement, every God-fearing family and institution. And who knows how many of you slippery little frogs there really are.”

“Not again. Glaer--”

“They’d signal their fleet and be right back in business! You paths would welcome them with open arms.” He shoved me hard. “And how about some supposed ‘half’-path, right here in the Hole? Huh, punk? Sent in every night to soak up personality traits…feeding on his sleeping ‘friends’ before going back out for more ‘interrogation’. Pierce, why-oh-why do I feel so violated every time I look at you?”

The hatch swirled fully open. Blinking guide lights urged me forward.

Glaer grabbed me by the biceps. “Don’t you dare think a thing in there, path-boy! You make your mind a blank; you hear? If you open up I’ll break you into little pieces when you get back. Did you pick up on that? Was that clear enough for you?”

Parker and Smythe pulled him off me.

Smythe straightened my collar.

“Mum’s the word,” he whispered.

* * *

I was perched on that same central platform, surrounded by a semi-transparent wall that glimmered with tiny revolving sparks whenever the Xhent probed, and with a kind of rolling static whenever I thought back. The whole chamber was dim and oppressive--here there was never a movement, never a peep. The only sounds were my breathing and the subtle plunks of dripping sweat.

Silence was imperative: Xhentian interrogation came not through words as understood by decent men and women, but through a series of complex intercranial vibrations; an unearthly process producing a deep sense of violation. Initially I’d reacted to these vile probes like a victim freezing under the filthy touch of his mugger. But by now I’d become an exotic mass of still-twitching road kill, a wholly alert dead man. I could lift and lower my head, I could roll my eyes. Now and then I could arch my back or shift on my seat. But that was all.

The glassy hemisphere sputtered.

A tingling in my skull informed me of a new development. After months of negotiations, Earth had agreed to send up an emissary, due at any time. The frustrated Xhent were sick of dealing with me, and were seeking a face-to-face, human-to-human encounter. They needed a mouthpiece.

Fresh human company! But who? The response came a lot like Bow-er. I managed to rock my head, wondering, Bauer?

The vibrations came back: Bauer.

Please, I tried to say, not that rectum! Meredith Bauer: God’s gift to vainglory, the mob’s beloved symbol of media immortality. Everything we’d survived, all we stood for, turned into a glossy circus sideshow. I closed my eyes and ordered every ounce of available energy into one parrying thought: NO!

It wasn’t my place to make demands. For the first time I felt what might be perceived as Xhentian anger. My opinion of Bauer was in some ineffable way softened. A moment later my powers of speech were restored.

Then it all turned really creepy.

I began picking up understandable words.

I began seeing perceptible objects--a little fuzzy, a little blurry, but rapidly sharpening.

This was impossible.

Somehow we’d been…sampled.

You…can…“hear”? a voice asked.

The vibrations bounced around in my skull before radiating outward.

It was bizarre to hear my own voice. “Who said that? Where are you?”

You can…“see”?

A beam shot off the glassy wall and danced one eye to the other. I was being scanned.

You can “feel”? the voice wondered.

The beam played all over my face and down my throat. It split at my sternum, one half passing across each of my shoulders and descending along my arms clear to the fingertips.

Hear…see…feel. Michael…Pierce. Polly…polyglot. Half…path. Eyes…blue.

I was nearly blinded.

Hair…hair brown.

Acid rolled over my scalp.

Hello Michael Pierce. I am talking Michael Pierce. Hello Michael Pierce. I am Michael Pierce.

The voice dropped a few semitones.

Hello Jo-mo…hello Jomo Parker. Eyes brown. Hair…black. Hello Jomo Parker. I am talking Michael Pierce. I am Jomo Parker.

“Stop it!” I managed.

Stop it Michael Pierce. Stop it Jomo Parker. Stop it.

A face very much like Parker’s came swimming onto the concavity. Then it was Parker’s face. The eyes were just blanks, the mouth merely a broad slit devoid of humanity. But it was Parker. And now a body began to fill out underneath.

“Stop it,” I begged again.

Glaer’s face replaced Parker’s. It appeared even more detailed, even more realistic.

Stop it Austin Glay-er. Glaer. Stop it. Wake up. Wake up Michael Pierce. Wake up. If I catch you sleeping on your feet again…I…eye-l…I’ll…kill you.

“Please.”

Stop it Winston Smythe. Stop it.

“Leave us alone!”

I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you Michael Pierce. I’ll kill you Jomo Parker. Stop it. I’ll kill you Winston Smythe. I’ll kill you Austin Glaer. Stop it. Stop it. I’ll kill you. Stop it.

The voice trailed away, the images faded, the interrogation wall dissolved. The magnetic tension keeping every mineral in my body in sync with the platform relented, and I could relax. My brain was still reeling, so that when I stood and turned I found myself stumbling over an apparition sitting cross-legged just behind me. It was an incredibly realistic, almost perfect likeness of a blindly gaping human being, with flickering retinae and glowing fingertips. Moreover, I recognized it right away.

It was me.

* * *

“Saw an apparition!” Glaer sneered. “A spook! A beautifully executed illusion designed to win over our little waffling freak of circumstance. Well, Pierce, I believe the word you’re looking for is hallucination.”

“Apparition, hallucination,” Smythe muttered. “So what’s the big difference? He saw what he saw, or saw what he was meant to see. We end up with the same equation: this plus that equals zero.”

“What is absolutely critical here,” Parker interjected, “is…is the degree of completion. Piercey, you said it was almost perfect, insofar as projections go.”

“It was basically done, man. Details were spot-on. Not only that, they scanned my eyes and prints. And I saw you and Glaer on their wall. Good images; quality stuff.”

“So!” Smythe blew out. “It really is exponential!” He spread his thumb and forefinger an inch. “We must believe they’re this close to perfecting our counterfeit selves, and will be aggressively using them to pass the initial scans from Ground.”

“They still don’t have the code, Smitty. And memory implants, as far as I know, don’t break down.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “But maybe the cortex does…with a little assistance.”

I couldn’t help myself. “Now just what the hell’s that supposed to mean!”

Smythe continued watching me while drumming his fingertips. “They’ll be hammering the signature out of us--piece by piece, man by man. Everything’s coming to a head. I wouldn’t be surprised to find each of us dragged in there, one at a time or all together.”

“What’s the point in that?” Glaer snarled. “They’ve already got their little buddy here, doing their dirt whenever we’re in laundry land.”

“Shut up, Glaer! You silly psycho…just shut your face!”

“You shut it for me, Pierce. All you gotta do is wish it shut. Right?”

“Come, come,” said Parker.

Glaer stared at him. “So! Maybe it’s about time we had us an accounting. Just whose side are you on, anyway?”

“You forget I’m a psychologist, Glaer. I don’t take sides.”

Parker wriggled his fingers. “Look at us, snarling away like animals. But we’re human animals, damn it…we’re mammals armed with brains biochemically developed for group survival. Conscience--conscience and honor, genuine values…these are highly evolved aspects of the self-preservation instinct.”

“I asked for an accounting, Shrink, not a lecture.”

“Fair enough. I just want to say an accounting is unnecessary. No matter how deeply they dig, they’ll never get what they want--the primal stuff is way too embedded. They can hang us on meat hooks and torture us into the grave, but there are realms of the soul that are inviolable. We’re talking our planet here, our species. As patriotic men of Earth, we cannot be compromised.”

“Still…” Smythe said, clucking his tongue. “The stuff of your argument, Jomo, is predicated upon the concept of a hypothetical animal with healthy faculties. But that very same hypothetical man, perpetually subjected to suggestion, will be incapable of logical reactions. He will be, quite literally, ‘out of his mind’.”

“Tippy-toe,” said Parker, watching me curiously. “Tippy-toe.” He clasped his hands and began pacing in a small circle. “So what else did you learn in there, Piercey?”

“Only that we’re due a visitor.”

“A visitor!”

“They want an emissary for real-life negotiations. By ‘emissary’ they mean a journalist. They’re loading a man called Bauer. Oh, don’t look so innocent: y’all know him. Meredith Bauer. East Coast luminary and man about town; that’s if you consider the planet Earth a town. Apparently they’ve been in negotiations with the Army for some time now, and he’s due at any moment.”

“No negotiating!” Glaer said. “That’s always been our slogan, and it’s always been our ultimatum. You tell him to go to hell.”

Parker glared to starboard. “Bauer! I’ve always despised that creep…forget that I’ve never met the man. And he may be a prima donna, but he’s way too smart to be buffaloed.” He shook his head. “If he’ll come up here he’ll go anywhere, do anything, say anything to impress his crop and improve his celebrity.”

“If…” said Smythe. “That’s the biggest word we’ll ever face. If Michael actually heard as much. If it’s not all a dream implant or direct hypnosis. If it’s not some kind of suggestion well beyond our purview.”

Glaer showed me his fist. “That’s right! Why should we believe a word he says?”

“You, hammerhead,” I said, stabbing a forefinger at Glaer’s nose, “will believe whatever I tell you to believe!”

Parker thrust a forearm between us. “So…Piercey, Piercey, Piercey…let’s talk about dreams. You say you don’t dream about us. But how certain are you?”

“What do you mean, man? You’re starting to sound like this dribbler here. Why would I lie?”

“Nobody said anything about lying. I simply asked if you’re sure.”

“Okay, Parker…one more time. What do you mean?”

“I mean, Pierce--could you imagine yourself doing so? If, say, you just relaxed and closed your eyes, do you think you could picture yourself, well, picturing us? In our sleep?”

I balled my hands into fists. “Of course. What do you expect when you start putting ideas in some guy’s head?”

“And can you imagine yourself leaning over…um…let me put it another way. Can you imagine yourself, well, just wondering about pulse signature pieces?”

“God damn you, Parker!”

But it was as he was describing; I could see myself, a skulking shadow on hands and knees in a dark snoring room. Hyper-cautious. Curious.
“My point exactly!” Glaer exulted. “Why, you…you half-assed excuse for a loyal human being! They’re in your head whenever you leave that chamber! In and out you go. And every time you come stumbling back in you’ve been wrung like a wet towel. Man! Do you honestly believe you’re in control of your own thoughts?”

“Hell yes I do! I honestly believe I’m in control of my own thoughts.”

“Michael,” Smythe said. “Of four hypothetical souls, three locked away and one under summons…upon which of the four would the onus for suggestion most likely lie?”

I shook my head. “Uh-uh, Smitty. Your hypothetical subject would have to be the village idiot.”

Parker said reasonably, “Nobody’s saying you’re any more suggestible than the next guy, Piercey. Aboard this ship it’s possible to believe anything, to visualize anything. What we’re trying to say is…well, while there’s no question about your being a half-path under Earthly conditions, you just may be a two-way street up here. And nobody’s implying you’re remotely complicit. What we are saying is that none of us know anything for sure. Our implants are designed to prevent any one carrier from referencing any other without a release triggered by Ground. And of course they’re telepathy-resistant. But things work very differently up here, and if our instincts are correct we’ve all been compromised.”

“Do I hear a ‘leak’?” Glaer wondered.

“I’m warning you, Glaer. Right now I’m visualizing sticking my foot down your throat and kicking your a*s from the inside out.”

Glaer flipped me off. “Visualize this, Pierce!”

Smythe rolled his eyes. “Children, children.” He faced me directly. “What am I thinking, Michael?”

“I’ll tell you what you’re thinking, Smitty. You’re thinking about a steak and a cold brew, just like the rest of us.”

“Make that kidney pie and a trinny of Guinni. This, son, is my point: we’re sentinels, and our alert minds are citadels. But when we’re unconscious the sentinels are off duty and those citadels are fully vulnerable to all that is silent and insidious.”

Glaer summed it up with all the diplomacy he could muster. “Yeah, we think you’re using us, suckface. We think you’ve been brainwashed, in there, to ream us when we’re asleep. And we think you’ve been seeding us; putting stuff in our heads as well as taking stuff out. Now, I could give a good holy crap about whether or not it’s your fault, or whether you’re a leaker for posterity or a leaker for hire. Damn you straight to hell, Pierce, you’re a traitor!”

“Careful,” said Smythe. “Those are serious charges, Dr. Glaer. Please don’t speak for others.” He turned back to me. “And now, Michael…now what am I thinking?”

“Aw, Christ. This is ridiculous.”

“I’m thinking we should be most wary of this Bauer person. He is a man of the media, and his words are respected the world over. What he brings back to his followers will be gospel, so it behooves us to create an impression of confidence and camaraderie.”

Parker folded his arms across his chest. “We could enlist him. Maybe make him one of the guys. Convince him to go for the good press.”

“No,” Glaer said. “It’ll never happen. I’ve seen that man at work. He’s a pit bull.”

It was quiet for a minute.

“Y’know,” I said, “there’s a poem I read somewhere. It goes, in part, ‘I shot an arrow into the air. It fell to Earth I know not where’.”

Glaer sighed from the bowel. “Yeah, right. It’s our good old Mr. Longfellow. Syntactic slop, moronic sense of meter, indifferent verse--just another time-honored exercise in mindless platitudes. Keeps the herd’s chins up, but it’s drivel. So what’s your point?”

“My point is I think it’s about taking chances. How can we trust Bauer if we can’t trust ourselves? I agree with Smitty. We’ve got to demonstrate some solidarity.”

Glaer sneered. “So what do we do now, fellow Musketeers? Kiss our rings and raise our weapons high?”

Smythe grinned ear to ear. “I nominate Dr. Glaer our Morale Officer!”

“Let’s scrape some sweat off the walls,” Parker said. “Damn it, you guys, let’s just stand up straight for once! Let’s show him we’re unbreakable!”

Came a hard rocking to starboard, followed by a heaving toll that reverberated throughout the Hole.

It was the buck-and-bray of a ship docking.

“Hey, Parker!” Glaer whispered. “Was that the sound of something breaking?”

* * *

Meredith Byron Bauer entered the Hole like royalty, pausing for a gracious collective bow while the hatch noiselessly wound shut behind him. In appearance he was the piping lovable rascal of countless beamed images: a round little man forever posed as though hobnobbing with heads of state in a paparrazi-crammed ballroom. Not much to look at, far less to recommend, he was still one of the world’s most recognizable and sought after men.

“Gentlemen…” Bauer rocked a stuffed envelope in our faces. “Your home planet sends its warmest regards, along with oodles of personal correspondence from Earth’s proudest family members.”

“Give me that.” Glaer snatched the envelope and passed its enclosed named stacks to each of the guys. When we’d all indulged and were tenderly rebinding our correspondence, Bauer performed an eeny, meeny, miny, moe sequence with a lax forefinger, pausing on me.

“Mr. Pierce?”

“Mr. Bauer. Exactly as I remember! Why, you haven’t aged a day! We used to scope High-Steppin’ religiously; the whole family plugged in as one.”

“The miracles of implants and colonics, sir, not to mention a nip and tuck here and there.” He winked and added, sotto voce, “Just our secret, please. Not something even for your wife and child.”

I watched him suspiciously. “I don’t have any children.”

“You do now. Ah…revelations and indiscretions--isn’t that just me-all-over! Here, my friend; I was saving this for last.”

Bauer handed me a photocell of Christy holding a sleeping newborn.

She was standing in our backyard with the sun in her beautiful green eyes, our little airship gleaming just behind her. Along the bottom, followed by a drawn heart, she’d scrawled: Please hurry home, sweetheart. We’re waiting and praying. Love forever. Christy and Evan. Not since childhood had I felt myself go misty--if it hadn’t been for Bauer, beaming at me there, I might have broken down completely. I tenderly laid her cell atop a pile of fan mail.

“Congratulations,” he said warmly. “She says she’ll name him Evan, if you’re amenable. What may I tell her?”

“I’ll tell her myself. Thanks anyway.” I waved an arm around the Hole. “From all of us.”

“Nonsense. Your admirers would never have let me come up empty-handed.”

Bauer introduced himself to each of the guys before awkwardly perching on a platform.

We all sat like scouts around a campfire storyteller.

“Well, then. Am I to report you’ve been treated reasonably--”

“How the hell did you get up here?” Glaer demanded. “And how are you supposed to get back?”

“I was escorted by the Army, God bless ’em. When we were all waiting at the Screen, Ground triggered the aperture and I was spat out entirely on my lonesome, in one of those cute little ‘Lightspeed Super Subs’. Ocean Ambiance, de-scrambling entertainment consoles, a fully stocked wet bar. Before I knew it I was popped into this ship’s ghastly starboard hold, and thereupon directed by floor lights to this very room. And as far as getting back goes, well, that same military escort will be waiting for me as soon as I’m released. Quite exhilarating, really. I’m sure my fans will eat it right up.”

We all turned, gaping.

“How very convenient!” Parker said. “Now why couldn’t they have pulled that off with us?”

“I’m only allowed this single meet-and-greet. You four were sent up on an indefinite pass.”

“Maybe ‘indifferent’ would be a better word.”

“Ah-ah-ah!” Bauer chided. “Bitterness never plays well! Why can’t you just accept that you’re heroes? My piece will not only make you famous, it will make you historic.” He placed an oval object on the platform and allowed it to scan his hand.

“No recording devices,” said Glaer.

“Of course.” Bauer smiled apologetically and double-tapped the object before pushing it aside.

Glaer pointed at the hatch. “So how did those dumb b******s contact you? For that matter, how did Earth arrange this gabfest? I’ll put it right on the table, pal. Are you a path?”

Bauer was embarrassed and amused. “And here I’ve been so conceited as to believe this would be my little interview. No, Dr. Glaer, I most certainly am not telepathic--just imagine the perks in my business! My friends…a great deal has taken place while you were so gallantly withstanding this ship’s internal pressures. That simple blinking-light code has evolved dramatically, and now meaningful communication is just about spontaneous. Daily updates concerning your heart-stopping struggle are all the news. The Xhent, it seems, were run ragged by the steely resolve of Mr. Pierce here--”

“Steely resolve, my a*s!” Glaer said.

“--who deserves all our praise and gratitude. They’ve decided to open negotiations verbally, utilizing a flesh and blood man of Earth…moi…in conjunction with their only available telepath. So, before I was sent whizzing like a cork from a bottle…” Bauer laid out, face-up on the nearest platform, signed scripts, ID badges, and a small pile of photocells clearly establishing his standing as temporary Army military-media liaison officer. When we were all satisfied he lowered his voice.

“Ergo, fellow daredevils, everything revealed in these confines is ipso facto classified.”

“Negotiate what?” Glaer demanded. “What do they have that we want? They’ve lost! Why don’t they just split while the splitting’s good?”

Bauer grinned irritably. “I’m certain they’re not just hanging around with nothing better to do, Dr. Glaer. As to Earth, well, it’s what we want back; meaning: four healthy original hostages. And as to the Xhent, they obviously want your ship’s reentry code. They’ll never get it, of course. What we hope to provide is a way to gracefully ease them out of their corner. Wink-wink, gentlemen: there’ll be no negotiating. I’m coming out of this with the interview of a lifetime, and the Xhent are coming out of it with a shipload of empty promises. Rather a shame, actually; they’ve been surprisingly accommodating of late. And now, thanks to their bizarre passion for light-messaging, the whole planet knows where we stand, and is just aching for your story in toto. So we’re all up to speed. Let’s do it, team! I’m all ears.”

“Ground knows our ship’s pulse signature,” I said. “Tell them to ignore any matching reentry codes. Tell the Army to delete our signature altogether.”

“Shut your mouth, Pierce,” Glaer said. “I’m going home.”

Bauer continued uncomfortably, “As I mentioned, Earth wants you back. A doomsday option’s surely on the table, but only as a last resort. Anyway, the Xhent could never break four determined men of honor.”

Smythe loudly cleared his throat. He looked us over very deliberately, one at a time, before turning back to Bauer. “There’s more than you know, sir. We’re certain they’ve perfected 3-D projections, and it’s imperative you get this intel back to Ground immediately. Now, Mr. Bauer, we’ve all duly verified your official credentials. We understand your status. But I’m still demanding you not carelessly include any classifiable info in your media reports.”

Bauer’s offense was radiant. “I, sir, have never done anything careless in my long and celebrated career.”

“All the same,” said Parker. “For official ears only.” He raised a forefinger. “Aboard this vessel ‘compromised’ means having inadvertently leaked highly classified code through an undetectable medium created by the minds of our enemy. That enemy has been scanning in the abstract, and, we believe, tapping into our deepest thoughts. We’re very concerned that they may even be able to forge personalities.”

Bauer went pale. “You…you allowed your minds to be scanned?”

“We didn’t allow anything!” Glaer spat. “Those monsters had inside help.”

“I’m confused.”

“Maybe because there’s a joker in this deck you don’t know about. This dirty little telepath has been picking our brains in our sleep. He’s got the code in full.”

“Can this be true?”

I blew it. “Sure, in his own fantasy universe! Glaer’s a basket case! Ask Smitty and Parker.”

Right then Glaer might have taken me out; he was a big man, and not in his right mind. Parker and Smythe formed a flanking barrier.

“Ha!” barked Glaer. “‘Inadvertently’? You’re so compromised you don’t even know whose side you’re on.”

“And you’re so full of crap nobody even knows if you’re on a side! Glaer, I’ll never be…I cannot be compromised!”

“This isn’t an interview!” Bauer cried. “It’s a brawl!”

Smythe vexed Bauer with that patented Smitty leer. “How do we know they’re even in here, Mr. Emissary, sir?” He playfully pinched the recoiling journalist. “How do we know you are?” Smythe smiled all around. “Feels pretty solid. Or is he just supposed to? This level of telepathy is some strange turf, mates. It ain’t only for communication anymore. We may be zealously misinterpreting everything we see, hear, and feel. So…bollocks! And bollocks again!” He slipped a hand under his palette and pulled out a shaped and sharpened slice of metal. “But there’s one thing I think we can all agree upon. You remember Queenie here?” He brought the blade to his throat and made a slicing motion. “Minus a third of the code the pulse signature’s irrelevant.”

“You’d really do that, ‘matey’?” said Glaer. “Then you’re even barmier than I thought.”

“Maybe I wasn’t necessarily talking about meself, ‘killer’.”

Smythe replaced the blade and studied me coldly before addressing the group in general. “Due to telepathic influences aboard this vessel we cannot be sure of anything. More than that, we must consider the entire ship telepathically saturated. We must discount everything we see and hear. We must intuitively doubt anything we even think. Agreed?”

“We must,” Parker squirmed, “be careful of what we say and think. We must be suspicious of anything that warrants suspicion.”

“Not good enough!” Glaer spat. “How in hell can a man be careful of what he thinks? You’re talking about some kind of mental discipline, Parker. But even now your innermost thoughts are floating around in the Hole for any buzzard capable of picking ’em up.” His eyes seared mine. “We’ve been had, brothers. That’s right: we’ve been intellectually raped by some kind of biologic monster.” He stuck his finger in my face. “Look at him! He knows it!”

I was too pissed to even think. The weirdest stick-shadows were dancing in my skull like clothes blowing on a line.

“He’s been compromised from Day One! Now he’s got the whole code locked in his head, and he’ll give it up first chance he gets!”

I hurled a metal bowl at him. Glaer didn’t move. Bauer threw his arms over his head as though expecting to be the next target.

“Why don’t we establish who’s who in this room, path-boy? I’ll show you my cards if you’ll show me yours.” Glaer grabbed one of Smythe’s brushes, dipped it in paint, and smiled at the shocked faces around him. “I’ll write my piece of the code on the wall here, and Pierce’ll tell us if it matches what’s in his head.”

“Stop it, Dr. Glaer!” Bauer pleaded. “Please think! Gentlemen, you mustn’t allow him to continue!” He folded his forearms over his eyes.

“Prove me wrong!”

Smythe leaned in.

“Please tell us he’s bloody mistaken, Michael. Please tell us we’re the only three with a hand in all this.”

“Mr. Pierce!” Bauer wailed. “For God’s sake, refute the man!”

Something strange was jerking me around, digging into my brain. Through a blood-red veil I beheld a dark figure slithering around the Hole on hands and knees; eager to learn, desperate to accommodate. Letters of the alphabet came banging about in my head in no sensible order, trying to form a straight line.

“Back away!”I cried. “That means all of you! Anyone points a finger at me, I’ll bite it off!” I turned to Bauer. “You go right ahead, man, get your equipment. Snap a cell or two. I want the whole world to see this. Just make sure you tell ’em it came straight from the heart of Michael John Pierce!” And I grabbed an oozing tube of indigo from Smythe’s platform, squished the whole mess onto my left palm, and finger-painted on the nearest wall:

I WILL NEVER BE COMPROMISED!

And collapsed on a pile of cells and scripts from home--the only data that really mattered. From now on I’d happily cut my own wrists before I’d divulge a particle of information that could harm another living soul.

“Piercey?” It was Parker. “For Christ’s sake…Pierce!”

I turned to see the guys staring at the wall.

Where I imagined I’d written my defiant message I now saw that I’d painted, in glorious oozing indigo, the entire sequence of twenty-four letters making up our ship’s pulse signature!

I tried to push myself upright. A hand slipped. When my chin struck the platform I grabbed Christy’s photocell and stared until my eyeballs burned. Other than a fresh blue thumbprint it was blank; a flimsy square of featureless white plastic. I shoved through the rest--blanks, blanks! All blanks!

The guys tore out their own scripts and cells, looked them over quickly, threw them down in disgust. The overheads began to dim.

“Gentlemen…allow me…deepest gratitude…”

We all turned to see Bauer displaying his blank “credentials”, his contours and features steadily blurring.

Bit by bit the projection grew transparent, until it was no more substantive than a soap bubble on a breeze. Before vanishing altogether the projection whispered, with depth and with aplomb, “Friends…families…followers…fans…”

It was Bauer’s legendary sign-off!

And the whole thing hit me like a tsunami…fond old memories, telepathically scanned from my ripe, easily plucked plum of a mind--yes, all those nearly buried, youthful memories of Bauer--of a lovable quirky media superstar.

Then these last brutal months of interrogation, of suggestion, of manipulation…

It was as if I could see myself, tiptoeing through the Hole in the dark, night after night…

As if I could see these three loyal men of Earth being violated in their sleep by some leaking sneaking son of a--it was me!

I was everything they’d accused me of.

I was…I am the most despicable creature alive! The man who sold out his friends, the man who gave up his own planet!

“Please,” I managed, “for God’s sake, somebody just kill me.”

Glaer’s fist put me flat on my back. Two seconds later the guys were all over me. Parker threw me into a chokehold.

Smitty’s eyes were wild. He grabbed me by the hair and forced me to stare at the complete pulse signature, now drying on the wall in trails of indigo. “You stupid prick, Pierce! What the hell have you done?”

But my mouth was almost too dry for words.

“I…I shot an arrow--”