I unwind from the sheets and stand by the side of the bed. I feel myself, soft ribs beneath gray underwear, thigh muscles, sinews between my legs, balls okay, cock okay….
Hair on my arms and legs, around my junk, hair on my chest, fuzz on my head. To my right is the narrow door to the bathroom, where the light above the shatterproof mirror has been left on—as always.
I blink away a smear of sleep.
The battery-powered electric razor rests precariously on the counter beside the sink. I leave it there, about to fall off every time I use it, as a kind of protest. Maybe I can bankrupt them with busted razors. No outlets anywhere, in case I want to try to electrocute myself. I wouldn’t, but they’ve been careful not to provide temptations or opportunities.
I bend down and feel under the foam mattress. The sap is still there. I haven’t taken it out, haven’t yet been rescued by…
Who?
I lean my head on the bed. The rumpled sheets and blankets look like a topo map of mountains. All rearranged, tangled, no good now.
Shit. Of course none of it was real. I had no idea how weird they could get. How far back does it go? How much do I remember about Mars? I remember meeting Teal, being rescued by her in her buggy. I remember the Voors. I remember Captain Coyle and her Special Ops team. Not all a dream. But everything since being locked in at Madigan is now in question. The whirly-eyed inquisitor finally got to me, finally pushed me into the madhouse. I can almost remember his name… which of course I learned in the dream.
Kafka?
Kmart?
DAYS PASS. NOBODY visits. Food arrives as usual, but tastes bland, pasty. I read, but the paperbacks don’t mean much. I can’t remember the last page. I can’t even remember the cover of the book, unless I turn it over and stare at it, and then, it doesn’t seem to matter. Elmore Leonard? Louis L’Amour? Daniel Defoe?
The bell rings at the window. Takes me forever to get out of the chair and answer. I’m toasted. They’ve finally broken me. Brilliant piece of work. Just lead me out to the end of my rope—somewhere out near Saturn—and jerk me back and that fucking does it. I’m one sad little white lab rat. See my twitchy nose, my beady pink eyes?
The bell rings again. I pack some energy down into my legs and stand to get to the window. The face behind the glass is not the whirly-eyed inquisitor, it’s the other guy. The one who claims he’s Wait Staff. (But didn’t the inquisitor claim that, too? What was his fucking name again, Kafka or Kaffeine? Total toast!)
The face asks, “How are you feeling today, Master Sergeant Venn?”
“Not so good, Doc.” I stick my tongue out and say ahhh. He smiles. This guy looks like a mannequin, the way he dresses, so fashionably lost and feckless, someone’s idea of a middle-aged nerd.
“Have you been sleeping well enough?”
“Too well, Doc. Take me out of the oven, please? I’ll tell you anything you want to hear. Really.”
“We don’t expect that, Master Sergeant. We are most concerned about your welfare.”
“Then let me go. Let me walk on the beach. You can surround me with MPs, I don’t care. I just want to feel sand between my toes and smell the salt water. See the sunset. I need to know I’m back on Earth for real, not somewheres…”
My voice breaks. I can’t finish.
“I am most sorry, Master Sergeant. Perhaps soon. But first, I have to report that we have conducted an investigation into your longtime friend, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Sanchez.”
“What about him?”
“It seems he is not all he appears to be. Certainly not all he told you he was. Why do you trust him, Master Sergeant?”
“Fuck you!” I try to shout, but it’s a raspy croak. I step away from the window and turn my back. Why so angry?
“He was ever your instigator, was he not?” I hear behind me. “He was the one always leading you into trouble.”
I try to go to the bedroom and close the door, but the door won’t close. I want to go into the bathroom but my legs won’t carry me there. I stand by the bed and think about pulling out the sap and just whaling away at my head.
The voice goes on, calm but concerned. “He encouraged you to enlist in the Marines, and then to join the Skyrines. He accompanied you through basic and vacuum school and much of special training thereafter. He was with you at Hawthorne and Mauna Kea, but he was not with you at—”
“Just shut up,” I say.
“While you were training with your drop squad and various chiefs at Socotra. He rejoined you before your first drop on Mars. Did he seem different to you at that time?”
He didn’t. Maybe he did. I don’t remember.
“Did he tell you what he had been doing while he was away?”
He did. He didn’t.
“Thereafter, did he not always seem to have special knowledge about the unpleasant situations you were subjected to during your actions? And was he not always there before you, able to locate you and extract you, even during the most extreme circumstances?”
I return to the living room to face the guy in the window. Is he the same guy in the window I remember from the last time? Doesn’t matter. “I know about you,” I say. “You’re not Wait Staff. Your name doesn’t show up on the lists.”
He ignores that. “Joe Sanchez is a very special individual, is he not?”
“He’s my bud,” I say.
“Then why has he betrayed you so many times?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Suddenly I’m calm and collected and cool. I’m as frosty as a fudge bar in Fargo in February. Vee-Def said that once.
“Are you really anything without Joseph Sanchez? Are you even a complete human being, Master Sergeant Venn?”
“What’s your point, you horse-fucking little dweeb?”
The guy smiles not in cruelty or triumph but in pity. Like he knows he’s about to change my life and not for the better and he almost regrets it.
“Joe Sanchez has been stringing you along since before you were arrested, Master Sergeant. He has used you to advantage, and will use you again.”
“How?” I shout. “I’m stuck here! Bring him to me! Put us together in a room with you and some Louisville Sluggers, I’ll knock the Guru shit out of you—”
The guy behind the glass takes a peculiar, isomorphic side glance that smacks of a special effect gone wrong.
“That’s it!” I say in triumph. “That’s what Kafka said to me. He said you couldn’t be Wait Staff. You have to be a Guru!”
“I am a Guru,” the guy says, and then, briefly, I see him without the overlay. He looks like he could be a fucking Guru, but I’ve never seen one, so how can I be sure? He’s not exactly a mammal, he’s certainly not a bug, and he’s definitely not an Antag. Also, he’s not ugly. He looks efficient and smaller than I would have thought. The figure behind the glass keeps talking. Where’s his mouth? Somewhere above the bump that might be a jaw, below the wide ridge that holds a shiny gray bar that might be his eyes. Gort eyes. RoboCop eyes. Shit. I still don’t see his mouth. Just little motions above the jaw. Maybe he’s a straw-sucker.
“You should ask Joseph Sanchez the following questions,” he says.
For a while after that, I don’t hear anything. I stand there trying to focus on the window, on the deepening darkness beyond the glass.
Sound returns.
“Ask Joseph Sanchez—”
“Yeah, ask him what, Goddammit?”