Deserts of Fire Read online

  No, that’s it. That’s the whole story.

  No, for the last time, I’m not from the future, I’m not you. I’m from … someplace else. Sort of a kingdom next door. And there’s some bad stuff happening there, way more complicated than heroes and Halfway People, but there might be some … refugees, you could say. Things might spill over here, to this world. And if they do, and if you’re in the right place at the right time—you might be, but we’re not sure, it’s not like you’ve got a destiny, you’re just some guy—we hope you’ll try to do the right thing. Don’t stand there. Don’t wait around. Don’t look at your buddies and wait to see what they’ll do. There’s no such thing as fate, but all kinds of tremendous shit seems to keep happening anyway.

  I can’t tell you exactly what you’ll have to do, because I don’t know what’s going to happen. None of us do. So we’re coming over, talking to as many of you as possible in the few moments we have. It’s like, if you teach a kid to play chess, he doesn’t just learn how to play chess, he learns how to think a certain way, how to look ahead, think of things in combination, and that’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to show you.

  Damn. Time’s up. Here I go. Just remember—

  Michael Canfield has published mystery, fantasy, science fiction, horror and just-plain-odd stories on fiction sites including Strange Horizons, Spinetingler, EscapePod, Daily Science Fiction, Black Gate, and other places. His story “Super-Villains” was included in Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2006 edited by Rich Horton. Canfield’s novels include Scaffolds, Growing Up Zombie, Blue City, and Voyage to the Cloud Planet.

  His story “The Language of Monsters” was included in his collection Stairwell to Hell and is a monster story about the US policy of extraordinary rendition, a monster story that makes it difficult to keep track of who the monster really is.

  “the language of monsters”

  MICHAEL CANFIELD

  jason comes to my cell, sets his watch’s alarm. No more than a hour’s exposure at a time, no more than every other day.

  In the hour we talk about many things: the world, politics, God—and we talk about light. At opposite corners this cell has two naked bulbs, in sockets screwed into the brick.

  “I’ll see the next locale has a window—and natural exposure.”

  I thank him. I haven’t felt sunlight in so long. The guards had orders to give me an hour a week here, but didn’t. I don’t trouble Jason with this; he works hard. He holds a responsible position despite his youth; he has more important concerns. Today I leave Egypt for another site anyway, so the matter loses significance.

  Instead, I ask about my next assignment.

  “You’re worried,” Jason says.

  My previous assignment: the black-bearded Saudi, heavy browed, black eyed, yielded no intel. To date none have. I tell Jason I fear if I fail again I’ll receive no more assignments and he will no longer handle me.

  “That’s irrational,” Jason waves the notion away. “We’re a team.”

  “I doubt my abilities,” I tell him.

  Jason frowns, wounded. “You have done everything I’ve asked. It’s on me.”

  Before Jason gave me a job, I had no meaningful existence. Meaninglessness makes solitude unbearable. I can’t return there. I spare Jason this, but he feels it anyway.

  “Look at me,” says Jason. “This is the one. A high-value subject. A driver, from Yemen, detained in Basra. This is the break I’ve … that we’ve waited for.”

  Jason checks his watch. He calls it a diver’s watch. It resists water, it shows direction, it does many useful things, and now it tells him our time together draws short. “We should pray,” he says.

  We kneel in the sawdust. Arms out, palms upward, we give Our Heavenly Father thanks.

  “… Lord help us see what lies hidden, help us rid this world of these monsters who would rain terror on innocents. Give us strength to do our work. In Jesus’s name. Amen.” Jason kneels a moment longer, eyes shut, unblemished face serene.

  “Feel that,” he says. “We’re never alone.”

  God exists in all things.

  Jason’s watch alarm goes off.

  After a deep breath he rises, brushes sawdust off his khakis, calls the guards to bring the crate.

  Safety concerns require I travel in it. A move (I must move often) takes two or three days, sometimes longer. Lying down in a lead-lined crate for transport reminds me of the concrete tomb in Abu Ghraib prison where the Americans found me and liberated me. The tomb had, Jason explained, probably housed me for decades. In the crate, I will lose myself, cease existence. This thought would send me into despair except I know Jason will free me ASAP. I have avoided food beforehand, because, though this mind and soul sleep in the crate, this body still fouls itself.

  Jason will fly ahead, but first he injects me with the sleep drug to ease my passage. He tells me one more thing:

  “I can’t do it without you, Ba’al. I need your help.”

  Before Jason became my handler, I had no identity. I cannot lose his friendship.

  Jason fights to keep the world safe from terror.

  So do I.

  I cannot fail.

  He needs help only I can give.

  I awake at the next site. Jason has prepared it, instructed the guards, chosen my cell, but has already returned to Virginia for other work.

  I lie on a mattress, one of two. I sit up. I acclimatize. Concrete walls. A latrine bucket rests in a narrow space between the mattresses. Straw covers the other bits of naked floor, which measures two meters by two. On the ceiling, three meters high, powerful fluorescents behind chicken wire hum and flicker. A small window in the cell’s door has bars, but no glass. The cell has no window to the outside, no sunlight.

  Circumstances often limit the available options. Anyway I have work to do.

  Nine days pass.

  On the tenth, my assignment begins.

  I stand at the door, press the side of my face against window bars. At this angle I can see way way down the long long hall. The guards have a detainee.

  The detainee, who appears small, wears a hood. The legs and sleeves of the jumpsuit the detainee wears bunch up over wrist and ankle shackles. The detainee shuffles down the hallway between the guards.

  I step away from the door.

  Three days form the standard length of an assignment. In three days I will see Jason again.

  One mattress in this cell appears cleaner than the other. I have left the clean mattress alone. Now I remove straw that worked its way onto the mattress and find spiders there. I brush them away. “Dirty damn spiders! Get lost!”

  Tumblers turn. The guards bring in the detainee, who makes no sound, not crying.

  The guards here work twelve-hour shifts, in pairs. They wear gray wool masks; one wears a gold watch, the others I distinguish by posture. I believe this site lies in Europe. At the Egyptian site the guards acted lax. Just as they did not give me my hour’s sunlight, they did not usually hide their faces—despite orders.

  Here, the guards always wear their masks.

  They unshackle the detainee. They remove the hood. Freed, the detainee’s hair, black stranded with gray, falls slack and wet. I see why this detainee appears small.

  Besides in DVDs that these guards play on their desk at the hallway’s end, I have not seen a woman for so long. In my professional capacity Jason has never assigned me a woman. However, women as well as men, exist in my conscience.

  I have forgotten, as individuals, the people I knew before my liberation. While entombed, my thoughts decayed, but shadows remain.

  The detainee blinks to adjust to the bright light in the cell. She fights to absorb her surroundings: the walls, the straw …

  She takes me in last. Her knees buckle. I appear too large for the cell. I appear with a black beard, heavy brows, and black eyes. I remember seeing this myself, so I know how I look. My jumpsuit appears dingy compared to the detainee’s cleaner one.

  S
he watches the guards go.

  The guards have orders not to speak to each other around me, but after they relock the cell, one makes a remark to the other. Even though they always wear their masks, they do not follow every order given. However, I have not heard them speak their language enough yet to understand it.

  The detainee shrinks into the corner. “Hello,” I say in Arabic. “People call me Ba’al. What may I call you?”

  She doesn’t answer. I try other dialects and some other languages but the problem lies elsewhere. I think she does speak Arabic, and probably English. She experiences shock. She shakes. Her skin, like her hair, appears wet from perspiring, which tells me she does not experience dehydration. I find this fortunate, as we have no water in the cell, and I don’t know when the guards will bring some.

  I sit against the wall in the corner furthest away. I motion her to sit too. She crouches, wraps her arms around her knees.

  “How long since you have seen your family?” I ask.

  She doesn’t answer.

  “You don’t want to talk?” I ask.

  For a long time I wait and listen to her breathe.

  She falls asleep in a ball in the corner. I come close slowly, as not to wake her. Exhaustion binds her. I move her onto the cleaner mattress and use straw to make a pillow for her.

  I lie on my own mattress.

  The guards put in a DVD. The other cells in the hallway stand empty of course, and little noise exists to interfere with the sound of DVDs. The guards like DVDs in English, of people with American accents. I don’t know if the guards speak English, so I don’t know whether they understand the DVD voices or simply enjoy the images of people and things.

  They have several different DVDs and replay them often. I recognize this one from the music. I like the last part of this DVD best and when that begins I rise and go to the little window in the door. I feel the guards like the last part best too. The soldier in the DVD named Ripley protects a young friend called Newt from an alien. The alien has no name. To kill the alien, Ripley crawls into a device resembling a strong artificial man. The alien threatens Ripley’s and her friend’s way of life. The alien kills people, including many Marines, but in the end Ripley kills the alien.

  Hours and hours later, when she wakes, the detainee exists weaker. Normally, sleep restores strength and health in people.

  Not near me, however.

  She does not try to rise. The time hasn’t come yet, so I go to her, try to cradle her shoulder to help her sit up. She recoils from me. “Get away!” she says in Arabic. Her accent sounds poor. I think I know her accent.

  “What country do you call home?” I ask in English.

  “I am a legal resident of Canada!” she shouts. Tears well in her eyes. A laugh escapes her lips, despite everything. “As if that mattered,” she says, “here.”

  I find laughter infectious, so I laugh too.

  She exhales. “Am I here to torture you?” she says.

  “Torture me?” I ask. “Why?”

  She looks me up and down. “A woman in your cell. You must find that humiliating.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re Saudi, aren’t you?”

  She guesses that from the accent from my mouth when I speak. I let her think so.

  “There you are then,” she says.

  “They call me Ba’al. What do they call you?”

  “My name is Muhammad,” she says.

  “That does not seem right.”

  “No I suppose it doesn’t seem right to you. It isn’t the name I was born with. Obviously.”

  “Oh. Did Jason name you?”

  Her look tells me she doesn’t know Jason.

  “Jason named me Ba’al,” I explain.

  “Both our names are lies then.”

  “Jason tells the truth.”

  “You’re certain? You have faith? Of course you do.”

  “Of course I have faith, of course I do. Don’t you have faith?”

  “Not your kind. Do you know where your name comes from?”

  “From Jason.”

  “No, I mean…. Well, you should ask this Jason what your name means sometime.”

  “You drive a car?”

  “I do.”

  “Oh.”

  “That surprises you.”

  “In Canada?”

  “Europe also. We can drive in most places.”

  “In Canada, Europe, The United States. No, that doesn’t surprise me.”

  She makes an expression like a smile, but with lips only. Her eyes don’t smile.

  “Talking to you seems interesting,” I say.

  “Seems? Aren’t you sure?”

  “No.”

  The word frightens her, or perhaps the way I say it does.

  “The process does not go like this …” I reach out. She shrinks away. I put my hands over her face, her nose, her mouth, her eyes. She struggles, but her weak body, unlike her mind, cannot fight. My last assignment, the black-beard Saudi, heavy browed, and black eyed, the man who appeared too big for the cell, he had a mind that long internment had broken.

  If, like this woman who calls herself Muhammad, a detainee come to me with a mind still strong, the process can take many days, not three, but I haven’t the time so, pressing my hands against her face, I pull her mind.

  It doesn’t work. I cause her fear. The fear could move her, but she remains unprepared. She doesn’t accept.

  Or I can make her accept, finish the job, and see Jason soon.

  Enough. I must stop.

  I remove my hands and sit back. I have orders; I have duty. Her chest rises and falls, she sleeps again.

  I follow orders because I, as Jason would say, “am” a soldier. Not everyone can soldier. A guard, for example, says Jason, “is” not a soldier necessarily—even though a guard may belong to the armed forces. For example, according to Jason, the American guards at Abu Ghraib prison back in 2004 did not act as soldiers. Those men and women lacked leadership; he doesn’t fault them that. He does fault them for lacking discipline. He says he and I, true soldiers in the war on terror, strive for a higher standard. We have a hard job, we fight monsters, but cannot allow ourselves to become them. This fight brings value to my life.

  Six days pass with her—not three. Six days. For the last two I’ve female Mohammad’s life force in my hands, as she fades despite resistance.

  “What happens now?” she asks. She knows. They always know. Not on the surface, not in a place they can articulate something so outside their experience, but they do know. So we wait.

  “We can talk,” I say.

  “About what?”

  “Whatever you wish. You have children?”

  She shook her head.

  “Husband?”

  She smiles, almost laughs to herself. “No.”

  “Why not? You don’t like them?”

  She considers her response. “I think I like work more.”

  “Works give life meaning,” I tell her.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about your work.”

  “I made—I make—films. Movies.”

  “I like movies. Did you make any the guards have?”

  “I somehow doubt it. I make documentaries. About women. About people. Our people. Our culture.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s a common reaction.” She pauses to rest. “I have a question. In all this time, you haven’t used the verb ‘to be’ once.”

  “You noticed?”

  “You seem pleased. Forgive me, how can you speak a language so well, know its idioms, and not know the verb ‘to be’?”

  “I know the verb, but it reflects the world poorly. It implies some permanent state. Yet everything moves. We change, we flow, and merely appear to ‘be.’ ‘To be’ means stasis; stasis means death. I rejected the nihilism of stasis, the monstrosity of ‘to be.’”

  She coughs deeply. Her isolated existence ebbs. I give her some water. “We are alive,” she says. “I am
. Though for how much longer?”

  “You will live as long as I do, and I have already lived a long time.”

  “What are you? Are you good?”

  “I seek ‘to be’ good. I can perhaps accept that use of the word. Though goodness, if I possess any, must come from my actions, because how can it pass that I ‘am’ good, unless I do good things?”

  She does not hear me. “I have to tell you, when they first brought me here, I feared you.”

  “Now you feel close to me.”

  She nods.

  “You feel the transference. I come toward you. Allow it.”

  “Can you forgive me? In this cell, looking like you do, I assumed you were a terrorist. Even though I’m falsely accused myself.”

  “You don’t need my forgiveness. You have God’s.”

  She formed the last words she would speak as an individual, as separate existence: “Poor foolish man-child. How can you still hold on to that even in this place? There is no God. Not even a false one. Only people.” She closes her eyes, her eyes, for the last time. With great effort she wraps her hands around mine. “Only us.”

  Exhausted, I lay down next to her.

  Six days, six days it has taken.

  Not three.

  Many more hours pass through the night while last vestiges dissipate, and the mummy forms.

  At last I can rise. I call the guards.

  While I listen to their footsteps approach, I feel a start.

  This one exists different than me, and the others in me. She does not believe in God. No God, not even the wrong God. She said so, and now I feel a floor pulled away beneath me, this void, this empty, this non—I don’t know what to do with this.

  The guards open the cell door.

  Jason has briefed the guards for what they now do, but they find themselves unready, nevertheless. This always happens. This counts high among the reasons Jason moves me often.

  Jason has told the guards to expect a mummified corpse of the Saudi man in the cell with the newer detainee. The cover story exists to protect them. Jason does not tell lies; however, he sometimes finds it necessary to simplify facts. So the guards believe they see the woman who called herself Mohammad alive in the cell, and the large Saudi man dead. Actually they still see me: Ba’al. I have moved to the female’s form and discarded the black-bearded Saudi’s, like a shell. I do this each time. Each time I carry the minds and the feelings of all the others I have interrogated with me. Once I speak the memories of the female Muhammad to Jason the memories will start to fade. The person’s essence stays longer. Forever? I hope Jason comes soon, because the memories now exist heavy in me, provoking me.