13Transmitter & Transducer
WEDNESDAY WAS GOING BADLY.
Hermann had left Newt at 8 AM. After eating breakfast (which he requested, through a closed door, that room service leave in the hall), Newt watched the TV with the sound off and the news playing on the radio. But the ringing. The ringing was louder today.
He turned the radio up, but as soon as his attention drifted from the words he was hearing, it wormed back into his awareness. The ringing, the ringing. Like a mosquito he couldn’t slap.
He turned the volume up on the TV and lay on the carpet, between the bed and the window, with the radio next to his head. Rain hammered the glass. He strummed Caitlin’s guitar for a while, mindlessly running chord progressions, while in his head, his thoughts paced the perimeter inside an electric fence. If he tried to get out—if he stopped playing—he would get shocked.
He closed his eyes and slowly convinced himself of this. Keep playing, or the alien ray zaps your brain.
Obediently he played another chord.
That was a game he had played since childhood. When Newt closed his eyes, only his mind was real. Nothing else outside his head existed. He could logic himself anywhere he liked.
When I open my eyes, there won’t be anything. It will all have been a dream.
He strummed, feeling the vibration in his chest.
This is all my imagination. I’m going to open my eyes, and there will be nothing—no London, no Earth, no universe... Just a big empty plane, a huge silent airplane hangar, an unformed space cloud.
He let the chord echo into silence.
None of it’s real. Just me.
A relative lull in the TV coincided with the end of a transition on the radio, and in the silent slit, it slid in.
The ringing.
He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, trying to withdraw into his mind. It’s not real. Nothing can touch me in here, he thought.
But what if this could?
Newt sat bolt upright and opened his eyes.
This thing was fucking with his brain.
It's feedback, he thought. The ringing. It had to be. Some other signal. Close by. He yanked the radio plug out of its socket, then crawled over to the TV and pulled its plug too. He stumbled into the adjoining room and unplugged those too, then dizzily turned all the light switches off.
It was still ringing.
He got frantic. He pulled the bottom off the desk lamp and pulled out the wires, then took out the lightbulb and smashed it. He pulled the back off the TV and searched its guts. He did the same to the other TV and both radios. Nothing. He tore apart the bathrooms, opening the U-pipe under the sink and unscrewing the head of the shower. He used a coin to unscrew every outlet and vent.
Nothing.
Newt was about to step right off the deep end when at the door came a knock.
Lunch.
He ate his sandwich in the empty bathtub with the lights off. The semi-repaired radio played Lou Reed next to his head, reverberating soothingly off the walls and the tub. The calories soothed him too. All was dark except one thread of light from beneath the door.
Why did you put that thing into your head? he asked himself, properly, for the first time.
This was a problem he sometimes had. The problem that had reared its head on his trip to Langley, nearly two years before. Sometimes things were too good. Sometimes, in the absence of a real problem, he rationalized a net of potentialities and justifications and inventions and then before he knew it, he was trapped inside. And then the only way out was with scissors.
Things were stable now, or had been. He had a stable relationship; Hermann was patient, and Newt had his privacy. He had a stable workplace, focused but out-of-the-way. Conditions could hardly be better.
But Newt was not stable. He did not deserve these things. He deserved—needed—wanted—an instability to match the shape of his psyche. Its spikes and drops, its static frantic ground-covering, its chaos pattern tracking, its unpredictable meteorology. He didn’t belong here. He was not in the world he deserved; it was not good enough for him, it could not keep up with him, but at the same time, he didn’t deserve it as it existed: growing, calm, normal, real. He belonged elsewhere.
But there was no such place.
He would not go down this slope again. If this was where solitary confinement was sending him—he would not go.
He was going to clean up, he decided, and get out of here.
Newt was up, he was out, listing to the left as he smacked on the light and threw open the bathroom door. Light poured in. He turned on the tap and ran it until it was frigid, then plunged his face into it. His glasses went clattering.
When he couldn’t feel his face anymore he came up, ran his hand back through his wet hair. He blinked, tasting salt and iron. He put his glasses back on and found that the foggy reflection in front of him was having a nosebleed.
Newt found her in the alley out back, smoking. Lightcap was hugging herself in a long overcoat, rolling a can back and forth between the heel and toe of her high-heeled boot. The generous eaves of the bar were protecting her from the ongoing downpour. Newt, already drenched, ducked through the curtain of water and splashed his way towards her.
Caitlin was singing:
There's no place in this world where I'll belong when I'm gone
And I won't know the right from the wrong when I'm gone
And you won't find me singin' on this song when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here...
She glanced up. “Hey, Buddy Holly.” She did a double take. “You all right, Newt?”
“I must look really schlubby if you’re giving me the first-name treatment,” Newt said, putting his hand on a dumpster as he felt the first verging of a dizzy spell. His weather-inappropriate wool coat was already soaked through.
“You do,” Lightcap said. “You look like...” He had his eyes closed, waiting for the ground to stop pitching below him. “Seriously, are you all right?”
He straightened up. “It’s just vertigo.” He blinked. “I’m fine.”
“If you say so,” she said, bending down to bump cheeks hello. “Cigarette?”
Newt was pushing himself up to sit on the wooden crates next to her. “Thanks.”
While he wiped off his glasses, she lit one in her mouth and passed it to him. He only really smoked with Cait. He took one pull and then held it between his fingers, immediately forgetting about it.
“Are Laurie and Vivian here yet?”
Cait shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Thanks for the delivery yesterday,” he said. “You really saved my ass.”
“That hotel was seedy as hell, dude,” Caitlin said. “Are you still staying there?”
“No, we moved last night. New place. Downtown. More secure.”
“‘We’? So Dr. Stodg-lieb is slumming with you too?”
Newt snorted at the nickname. “No. I mean, yes, he is. But we moved. To a nicer place.”
Lightcap dropped her cigarette butt and stepped on it. “Why?” she said, lighting another. “What the hell is going on with you two? Are you eloping? Or am I witnessing the early stages of the next big Div scandal?”
“Please. They knew what they were getting when they hired me.”
Caitlin snorted out smoke from her new cigarette. “I knew you had it in you. Burn it all down on your way out. Come and join me. I’ll get you a job.”
“At IBM? No thanks,” said Newt. “No, I think Hermann’s pretty committed to keeping me gainfully employed.”
Lightcap rolled her eyes. “What for?”
Newt shrugged. “Habit?”
“Loyalty?” she said with a derisive edge.
“Convenience.”
“The ample pay, perhaps?”
“The friendships.”
“Ha, ha. Tell me what’s going on.”
Newt remembered the cigarette burning down in his hand, and took another pull. “Yeah. Well, nothing. I just semi-accidentally stole some extremely sensitive CIA equipment from the Estate. And now it’s stuck inside my ear, and everyone is looking for it, and also me.”
“Newt, holy shit,” she said.
He told her the story of his escapades—the transmitter blueprint, the reconstruction, and the semi-accidental theft, followed by the semi-failed real theft. He told her too, as briefly and obliquely as possible, Hermann’s side of it.
“Jesus,” she said when he’d finished. “What a mess.”
“Yeah.”
Newt sat back on the heel of his hand, and breathed in the cold, humid air, the smell of rain and the city and the smoke of Caitlin’s foul American cigarettes. “It’s good to be out,” he said. “I was starting to think the real world no longer existed. Or maybe never had. And that I was just a figment of Hermann’s imagination.”
Caitlin shrugged. “Locking you up is stupid. It’s not like they have any proof.”
“Um, once they apprehend me, they’re gonna find proof right quick. They take one quick look in here with the otoscope and I’ll find myself getting extradited.”
“I meant Hermann,” said Caitlin, exhaling smoke. “He shouldn’t lock you up. They don’t have any evidence against you.”
Newt shrugged. “He just wants to protect me. How much do you know about neurology?”
“Neurology? Some. Why?”
“Any idea what long-term effects a single nonstop frequency might have on the brain or skull or inner ear?”
“No. Besides insanity.”
“As in clinically?”
“No,” she said, exhaling smoke. “But I’m no expert. Are you hearing something?”
“Yes. Actually, no, not out here, with the rain. But when I’m alone and it’s quiet, yes. It’s getting louder every day.”
“Ooh. Maybe it’s a tracking device. And they’re coming closer.”
“Cait, seriously.”
“Seriously, I have no idea. Have you tried taking it out?”
“Yes,” said Newt.
“But have you really tried?”
“Yes.”
Looking skeptical, she pulled her cigarette out of her mouth and threw it down. It made a faint but satisfying hiss when it hit the water.
“So Rennie, huh,” she said.
“Seems like,” said Newt.
“He always was a two-timer.”
“Even in the good old days?”
“Back when he was running with Bowen and Vicky?” she said. “Definitely. Birds of a feather commit treason together.”
Newt snorted. “I guess. Vick being the exception.”
“Someone’s got to get excluded, or it isn’t a club.”
“I s’pose,” Newt said. He frowned. “Wasn’t their heyday before your time?”
“I was recruited younger than you, Shortstack,” she said.
“What? No you weren’t,” said Newt, sitting forward competitively. “I was 21.”
“I was 20.”
“Recruited in uni doesn’t count, you didn’t actually start until you graduated.”
“Anyway, asshole,” she said, “I’m just telling you. Rennie and Victor were awfully close.”
“I didn’t know you knew them so well."
Cait looked at him, then away at the rain. “Not them,” she said.
Newt frowned. “What do you mean?”
She looked back at him, and paused like she was about to say something. Then she caught sight of someone over Newt’s shoulder.
“Look alive,” she said, turning away quickly. “Your boyfriend’s pissed.”
Newt turned quickly, and saw Hermann splashing furiously down the alley towards them under an umbrella.
“Shit,” he said, throwing his cigarette butt into the puddle with Caitlin’s.
“Newt—if Rennie’s involved in this—if he’s alive, and you two numbskulls figured it out, I find it hard to believe Victor doesn’t know it too,” Cait said in a quick, low voice. “And if he doesn’t, he should know. If I were you, I’d look into it.”
Newt just frowned, hopping down from the crate.
“Afternoon, Doc,” Caitlin said loudly as Hermann reached them. “Come to see the show?”
“I most certainly have not,” Hermann said. “Newton—what are you doing out here?”
“Not smoking,” Newt said immediately.
Hermann, opening his mouth angrily, was derailed by the unexpected reply. “I meant—out here. As in outside.”
“It’s a beautiful day, Dr. Gottlieb,” Caitlin said over the sound of the rain. “Can’t a girl smoke outside with some company?”
“Miss Li—Caitlin,” Hermann said. “If you don’t mind. Newton and I must be going.”
“We’re onstage in an hour,” Lightcap said. “So hurry back.”
Hermann raised his umbrella and met her hard look.
There arose in the air the same tension that always rose when Hermann and Caitlin met face-to-face. He was disconcerted by her, by the dangerous edge she articulated in his partner. Caitlin disliked him for all the conventional reasons—rigid, unfunny, interested in boring things, never came to Newt’s gigs, seemed (to her) to exercise an excessive control on Newt’s free will. In truth, this discomfort with his influence was that of someone uncomfortable with the surrender that a relationship demands. In her view, she and Newt were still in the same foxhole, fighting together, and would die before surrender. But the truth, which neither of them really realized, was that Newt had surrendered long ago, and only hunkered down to visit her.
“We’ve got to go,” Hermann said. “Another engagement.”
“Mazeltov,” she said.
“He’s right,” Newt said, touching her arm. “I gotta go.” Smoking had made him light-headed and now he felt nauseous. He was in no condition to stand, never mind to perform.
“If that’s what you think is best,” she said, with an emphasis on you.
“Tell Viv and Laurie I’m sorry.”
Newt was braced for excoriation from Hermann, who was pale and gaunt and visibly shaking. But all Hermann did was lift his umbrella over Newt and put it into his hand—“Take it,” he said, and Newt did—so that he could wrap his arm around Newt and help him down the street. Newt realized that he needed the help.
The tube was still crowded enough to pass unnoticed. Newt could hardly stay standing. Every time the train moved or stopped, the world swirled around him like he was going down a drain. He closed his eyes, nauseous, and tried to hold on. His legs were trembling.
His eyes were still closed when, after a busy stop, hands guided him into an open seat. He gratefully sank down, holding Hermann’s arm to do so. At least in the crowded car, the screaming wheels in the echoing tunnel drowned out the noise in his head.
Hermann looked down at Newton, who was swaying in his seat with the motion of the train. Unaware or beyond caring about the people all around them, Newt leaned forward and rested his head on Hermann’s stomach. Hermann counted to five, then ran a hand through Newton’s wet hair. Then he gently pushed him back in his seat. Newt nodded vaguely, settling back.
By the time they returned to the hotel, Newt was refreshed by his underground nap and enlivened by the news of the transmitter. Hermann vetoed his request to stop at the bar for a brandy to “warm up” (“Absolutely not,”) but Newt insisted he only needed to eat something, and then he’d be ready to test it out.
“I cleaned,” Newt explained, back in their rooms.
“Is that what you did today?”
“Well, first, I made a mess,” said Newt as Hermann sat him down on the bed. “But I cleaned before I left for the gig so that you wouldn’t think I’d been kidnapped.”
“I still thought you had been kidnapped, idiot,” Hermann said, not voicing the other possibility that had occurred to him when he found the rooms empty. “Take off your wet clothes. I’ll call for the food.”
“And put on what?”
“I bought new clothes,” Hermann said testily.
Newt was wiping condensation off his glasses. “Those? No way.”
Hermann picked up the phone. “Catch a cold, then.”
“I will,” Newt said, putting his glasses back on.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“Newton, you almost fainted on the tube. The transducer is affecting you. Tell me your symptoms.”
Newt sighed. “I’m fine. Dizziness. The associated nausea. Headache. Caused by... persistent ringing in my ear.”
“Ringing?” Hermann repeated, like he’d never heard of any such thing.
“Yes. Like when you’re lying in bed trying to fall asleep but you hear a little ‘eeeeeeee,’ you know? Like that. But much louder. And all the time.”
Hermann frowned.
After they had eaten, and after Hermann had told Newton what he’d learned from Chara and Birch, he at last surrendered the little green box. Newt sat on the floor cross-legged and unlocked it. Hermann, sitting at the desk, angled the lamp so he could see better. Newton’s hands moved intently, unhesitant, the same way he played piano—like what he held was part of him and equally manipulable. He flipped open the lid and tipped the transmitter into his palm. It glinted in the lamplight. Then he squeezed the seams of the metal, and the device gracefully sprang open. The transmitter lay open in his palm like a butterfly. He lifted it up to examine his handiwork.
He nudged Hermann’s knee.
“Hm?”
“Glasses,” Newt said, not taking his eyes off his transmitter. “Let me borrow your readers.”
Hermann handed them over and Newt put them on in front of his own glasses to squint at the wiring and minuscule circuit board. Just watching him do it gave Hermann a headache.
“How do you work, little friend...” Newt muttered. He took a deep breath. “Well. After a week of waiting, months of wondering, and years of—” He glanced up at Hermann— “concealing the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence—”
Hermann rolled his eyes.
“—at last, at long, long last, let’s find out what you do.”
With a dramatic flick of the wrist, Newt used his fingernails to pinch the minuscule power switch.
Nothing happened.
Newt frowned, then took Hermann’s glasses off and shut the transmitter with a click.
“Nothing?” said Hermann.
Newt held it up to his ear.
“Bupkis.” He held it up to his other ear. “What the hell?”
“Is the transducer turned on?”
“It’s on. Trust me,” said Newt.
He opened the transmitter again. He squinted at its guts. Everything was in order, just like he remembered it.
“What if they aren’t actually supposed to work with each other?” he muttered.
“Maybe they can’t,” said Hermann. “You made one. The other was made by the CIA. Maybe they aren’t synced. Or tuned.” Hermann frowned. “Is it tuned?”
“What?” Newt said, not listening.
“It’s a radio, isn’t it? Did you put a dial into it?”
“Hermann, what?” he said, looking up.
“Are they tuned,” Hermann articulated, “to the same frequency?”
Newt’s eyes widened. “Frequency. Frequency. Hermann!” He grabbed Hermann’s face and kissed him on the mouth. “The frequency!”
Hermann, blinking, watched Newt jump up and scramble over the bed to fetch the—telephone?
“The day after I got it, I could hear the ringing the whole day, it was just out of range, and I kept trying to find some way to amplify it—I tried everything, I tried the radio, the TV, a glass over my ear, I even stuck a paperclip into it to see if I could make an antenna—didn’t work—but then, but then you called, and I could hear it—a frequency, there was a resonant frequency—so that means it’s somewhere within the phone’s bandwidth! Between 300 and 3,500 Hz!”
Hermann stared.
“So, one of those three-thousand two-hundred frequencies?”
“No!” said Newt, holding the receiver to his ear. He had dragged the phone cradle back across the bed and was sitting on the edge, his legs bouncing. “It’s 8!”
He was punching the 8 button over and over.
“8? How—”
“Here! Listen to it! No, dammit, what am I talking about, you won’t hear anything. It’s 8. The resonance. With the 8 tone.”
Newt was still jabbing the 8 button.
“All right, I believe you. I believe you!” Hermann put his hand on the cradle to hang it up.
“What’s the 8 tone’s frequency?” asked Newt.
“How on Earth should I know? Shouldn’t you?”
Newt was squeezing his eyes shut. “No, I don’t... the tone... There’s two. Each number on a telephone has two frequencies. When you press the button, the two frequencies are transmitted down the line. Then the network interprets the paired frequencies and registers which digits you pressed.” His hand was dancing, like he was turning the pages of a book. “So 8... 8...” He shook his head and opened his eyes. “I don’t know it.”
“But your memory—”
“I haven’t read every technical manual ever published,” Newt said impatiently. “We have to get one. Maybe it’s in the phone book. Maybe they know downstairs. I should call Lightcap, maybe she can—”
“May I?” said Hermann, and took the phone out of Newt’s hands before he could answer. He put the receiver to his ear and started dialing.
“Who are you calling?”
“Information,” said Hermann, adjusting the phone on his shoulder. “Good evening. I have what might seem like a strange question. No. Yes, I’m aware. It’s about telephones. Thank you. Could you please tell me what frequencies the 8 tone transmits? Yes.” There was a pause. Hermann raised his eyebrows at Newton like he was proving some kind of point. “1,336 Hz... and 852? Thank you. Yes, you as well.” He rang off.
“Resourceful,” Newt said, taking the phone back and setting back on the bed.
“Thank you,” said Hermann. “So which one is it?”
“Not so fast,” said Newt, reopening his precious transmitter. “We’re finally getting to the interesting part.”
“Yes?”
“The transmitter has two tuners. And two antennas. And I never knew why.”
“Two?” said Hermann, watching as Newt tuned one with his fingernails, using Hermann’s readers as a magnifying glass. Hermann angled the lamp higher. “Can you see those numbers? They’re minuscule.”
“Just barely,” Newt said, squinting. “8...52. And...”
“1,336.”
“13...3...6...” Newt moved to the other tiny dial. “I always wondered why there were two. The antennas are absolutely tiny too. This thing probably has a range of about five feet.”
“So don’t go far.”
“Mm.”
Newt squinted.
“Done.” He frowned. “It’s tuned.”
Hermann stared at him expectantly.
“Nothing?” he said after a moment.
Newt made a frustrated noise.
“Are you sure it’s tuned correctly?”
“No.” Newt squinted. “I can hardly see these stupid little dials. Hold this?”
Hermann took the transmitter and held it out. Newt leaned in to examine it.
"Is it at 1,336?” said Hermann.
"Yeah, should be..."
Newt felt odd.
“Well, do you hear anything?”
“No, not...”
A question was pressing into Newt’s thoughts but he didn’t know what it was. Like an idea he’d had, but just forgotten—it would come back if he could look at the object his eyes had lit on just a moment before—what was the object? He could see objects, but he couldn’t move his eyes.
He was seeing something else.
“It’s working,” he tried to say, but the sound was distant and doubled, vibrating through his skull but also coming from behind glass. It felt like he was sinking in a pool, letting all the air out of his lungs in a stream of bubbles, sinking down, lower, from the bright warm surface to the cool dark deep.
There was music playing.
Newt was distantly aware of his own hands closing around the bedspread, gripping the fabric, and his eyes closing. He sank deeper: he saw slats of light on a summer evening, he saw the marble corridor of a museum, he saw the signals lab; he saw the directory and the IBM and Wesley from behind; an accented voice said, I think he was a test subject. Ravel was playing over an intercom system, a muffled 5-measure loop in red and black; they were standing in a white hospital room, looking at a balding man in a white bed. His face was turned away.
He saw the interior of a phone booth, I think he was a test subject. They made me listen... He was dialing a phone number—the hotel phone number. Each number was a different color. When he lifted the receiver, the voice that spoke was emerald green.
I think he was a test subject.
Something was pulsing. Was it in his head, or outside? His eyes were closed, but he saw someone sitting in front of him, someone who looked ill and felt green, emerald green, someone gripping the bedspread and tilting dangerously to the left...
“Newton—”
The word vibrated through his head like he had said it himself.
A chair moved abruptly and there was a scuffling sound and a thump, and then everything was dark and silent again—or as silent as it ever was, inside of Newt’s head.
The ringing had stopped.
Also, he was on the floor.
“Are you all right? What happened? Did you hear something? Can you sit up—?”
“Dude,” croaked Newt, eyes still shut. He was becoming reacquainted with the carpet. “I think you have synesthesia.”
“Are you—what?”
Newt started coughing violently.
When he came to, Hermann was holding his chin in his hands, pressing something against his face.
“What’s this?” Newt mumbled. He realized belatedly that he had briefly blacked out.
“Your nose is bleeding,” said Hermann, pressing the handkerchief into his nose. “Tip your head forward.”
Newt sat up, too quickly. Blood dripped down his pharynx, making him cough again. He leaned forward, hacking. The floor pitched below him.
“Are you going to be sick?”
Newt, eyes still closed, managed, “Uh. Maybe.”
Hermann helped him to his feet with difficulty. They only made it a few steps before Newt’s legs gave out, and he heard a hiss of pain from Hermann.
“Oh—Hermann, are you okay? Put me down, I’m okay—”
“Are you—?”
“No, just—”
Newt helped Hermann pivot them clumsily. They collapsed onto the bed.
Newt lay on his back, breathing in through his nose and out his mouth, feeling the nausea ebb. Beside him, he could hear Hermann’s tense breathing. He felt a pulsing in the bedspread that might have been his heartbeat, or Hermann's.
“Did I twist your hip?” Newt said after a moment.
“I’m fine,” said Hermann, in a way that meant yes.
“I’m sorry.”
There was another breathless pause.
“Synesthesia,” Newt said again.
“What are you talking about?” said Hermann hoarsely.
“It’s a perception thing,” Newt said, not opening his eyes. He was still weirdly breathless. “Colors... associated with other sensory input. Like numbers, or letters... Even smells, or sounds. It’s a... a sense thing.”
He cautiously opened his eyes and checked the handkerchief. Not much blood.
“Associating numbers with colors? Everybody does that,” Hermann said to the ceiling. “It’s mnemonic.”
“Not everybody,” Newt murmured.
“What happened, Newton?” said Hermann.
“It worked,” Newt said. “It’s a mind-reading device.”
Hermann had dropped the device when Newt had fainted. Once Newt explained its function, he refused point-blank to pick it up again.
“Come on!” said Newt a few minutes later. “I feel fine. Let’s try again.”
“Absolutely not,” said Hermann. “It’s much too dangerous! Look at yourself!”
“I feel fine!”
“You don’t, Newton, and in any case I do not want you listening to my thoughts!”
They made me listen, Birch had said. They made me listen.
“It wasn’t really sonic,” Newt said. “It was actually mostly seeing. Like seeing your memories. I got snippets of your day, too. Lots of colors, like I said. You’re a much more visual thinker than I would have guessed, by the way.”
Hermann was shaking his head incredulously.
“When you do math—when you look at numbers, or codes—ciphers—are the letters and numbers each different colors? Is that how you’re so good at it?”
Hermann closed his eyes, still shaking his head. “Stop—what did you see?”
“Oh, is this why you won’t do it again? Because you’re worried I’m going to see something embarrassing in there?”
“No,” said Hermann, coloring. It wasn't that. “Because of Birch.”
“What about him?”
“He was a test subject.”
“What? For this?”
“Yes, and Newton, he’s completely gone. And I’m certain he’s not the only person whose brain was damaged by trials of this device.”
“But we—”
“We need to take it out,” Hermann said firmly. “We know what it does. That’s enough. That’s all we need.”
“Take it out? Now? No way!”
“Newton, it’s too dangerous! We need to return it to the Americans. If we cooperate, they might be lenient.” Hermann was starting to get truly agitated.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Give it back?” said Newt.
“Yes!”
“This device? Hermann, have you thought about what this could mean?”
“Yes, it could—”
“No, no, I mean in the hands of the government! This is completely unethical!”
That stopped Hermann up short.
“Did you even stop to think about how a government would use something like this? Picture it—no more interrogations. No more reasonable doubt. No more secrets. Of any kind.” He shook his head. “This is way too dangerous. Not for me. For everyone.”
Hermann paused, his mouth open to object.
“No wonder they all want it so bad,” Newt muttered, looking away. “Imagine what this would mean for surveillance. I mean—you worked for GCHQ. You hardly even have to imagine it.”
Hermann frowned at his accusatory tone.
“Excuse me, but were you about to claim that thing and dub yourself the savior of liberty? You make bugs, Newton, for the British secret services.”
“Yes, bugs to use on other spies,” Newt snapped. “That’s not the same as eavesdropping on people’s thoughts.”
“All right, but you’re hardly the antiauthoritarian rebel—”
“Oh, shut up, you loyalist. Yeah, take the gadget right back to our boss. Take it upstairs to Victor. Wield it to serve your queen and fucking country. Kiss my ass.”
Hermann sighed noisily, trying to cover his rising panic. “Stop being unreasonable. If it’s dangerous and unethical, we ought to take it out and destroy it. Let me take it out.”
“No way,” said Newt again, leaning away from Hermann. “You can’t. We already tried.”
“Then let’s go to a doctor.”
“No!”
Hermann sat back and raised his hands in truce. Newt eyed him warily.
Why won't he let me take it out? Hermann thought desperately. Desperately trying to find an explanation besides the obvious. Why?
Then Newt’s eyes slipped away from Hermann and fixed on the window. “I know what happened,” he said. “In the stables.”
“What do you mean?” said Hermann.
Newt looked up at him. “It was a setup. The Division wanted to steal this tech from the CIA. So they used me as a decoy. They wanted to steal it and then pin it on me.”
“Newton, that makes no sense.”
“No, think about it. The fifth floor put all the clues in front of me... made it look like I had means and motive... Their plan only backfired because I got there first.”
Hermann frowned and looked away. It didn’t make sense—the Division didn’t operate that way. It was clumsy, as an institution, but not mercenary. It would never choose to jeopardize the transatlantic alliance over something like this.
“And Becket,” Newt was saying. “Becket is the fixer.”
“Newton, that’s ridiculous...”
Hermann looked back up at him.
Newt was watching him closely.
“Can I try it again?” said Newt.
“What?” said Hermann.
“I’ll let you take it out if you let me try it. One more time.”
What would he see if he did?
Would he be able to hear it? The thought that Hermann kept having, beneath it all, even as he refused to listen to or acknowledge it?
Hermann shook his head.
“No,” he said. “No.”
That night, they both dreamed of the lake.