Free Bleak History by John Shirley Page A

Nowhere to lay his head.
    What was that line from the Bible? The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
    Me, he thought— only I'm not the Son of Man, I'm not the son of anyone. Going to have to be the sunless man. Hide in the dark for a while. Keep to the shadows.
    That's what he was stuck with. Another quote came into his head—from a very different source, an old hippie rock band. What was that band's name? Knocked down, it gets to wearin' thin. They just won't let you be.
    That's what it was like for Bleak. The feds wouldn't let him be. Their Remote Viewing division —early CCA, maybe—had come sniffing around in Afghanistan, hinting about Special Recruitment. He'd wondered how they knew about him—about his talents. Suspected that they'd set him up to leave the Rangers early. As if they had other uses for him and didn't want him on the firing line.
    But he'd refused to play along, after the Rangers. He'd ducked out on them. Made a life for himself in New York City, where it was easy to vanish in the crowd. A sort of life, anyway.
    It was hard for Gabriel Bleak to live like a normal human being. Couldn't keep a relationship long. Had to be secretive—which women hated. But if he wasn't secretive it was good-bye, Esme; good-bye, Laura; good-bye...Wendy.
    The train hummed through the tunnel, windows flashing with passing lights, and Bleak realized he was clenching his fists, his knuckles white. He tried to relax, but he was seething with anger. Seething at having to run from that chopper; at being tracked by a spotlight from above. Forced to run like a panicked dog with its tail on fire.
    He sang the tune to himself, '“Knocked down, it gets to wearin' thin. They just won't let you be.... “' Muttered, “What band was that...”
    “That was the Grateful Dead,” said a voice near his ear. From some invisible entity.
    “Go away!” Bleak said angrily. And felt it depart.
    He was still burning inside. And he wasn't even sure whom he was angry at. Not at CCA—not particularly. Not at Shoella and her people, with their pointless suspicion of him. Not at the army, especially. Not at his parents...not exactly.
    It was more like he was mad at all of them, and at himself, for the outsider life he had to live. It didn't make sense to be mad at yourself, he figured, for being what nature made you. But that's how you ended up feeling.
    He was quietly but perpetually pissed off at who he was, and what he was, and how everyone around him dealt with it—or failed to.
    It had been that way almost from the first night. The night he'd realized. The night he'd first looked deep into the Hidden. Years ago...

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    Gabriel Bleak, two weeks after his thirteenth birthday.
    He was living with his parents, in eastern Oregon. His parents had caught him at it out in the barn, that night. Could be they had expected to catch him masturbating over a girlie magazine, or smoking marijuana cadged from his young Native friends on the Rez, or feeling up some drunken local girl.
    But this...
    He had been a kid living alone with his folks on a ranch, just trying to keep up with homework and Future Farmers of America meetings—he'd always found being around animals soothing—and getting into rock 'n' roll, and starting to look at girls a lot more: his eyes drawn to their hair floating in the wind, their thighs on the desk chairs at school, the pale, glossy curve of their shoulders when they wore sleeveless blouses, the sudden parabolas of their new breasts; noticing the color of that girl's eyes for the first time, noticing that she'd started painting her nails.
    He'd been a kid reading Marvel comics and Conan and Horatio Hornblower novels; just a kid watching war movies on late-night television. Always drawn to the military.
    Why? What was it about the military?
    But he knew, on some level. Later, grown-up, he'd work out the why of it: if you were a good soldier,