11. Liar’s Paradox

He was lying through his teeth, that much was obvious to Stephens. He was inconsistent and ignorant even of the United States. Confronted with the devices, he’d sworn up and down he only had the vaguest idea of how they worked. And that had had the ring of truth to it. And he’d been visibly relieved that was a truth he was ... allowed? Willing? to tell.

The sense of bewilderment in the man seemed genuine, but his inability to keep his story straight — as well as its sheer unbelievability; a tourist from America with no passport, that his embassy had never heard of, very convincing, that — made his lying obvious. And he seemed frightened to do otherwise. A coward, that much was clear. But a strange coward, with aspects to him that made no sense, that seemed almost to come from another world.

Even alone in his bugged cell, the snatches of songs he sang to keep himself company for the most part were drawn from the hundred(!) or so songs on his M.P.3. player. If this was a persona, it seemed unlikely he would be perfectly consistent in (supposed) privacy and constantly muddle his own story and let things slip in public.

There were little details, the cloth and fastenings of his jumpsuit and his tooth fillings all made of unknown materials. What could be the purpose of that?

He’d unthinkingly let slip that the radio was called a cell phone, been willing to clarify that it stood for “cellular telephone,” been surprised that it was transmitting, come to an apparent internal realization, and protested too much when called on to share it with the class.

An M.P.3 was a way of storing sound, a form in which to record it, apparently kept in the pattern of the minuscule array of wires within. He had hastened to assure Stephens that it was a storage device only (which seemed true) and used only for entertainment (which seemed less true). He’d also said they had just come out in America; a lie that would have been comical had the situation not been so dire.

The dates on the money were unaccountable, too much and too varied to be a bad print run; the devices, inexplicable. He would be willing to stake the fate of the nation that these were not ordinary objects anywhere in the world. In a way he supposed he was always staking the nation to some extent, but this seemed somehow unique.

The conventional investigators had turned up nothing, even calling the town he had claimed to come from in America to see if there was any record of him, but there were no Ramírezes at all in that city. He seemed to have dropped from the sky, even more so than one would expect from a parachutist.

Maybe it was time to take a different tack with him, let Captain Short take over for a while, a kindlier touch to throw him off balance. His stubbornness seemed come from fear of what might become of his telling the truth, not from being an ideologue, if his manner and musical tastes were genuine and not an elaborate dodge.

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