Five Great Novels Part 14

"This kind of unsupported speculation," Hank said, "as I already informed you, warned you, is worthless. Anyhow, we will send an officer with you to get your evidence. All right?"

Grinning, Barris nodded. "But naturally--"

"We'll arrange for an officer out of uniform."

"I might--" Barris gestured. "Be murdered. Mr. Arctor, as I say--"

Hank nodded. "All right, Mr. Barris, we appreciate this, and your extreme risk, and if it works out, if your information is of significant value in obtaining a conviction in court, then naturally--"

"I'm not here for that reason," Barris said. "The man is sick. Brain-damaged. From Substance D. The reason I am here--"

"We don't care why you're here," Hank said. "We only care whether your evidence and material amount to anything. The rest is your pn.o.blem."

"Thank you, sir," Barris said, and grinned and grinned.

13.

Back at Room 203, the police psychology testing lab, Fred listened without interest as his test results were explained to him by both the psychologists.

"You show what we regard more as a compet.i.tion phenomenon than impairment. Sit down."

"Okay," Fred said stoically, sitting down.

"Compet.i.tion," the other psychologist said, "between the left and right hemispheres of your brain. It's not so much a single signal, defective or contaminated; it's more like two signals that interfere with each other by carrying conflicting information."

"Normally," the other psychologist explained, "a person uses the left hemisphere. The self-system or ego, or consciousness, is located there. It is dominant, because it's in the left hemisphere always that the speech center is located; more precisely, bilateralization involves a verbal ability on valency in the left, with spatial abilities in the right. The left can be compared to a digital computer; the right to an a.n.a.logic. So bilateral function is not mere duplication; both percept systems monitor and process incoming data differently. But for you, neither hemisphere is dominant and they do _not_ act in a compensatory fas.h.i.+on, each to the other. One tells you one thing, the other another."

"It's as if you have two fuel gauges on your car," the other man said, "and one says your tank is full and the other registers empty. They can't both be right. They conflict. But it's--in your case--not one functioning and one malfunctioning; it's . . . Here's what I mean. Both gauges study exactly the same amount of fuel: the same fuel, the same tank. Actually they test the same thing. You as the driven have only an indirect relations.h.i.+p to the fuel tank, via the gauge on, in your case, gauges. In fact, the tank could fall off entirely and you wouldn't know until some dashboard indicator told you or finally the engine stopped. There should never be two gauges reporting conflicting information, because as soon as that happens you have no knowledge of the condition being reported on _at all_. This is not the same as a gauge and a backup gauge, where the backup one cuts in when the regular one fouls up."

Fred said, "So what does this mean?"

"I'm sure you know already," the psychologist to the left said. "You've been experiencing it, without knowing why on what it is."

"The two hemispheres of my brain are competing?" Fred said.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Substance D. It often causes that, functionally. This is what we expected; this is what the tests confirm. Damage having taken place in the normally dominant left hemisphere, the right hemisphere is attempting to compensate for the impairment. But the twin functions do not fuse, because this is an abnormal condition the body isn't prepared for. It should never happen. _Cross-cuing_, we call it. Related to splitbrain phenomena. We could perform a right hemispherectomy, but--"

"Will this go away," Fred interrupted, "when I get off Substance D?"

"Probably," the psychologist on the left said, nodding. "It's a functional impairment."

The other man said, "It may be organic damage. It may be permanent. Time'll tell, and only after you are off Substance D for a long while. And off entirely."

"What?" Fred said. He did not understand the answer-- was it yes or no? Was he damaged forever or not? Which had they said?

"Even if it's brain-tissue damage," one of the psychologists said, "there are experiments going on now in the removal of small sections from each hemisphere, to abort competing gestalt-processing. They believe eventually this may cause the original hemisphere to regain dominance."

"However, the problem there is that then the individual may only receive _partial_ impressions--incoming sense data-- for the rest of his life. Instead of two signals, he gets half a signal. Which is equally impairing, in my opinion."

"Yes, but partial noncompeting function is better than no function, since twin competing cross-cuing amounts to zero recept form."

"You see, Fred," the other man said, "you no longer have--"

"I will never drop any Substance D again," Fred said. "For the rest of my life."

"How much are you dropping now?"

"Not much." After an interval he said, "More, recently. Because of job stress."

"They undoubtedly should relieve you of your a.s.signments," one psychologist said. "Take you off everything. You _are_ impaired, Fred. And will be a while longer. At the very least. After that, no one can be sure. You may make a full comeback; you may not."

"How come," Fred grated, "that even if both hemispheres of my brain are dominant they don't receive the same stimuli? Why can't their two whatevers be synchronized, like stereo sound is?"

Silence.

"I mean," he said, gesturing, "the left hand and the right hand when they grip an object, the same object, should--"

"Left-handedness versus right-handedness, as for example what is meant by those terms with, say, a mirror image--in which the left hand 'becomes' the right hand . . ." The psychologist leaned down over Fred, who did not look up. "How would you define a left-hand glove compared to a right-hand glove so a person who had no knowledge of those terms could tell you which you meant? And not get the other? The mirror opposite?"

"A left-hand glove . . ." Fred said, and then stopped.

"_It is as if one hemisphere of your brain is perceiving the world as reflected in a mirror_. Through a mirror. See? So left becomes right, and all that that implies. And we don't know yet what that does imply, to see the world reversed like that. Topologically speaking, a left-hand glove is a right-hand glove _pulled through infinity_."

"Through a mirror," Fred said. A darkened mirror, he thought; a darkened scanner. And St. Paul meant, by a mirror, not a gla.s.s mirror--they didn't have those then--but a reflection of himself when he looked at the polished bottom of a metal pan. Luckman, in his theological readings, had told him that. Not through a telescope on lens system, which does not reverse, not through anything but seeing his own face reflected back up at him, reversed--pulled through infinity. Like they're telling me. It is not _through_ gla.s.s but as reflected _back_ by a gla.s.s. And that reflection that returns to you: it is you, it is your face, but it isn't. And they didn't have cameras in those old days, and so that's the only way a person saw himself: backward. I have seen myself backward. I have in a sense begun to see the entire universe backward. With the other side of my brain!

"Topology," one psychologist was saying. "A little-understood science or math, whichever. As with the black holes in s.p.a.ce, how--"

"Fred is seeing the world from inside out," the other man was declaring at the same moment. "From in front and from behind both, I guess. It's hard for us to say how it appears to him. Topology is the branch of math that investigates the properties of a geometric or other configuration that are unaltered if the thing is subjected to a one-to-one, _any_ oneto-one, continuous transformation. But applied to psychology . . ."

"And when that occurs to objects, who knows what they're going to look like then? They'd be unrecognizable. As when a primitive sees a photograph of himself the first time, he doesn't recognize it as himself. Even though he's seen his reflection many times, in streams, from metal objects. Because his reflection is reversed and the photograph of himself isn't. So he doesn't know it's the identical person."

"He's accustomed only to the reverse reflected image and thinks he looks like that."

"Often a person hearing his own voice played back--"

"That's different. That has to do with the resonance in the sinus--"

"Maybe it's you f.u.c.kers," Fred said, "who'ne seeing the universe backward, like in a mirror. Maybe I see it right."

"You see it _both_ ways."

"Which is the--"

A psychologist said, "They used to talk about seeing only 'reflections' of reality. Not reality itself. The main thing wrong with a reflection is not that it isn't real, _but that it's reversed_. I wonder." He had an odd expression. "Parity. The scientific principle of parity. Universe and reflected image, the latter we take for the former, for some reason . . . because we lack bilateral parity."

"Whereas a photograph can compensate for the lack of bilateral hemispheric parity; it's not the object but it's not reversed, so that objection would make photographic images not images at all but the true form. Reverse of a reverse."

"But a photo can get accidentally reversed, too, if the negative is flipped--printed backward; you usually can tell only if there's writing. But not with a man's face. You could have two contact prints of a given man, one reversed, one not. A person who'd never met him couldn't tell which was correct, but he could see they were different and couldn't be superimposed."

"There, Fred, does that show you how complex the problem of formulating the distinction between a left-hand glove and--"

"Then shall it come to pa.s.s the saying that is written," a voice said. "Death is swallowed up. In victory." Perhaps only Fred heard it. "Because," the voice said, "as soon as the writing appears backward, then you know which is illusion and which is not. The confusion ends, and death, the last enemy, Substance Death, is swallowed not down into the body but up--in victory. Behold, I tell you the sacred secret now: _we shall not all sleep in death_."

The mystery, he thought, the explanation, he means. Of a secret. A sacred secret. We shall not die. The reflections shall leave And it will happen fast. We shall all be changed, and by that he means reversed back, suddenly. In the twinkling of an eye! Because, he thought glumly as he watched the police psychologists writing their conclusions and signing them, we are f.u.c.king backward right now, I guess, every one of us; everyone and every d.a.m.n thing, and distance, and even time. But how long, he thought, when a print is being made, a contact print, when the photographer discovers he's got the negative reversed, how long does it take to flip it? To reverse it again so it's like it's supposed to be? A fraction of a second. I understand, he thought, what that pa.s.sage in the Bible means, Through a gla.s.s darkly. But my percept system is as f.u.c.ked up as ever. Like they say. I understand but am helpless to help myself. Maybe, he thought, since I see both ways at once, correctly and reversed, I'm the first person in human history to have it flipped and not-flipped simultaneously, and so get a glimpse of what it'll be when it's right. Although I've got the other as well, the regular. And which is which? Which is reversed and which is not? When do I see a photograph, when a reflection? And how much allotment for sick pay or retirement or disability do I get while I dry out? he asked himself, feeling horror already, deep dread and coldness everywhere. _Wie kalt ist es in diesem unterirdischen Gewolbe! Das ist naturlich, es ist ja tief_. And I have to withdraw from the s.h.i.+t. I've seen people go through that. Jesus Christ, he thought, and shut his eyes.

"That may sound like metaphysics," one of them was saying, "but the math people say we may be on the verge of a new cosmology so much--"

The other said excitedly, "The infinity of time, which is expressed as eternity, as a loop! Like a loop of ca.s.sette tape!"

He had an hour to kill before he was supposed to be back in Hank's office, to listen to and inspect Jim Barris's evidence. The building's cafeteria attracted him, so he walked that way, among those in uniform and those in scramble suits and those in slacks and ties. Meanwhile, the psychologists' findings presumably were being taken up to Hank. They would be there when he arrived. This will give me time to think, he reflected as he wandered into the cafeteria and lined up. Time. Suppose, he thought, time is round, like the Earth. You sail west to reach India. They laugh at you, but finally there's India in front, not behind. In time--maybe the Crucifixion lies ahead of us as we all sail along, thinking it's back east. Ahead of him a secretary. Tight blue sweater, no bra, almost no skirt. It felt nice, checking her out; he gazed on and on, and finally she noticed him and edged off with her tray. The First and Second Coming of Christ the same event, he thought; time a ca.s.sette loop. No wonder they were sure it'd happen, He'd be back. He watched the secretary's behind, but then he realized that she could not possibly be noticing him back as he noticed her because in his suit he had no face and no a.s.s. But she senses my scheming on her, he decided. Any chick with legs like that would sense it a lot, from every man. You know, he thought, in this scramble suit I could hit her over the head and bang her forever and who'd know who did it? How could she identify me? The crimes one could commit in these suits, he pondered. Also lesser trips, short of actual crimes, which you never did; always wanted to but never did.

"Miss," he said to the girl in the tight blue sweater, "you certainly have nice legs. But I suppose you recognize that or you wouldn't be wearing a microskirt like that."

The girl gasped. "Eh," she said. "Oh, now I know who you are."

"You do?" he said, surprised.

"Pete Wickam," the girl said.

"What?" he said.

"Aren't you Pete Wickam? You always are sitting across from me--aren't you, Pete?"

"Am I the guy," he said, "who's always sitting there and studying your legs and scheming a lot about you know what?"

She nodded.

"Do I have a chance?" he said.

"Well, it depends."

"Can I take you out to dinner some night?"

"I guess so."

"Can I have your phone number? So I can call you?"

The girl murmured, "You give me yours."

"I'll give it to you," he said, "if you'll sit with me right now, here, and have whatever you're having with me while I'm having my sandwich and coffee."

"No, I've got a girl friend over there--she's waiting."

"I could sit with you anyhow, both of you."

"We're going to discuss something private."

"Okay," he said.

"Well, then I'll see you, Pete." She moved off down the line with her tray and flatware and napkin. He obtained his coffee and sandwich and found an empty table and sat by himself, dropping little bits of sandwich into the coffee and staring down at it. They're f.u.c.king going to pull me off Arctor, he decided. I'll be in Synanon or New-Path or some place like that withdrawing and they'll station someone else to watch him and evaluate him. Some a.s.shole who doesn't know jack s.h.i.+t about Arctor--they'll have to start all over from the beginning. At least they can let me evaluate Barris's evidence, he thought. Not put me on temsuspens until after we go over that stuff, whatever it is. If I did bang her and she got pregnant, he ruminated, the babies--no faces. Just blurs. He s.h.i.+vered. I know I've got to be taken off. But why necessarily right away? If I could do a few more things . . . process Barris's info, partic.i.p.ate in the decision. Or even just sit there and see what he's got. Find out for my own satisfaction finally what Arctor is up to. Is he anything? Is he not? They owe it to me to allow me to stay on long enough to find that out. If I could just listen and watch, not say anything. He sat there on and on, and later he noticed the girl in the tight blue sweater and her girl friend, who had short black hair, get up from their table and start to leave. The girl friend, who wasn't too foxy, hesitated and then approached Fred where he sat hunched over his coffee and sandwich fragments.

"Pete?" the short-haired girl said. He glanced up.

"Um, Pete," she said nervously. "I just have a sec. Urn, Ellen wanted to tell you this, but she chickened out. Pete, she would have gone out with you a long time ago, like maybe a month ago, like back in March even. If--"

"If what?" he said.

"Well, she wanted me to tell you that for some time she's wanted to clue you into the fact that you'd do a whole lot better if you used like, say, Scope."

"I wish I had known," he said, without enthusiasm.

"Okay, Pete," the girl said, relieved now and departing. "Catch you later." She hurried off, grinning. Poor f.u.c.king Pete, he thought to himself. Was that for neal? Or just a mind-blowing put-down of Pete by a pair of malice-head types who cooked it up seeing him--me--sitting here alone. Just a nasty little dig to-- Aw, the h.e.l.l with it, he thought. Or it could be true, he decided as he wiped his mouth, crumpled up his napkin, and got heavily to his feet. I wonder if St. Paul had bad breath. He wandered from the cafeteria, his hands again shoved down in his pockets. Scramble suit pockets first and then inside that neal suit pockets. Maybe that's why Paul was always in jail the latter part of his life. They threw him in for that. Mindf.u.c.king trips like this always get laid on you at a time like this, he thought as he left the cafeteria. She dumped that on me on top of all the other b.u.mmers today--the big one out of the composite wisdom of the ages of psychologicaltesting pontification. That and then this. s.h.i.+t, he thought. He felt even worse now than he had before; he could hardly walk, hardly think; his mind buzzed with confusion. Confusion and despair. Anyhow, he thought, Scope isn't any good; Lavoris is better. Except when you spit it out it looks like you're spitting blood. Maybe Micrin, he thought. That might be best. If there was a drugstore in this building, he thought, I could get a bottle and use it before I go upstairs to face Hank. That way--maybe I'd feel more confident. Maybe I'd have a better chance. I could use, he reflected, anything that'd help, anything at all. Any hint, like from that girl, any suggestion. He felt dismal and afraid. _s.h.i.+t_, he thought, _what am I going to do?_ If I'm off everything, he thought, then I'll never see any of them again, any of my friends, the people I watched and knew. I'll be out of it; I'll be maybe retired the rest of my life--anyhow, I've seen the last of Arctor and Luckman and Jerry Fabin and Charles Freck and most of all Donna Hawthorne. I'll never see any of my friends again, for the rest of eternity. It's over. Donna. He remembered a song his great-uncle used to sing years ago, in German. "_Ich seh', wie em Engel im rosigen Duft/Sich trostend zur Seite mir stellet_," which his great-uncle had explained to him meant "I see, dressed like an angel, standing by my side to give me comfort," the woman he loved, the woman who saved him (in the song). In the song, not in real life. His great-uncle was dead, and it was a long time ago he'd heard those words. His great-uncle, Germanborn, singing in the house, or reading aloud.

_Gott! Welch Dunkel hier! 0 grauen voile Stille! Od' ist es um mich her. Nichts lebet auszer mir_. .

G.o.d, how dark it is here, and totally silent. Nothing but me lives in this vacuum . . .

Even if his brain's not burned out, he realized, by the time I'm back on duty somebody else will have been a.s.signed to them. Or they'll be dead or in the bucket or in federal clinics or just scattered, scattered, scattered. Burned out and destroyed, like me, unable to figure out what the f.u.c.k is happening. It has reached an end in any case, anyhow, for me. I've without knowing it already said good-by. All I could ever do sometime, he thought, is play the holotapes back, to remember.

"I ought to go to the safe apartment . . ." He glanced around and became silent. I ought to go to the safe apartment and rip them off now, he thought. While I can. Later they might be erased, and later I would not have access. f.u.c.k the department, he thought; they can bill me against the back salary. By every ethical consideration those tapes of that house and the people in it belong to me. And now those tapes, they're all I've got left out of all this; that's all I can hope to carry away. But also, he thought rapidly, to play the tapes back I need the entire holo transport cube-projection resolution system there in the safe apartment. I'll need to dissemble it and cart it out of there piece by piece The scanners and recording a.s.semblies I won't need; just transport, playback components, and especially all the cube-projection gear. I can do it bit by bit; I have a key to that apartment. They'll require me to turn in the key, but I can get a dupe made right here before I turn it in; it's a conventional Schlage lock key. Then I can do it! He felt better, realizing this; he felt grim and moral and a little angry. At everyone. Pleasure at how he would make matters okay. On the other hand, he thought, if I ripped off the scanners and recording heads and like that, I could go on monitoring. On my own. Keep surveillance alive, as I've been doing. For a while at least. But I mean, everything in life is just for a while--as witness this. The surveillance, he thought, essentially should be maintained. And, if possible, by me. I should always be watching, watching and figuring out, even if I never do anything about what I see; even if I just sit there and observe silently, not seen: that is important, that I as a watcher of all that happens should be at my place. Not for their sake. For mine. Yeah, he amended, for theirs too. In case something happens, like when Luckman choked. If someone is watching-- if I am watching--I can notice and get help. Phone for help. Bring a.s.sistance to them right away, the right kind. Otherwise, he thought, they could die and no one would be the wiser. Know or even f.u.c.king care. In wretched little lives like that, someone must intervene. Or at least mark their sad comings and goings. Mark and if possible permanently record, so they'll be remembered. For a better day, later on, when people will understand.

In Hank's office he sat with Hank and a uniformed officer and the sweating, grinning informant Jim Barris, while one of Barris's ca.s.sette tapes played on the table in front of them. Beside it, a second ca.s.sette recorded what it was playing, for a department duplicate.

". . . Oh, hi. Look, I can't talk."

"When, then?"

"Call you back."

"This can't wait."

"Well, what is it?"

"We intend to--"

Hank reached out, signaling to Barris to halt the tape. "Would you identify the voices for us, Mr. Barris?" Hank said.

"Yes," Barris eagerly agreed. "The female's voice is Donna Hawthorne, the male's is Robert Arctor."