Nightmare in Pink (12 page)

Then there were white things, white grunting things, running at me and pulling, and I fought them in a dream, and was yanked and mashed face down and felt a little stinging bite in my buttock.

I rolled under a night sky and saw a thousand tiny peering faces at either side, atop tall in-leaning bodies. There was a thump, a sliding, a bang of doors. Motor roar. High city lights moving by. A sinking deepness, somebody close by and fingers on my wrist. The thing I was in turned on its side and we went off into dark country, scraping swiftly along on the side, leaving a shower of sparks…

After an interval of time I could not measure, I began to be able to exert control over the wall. I could close it up and make it white and blank. It was like making a fist with my mind. If I let the fist relax, the things would come again. After a long time I began to be able to relax the fist little by little without anything appearing. I became convinced that I was awake. Later I was able to make ghastly things appear only by an effort of will, a kind of reaching to make them happen. They lost color and solidity. Finally I could make nothing happen. I was in a white room. I was in bed. I could move only my head.

Two men came in. They stood by the bed and looked down at me. One was in a business suit. He had a bald head and a young face. The other was tall, young and husky, dressed in white.

The one in the business suit said, "How do you feel?"

"Who are you?"

"I am Doctor Varn. I'd like to know if you are still hallucinating."

My mind seemed to take a long time to grasp the question and find the answer. "No. There aren't any things in the wall any more."

"Do you hear any strange sounds?"

"Not any more. Where am I?"

"Toll Valley Hospital, Mr. McGee, just south of New Paltz, New York. It is a private institution for the treatment of mental and nervous disorders."

"Why am I here?"

"Because you are ill, Mr. McGee. Jerry, please go tell Dr. Moore we can schedule Mr. McGee for hypnotherapy at two o'clock."

The one in white left. I heard the door close. "I'm not sick."

"You were very ill, Mr. McGee. You were irrational and violent in front of witnesses, including an officer of the law. In New York State any officer of the law can commit you for observation if he is a witness to dangerous and irrational behavior, if, in his opinion you are endangering public safety."

I wished my brain did not feel so slow and tired and muddy. "Then… wouldn't I go to a public hospital?"

"Usually, yes. But I have been treating you for some time now, Mr. McGee. When you began to behave oddly, your friend, Miss Hendit, became alarmed and phoned me. I arranged to have you brought out here."

"You have been treating me for some time?"

"According to my office files. My nurse can verify it, of course." He shook his head. "Until last evening, I really thought we were making progress."

He was so plausible it frightened me as badly as the things in the wall. I forced myself back toward reality. "What did that whore put into my drink?"

"That's an irrational question, Mr. McGee."

"So give me an irrational answer. Humor me.

"In the past several years we've made some very interesting discoveries regarding the relationship between blood chemistry and mental disorders. In order to get the extreme reaction you experienced, she would have had to give you quite a dangerous dosage of a complex chemical compound which can, in a normal human being, temporarily duplicate all the physical and mental and sensory symptoms of violent schizophrenia."

"But she didn't have to do that because I was already nuts."

He looked down at me with mild surprise and a certain amount of approval. "Mr. McGee, you have astonishing recuperative powers, mental and physical. You broke the arm of a very highly-trained attendant."

"Good."

"I expected you to be slightly incoherent, but your word choice seems controlled. We can schedule you sooner than I expected."

"For that therapy you told him about?"

"Dr. Moore uses a combination of mild hypnotic drugs and hypnotic technique. You see, we need to know a great deal more about you, Mr. McGee. We are particularly interested in all of your activities during the past several days."

"I won't tell you a damned thing."

"That is an irrational statement. But perhaps I made an inaccurate statement. We are not particularly interested in your activities. We have a request for an accurate report of your activities. We are far more interested in your responses to the psychotomimetic drugs."

"The what?"

"Our resident organic chemist, Doctor Daska, had been achieving some interesting variations in the Hofmann formulae, creating more directive compounds in the psilocybin and D-lysergic acid diethylamide areas. The experimental compound the girl gave you has the lab designation of Daska-15. A single odorless tasteless drop. Approximately three-millionths of an ounce, actually, in a distilled-water suspension. Harvard University's Center for Research in Personality has done some basic work in this area, but Daska can achieve more predictability. Daska-15 gives consistently ugly hallucinations, and mimics highly psychotic disturbances of the sensory areas, communication and so on." He seemed to have forgotten he was talking to me. His enthusiasm and dedication were apparent.

"What the hell kind of a place is this?" I demanded.

His young face firmed as he brought his attention back from the misty distances of research.

"Eh? Oh, this is the Mental Research Wing of Toll Valley Hospital, Mr. McGee. We're concerned with psychotomimetic techniques, surgical techniques, electrical and chemical stimulation of areas of the brain-in fact the whole range of the mechanical rather than the psychiatric approach to mental disorder."

"What the hell kind of a doctor are you? You know I don't belong here."

"We're making significant progress in several directions. Important progress." He seemed strangely apologetic, and anxious for me to understand.

"So what?"

"We have chimps and monkeys and rodents who didn't ask to come here either, Mr. McGee."

My mind was quickening a little. "Are you trying to tell me I'm some kind of an experimental animal?"

"All this work is generously supported by foundation money."

Were I a character in a funnypaper, a lightbulb would have appeared over my head. "One of the Armister foundations?"

He looked sad and apologetic. "Crash programs are essential in this area, Mr. McGee. It is… a very difficult thing to weigh a few isolated instances of… questionable ethical behavior against the greatest good for the greatest number. Also…" His voice trailed off into a troubled silence.

"Also what?"

"It would be illegal to attempt to solicit healthy volunteers. And the few cases we can get from the main hospital, with all necessary permissions, are generally so hopeless we can't accurately appraise results." He shrugged a mild sadness away and smiled down at me, his features clean and remarkably handsome under the sheen of his hairless head. "We're not monsters, Mr. McGee. There won't be anything as unpleasant as what you have already been through. Many of the Daska compounds have extremely pleasant side effects. This will merely be a case of taking you through the experimental series, and then, under hypnosis, getting your detailed verbal report of the experience and sensations. You'll be physically checked and checked against the electroencephalograph and given a detailed multiphasic personality inventory test between each segment of the series to determine any area of deterioration."

"You are so comforting, Doctor. Was Charles Armister here?"

He hesitated and said, "He was with us for ten weeks." He looked at his watch. "I'll send in some medication, and some people to get you cleaned up and fed, Mr. McGee."

"You want to keep me healthy."

"Yes, of course," he said, and smiled and nodded and went out.

I had ten minutes alone. McGee, the suave shrewd operator. In retrospect I could marvel at the heights of blundering stupidity I had reached. It was as if a team of experts were systematically looting a bank, and I had come bumbling onto the scene to ask them how they were making out.

Certainly Mrs. Smith of Arts and Talents had checked with the other account. It gave them the time, place and opportunity to get me out of their hair. Probably before that they had become aware of my buzzing around, drinking with Bonita, leaving her a note at the office, getting in contact with Terry Drummond, talking to the law about Howard Plummer, getting close to Plummer's fiancй. So when my buzzing became a little too annoying, they had swatted me. And I hadn't even taken the very elementary precaution of leaving some record of what I had learned, where it could get into the hands of the law.

Suddenly I felt a fear quite different from the terror of any distortion of reality. I was afraid for Nina Gibson and what they could do to her if she tried to do anything about my inexplicable disappearance.

A square sandy woman in white came in, bared my shoulder, held a hypo up io the light, then injected me in the shoulder muscle. She did not speak when spoken to. She swabbed the spot with alcohol before and after the injection and went away. In a little while I chuckled. I felt very very good. What the hell, let them have their fun. It was for the good of mankind. Way down in my mind a little lizard-head of fright kept opening its cupboard and looking out, but I kept shoving it back. I locked the cupboard door.

Two husky attendants came in. They got me up, took me out of the canvas jacket. I wanted to apologize for mussing my bed. I didn't want to be a burden to anybody. They were arguing with each other about the season bets they were going to make on profootball. I wanted to tell them a joke to make them laugh with me, but I couldn't think of one. They took me into an adjoining tiled bath. I stripped on request and they put me into a shower and gave me soap and a brush. I hummed as I showered.

When I came out they gave me a coverall suit to wear, a lightgreen garment zippered from throat to crotch. It seemed the most wonderfully practical and comfortable thing I had ever worn. I couldn't understand why everyone didn't wear exactly the same thing. They gave me straw slippers. Instead of telling me what to do, they tended to give me a shove in the direction they wanted me to go. I didn't mind. They were busy talking to each other. One of them thought the Packers could do it again.

I sat on the bed. They put the wheeled tray in front of me. I had to eat everything with a hard rubber spoon. Everything was delicious. They stood by the screened window and talked. Whenever one would glance toward me, I would smile. But they didn't seem to notice the smile or want to be friends. That was all right too. When I was finished, one of them took me back into the bathroom and produced an electric razor. He watched me until he was certain I could use it properly. I was anxious to use it properly, to please him.

They took me down a hall. It was a gray hall, like ships I had been on. I had a quick look out one window and saw a nice place of lawns and trees, flowers and a parking lot far away, and some people strolling on the paths. It was a very nice place.

They took me to a room. Dr. Varn was there. I was glad to see him again. His friend was named Dr. Moore. He was a nice fellow, too, a middle-sized man like Doctor Varn, but swarthy. They had me get into a lounging chair and then they fixed it so that I was very very comfortable. They darkened the room. Dr. Moore started a tiny light swinging in a circle above me. I watched the light. Dr. Moore told me I was very comfortable. He had a nice voice. Friendly. He was interested in me. I was very anxious to please him.

In all that comfort I closed my eyes and folded back into myself, as if looking down into the blackness inside my head. I could hear my voice and his voice, and they were a little bit apart from me. I could tell Dr. Moore everything. It is good to have someone you can tell everything to. It is good to have someone who is concerned about you. I told him all my troubles, but they did not really seem very important any more. If anything was wrong, he would fix it.

"Oh, you bastards," I said. "You sick dirty bastards."

"Mr. McGee, you can be reasonable or you can be unreasonable. If you are unreasonable, we'll put you under restraint. There is someone here to talk to you. There is something he wants you to do. And you have to be alert and awake to do what he wants. He is certain you will want to do it."

I slowly brought myself under control. I had nothing to gain by getting my hands on Varn. "I'll be reasonable," I said. It was an effort.

"Come with me, please."

The attendants came too. There were small lights in the corridors, like battle lamps. We went down narrow concrete stairs. I was trying to learn as much as I could about the layout.

We went to a small visiting room. They herded me into a metal chair. It was bolted to the floor. They pulled a wide strap like a seat belt across my thighs, and made it fast. When they started to fasten my arms to the arms of the chair, Varn told them not to bother. He sent one away. He told one to watch me. He went out and came back in a few moments with the same man I had seen getting into the Lincoln with Armister and Bonita Hersch.

He had a long face and a long neck. At first glance he looked frail. But sloping shoulders packed the fabric of the tailored suit, and his hands were big and knuckly, his wrists heavy. His white hair was curly, fitting the long skull closely-a dramatic cap of silver. He had a look of cool intelligence. Of importance.

He stood, and without taking his eyes off me, said, "Doctor, if you and your man would wait outside the door, please. I'll sing out if we have any difficulty in here. I don't think we will."

Varn and the attendant went out. The man said, "You do know who I am, of course."

"Baynard Mulligan."

He hitched himself onto a steel table and sat facing me, long legs swinging. "I will have to take Varn's word that you are highly intelligent. You've made belief a little difficult, McGee."

"I'm not used to such rarified atmosphere, Mr. Mulligan."

"You could have figured certain things out for yourself, certain obvious equations. This venture is about ten times as profitable as anything you have ever heard of before. So it was planned for ten times as long, is conducted with ten times the care, and has ten times as many safeguards against interference. Fortunately there are not ten times as many people involved. That would increase the risk and diminish the return."

"How many are involved?"

"Nine of us, to a greater or lesser degree. Say five principals and four assistants. It's very complex."

"How are you making out?"

"We're on schedule. Not too much greed and not too little. A proper amalgam of boldness and caution. In addition to all operating expenses, we've diverted six millions of dollars to established number accounts in Zurich. We're under continuous tax audit of course, which you might call the official seal of approval. Another eighteen months should see us home free-target twenty millions. That is just about the maximum amount we can cover with the faked portfolios and fictitious holdings. Not the maximum, actually. I always insist upon a safety factor. Our Mr. Penerra advises me that it will take years to discover through audit all the ways we managed it and covered our tracks. By then, of course, all five principals will be happily and comfortably distributed in extradition-proof areas. You see, when an applecart gets so big, McGee, one man is a fool to expect to tip it over. What's the matter? You look upset."

"You're telling me a lot."

"Yes, I guess you are reasonably bright. I wouldn't be telling you this if there was the slightest possible chance of your telling anyone else. I assure you, there is not the slightest possible chance. So, if you care to ask questions?"

"If this is such a careful, cautious, brilliant operation, how come you handled Plummer so stupidly? That's what brought me into it."

"I know. Bitter, heartbroken girl, and your duty to poor Mike and so on. Quite touching, actually. But you see, McGee, it was just a curious kind of irony. There was a slight lack of judgment involved. Plummer had a good head. He was becoming troublesome. I tried to talk him into resigning. Simplifying of our operations, no future and so forth. Finally he agreed. I had offered him a five-thousand-dollar bonus at termination. He asked for ten. It seemed strange. He wanted it in cash. That was easily arranged. I thought I knew what he had in mind. Childish, really, but it could have worked. He planned to go to the tax people with it, claim something funny was going on but that he had no proof, and drop the cash on a desk and ask them why he could ask for and get a cash bonus in that amount if his suspicions were incorrect. We had him followed. We found out that he had arranged an appointment. We could not let him keep it, of course. We were set up to have him brought here, under very plausible circumstances. But before it could be finalized that same evening, the poor fellow was actually mugged. By person or persons unknown."

"You didn't have him killed?"

"Don't be a fool. It was an ironic accident. We're too bright and too civilized to be murderous, McGee. This is a business operation. If you have been thinking you would be killed, allow me to ease your mind."

"Do you expect to keep me here forever?"

"That would be too awkward and too expensive. McGee, we are actually in your debt. Things were going so smoothly that we became slightly careless. It was good for us to have you arrive on the scene. Through your efforts we have learned that Olan Harris-the chauffeur, and one of our assistants in this project-has been dangerously stupid. Searching those apartments is unforgivable. For ten thousand dollars he endangered a project concerned with two thousand times that amount. He said he just kept thinking about that money. He is already in residence in this wing. Varn is delighted to get him. He is as hardy a physical specimen as you are, McGee. Poor Varn keeps deploring the fact he can't publish his test findings."

"And is Miss Hersch here too?"

"You are quick, aren't you? She is not subject to that sort of disposal. Or, to be a little more accurate, perhaps, not subject to disposal until the operation is terminated. She is essential. Mr. Armister is dependent upon her. She handles him nicely. Miss Hersch is not exactly a principal, though she believes herself to be. Her behavior in this matter has been very regrettable. She is a snob, of course. She went running when Mrs. Drummond summoned her. She took you at face value. She got drunk. She told you too much, far too much. She admitted all this, admitted she had been foolish, and promised it would never happen again. She did not admit her attempt to arrange to have intercourse with you. But it became quite obvious from what you told Dr. Moore. She is contrite. But I think we can arrange a very suitable discipline for her. Very suitable. It should quiet any random urges she might have been feeling."

"What's going to happen to me?"

"Nothing, until we can be certain no one is going to make a fuss about you, McGee. Varn and Moore and Daska will run tests on you. You shouldn't suffer any damage from those. And when the time seems appropriate, you will be treated and released."

The very casualness of his tone made me feel chilled.

"That word `treated' intrigues me."

"It has made Mr. Armister a very contented man, McGee."

"What has?"

"It's a minor surgery. It used to be used frequently in cases of acute anxiety, but it has been discredited these past few years. I can only give you my layman's idea of it, of course. Varn used to do a lot of them. They go in at the temples, I believe, with a long thin scalpel and stir up the frontal lobes. It breaks the old behavior patterns in the brain. With a normal adult it has very specific effects. It will drop your intelligence quotient about forty points, permanently. It will make you incontinent at first. They'll shift you over to one of the regular rooms for special care-toilet training, dressing and feeding yourself, that sort of thing. You will have a short attention span, but you will be able to make a living doing some kind of routine task under supervision. It does cure all repressions and inhibitions, McGee. You will become a very friendly earthy fellow. Very strong but quite casual sex impulses. You will eat well and sleep well, and you will have no tendency to fret or worry about anything. If somebody annoys you, you may react a little too violently, but other than that you should have no trouble with society. It will be a pleasant life, believe me. Mr. Armister is quite content. We keep him well-dressed and tanned and healthy, and see that he has a chance to satisfy all random desires. In return he signs his name wherever he is asked to. And he creates a nice impression. He isn't very rewarding to talk to for any great length of time, but he passes muster when he sits in on signings and conferences. Most important of all, McGee, you will have just small disorganized memories of all this, and no urge to do anything about anything you do happen to remember clearly. Mr. Armister remembers his wife and children, but has no urge to see them."

I could not speak. There were no words to convey my horror at what they had done to him. And wanted to do to me.

"Charlie is a powerful man," he said quietly. "He led a life of sexual repression and torment. Now he is extremely active, but without what Miss Hersch terms finesse. In the beginning we thought she could provide everything he would need. But after a month she begged off, and we agreed to supply Charlie with girls he could use. It's a minor expense compared with the return which comes from keeping him content. But now, I think, that as a sort of continuous act of contrition, Miss Hersch will assume her prior duties and functions. At any rate, there is something I wish you to do. We have checked you out of the hotel. I want you to write two letters. Varn will bring the necessary materials. You will write to Florida and arrange to have your boat sold and the money and your personal possessions shipped here."

"You're crazy as hell."

"And you will write to Miss Nina Gibson and tell her that you are not interested in pursuing this further, and wish her well, and quiet her suspicions. A nice pleasant and rather chilly brush-off. Actually, a note to Mike Gibson might be in order too. And one to Terry Drumond? I don't know. I'll have to think about it. She is just a little too important and well known to tangle with. Personally I think she'll get bored and say the hell with it and go back to Greece."

"I will not write a damned word to anybody."

"Varn!"

The door burst open so quickly I knew my chances of trying anything were slim. And I had the feeling that in the last twenty-four hours I had lost a small edge of physical coordination. When Varn and the attendant saw nothing was wrong, the attendant stepped back into the hall and the door swung shut.

There was a flavor of wariness in Doctor Varn's approach toward Baynard Mulligan. "Doctor, I would like you to brief Mr. McGee on the Doris Wrightson case."

"I don't believe that would be advisable," Varn said.

Mulligan ignored him. Looking at me, he said, "I can give you a layman's appraisal of her condition when she was brought in. She was a thirty-one-year-old spinster, shy, frail and introverted, an office worker in poor physical condition. Chronic migraine headaches, a susceptibility to infections of the urinary tract, pains in the lower back. Her pulse was rapid and irregular. Emotionally she was tense, anxious, with poor social and emotional adjustments. She became very upset when office routine was disturbed. Though she was a good worker, she tired easily, and she would weep when spoken to harshly. And she had the strange idea that she was sent here for treatment merely because she had stumbled across some irregularity in the accounting system and had come to me, snuffling and wringing her hands, to accuse our Mr. Penerra of peculation." He turned to Varn. "Certainly, Doctor, she had many physical and emotional problems?"

"Yes. Of course."

"But Doctor Varn is obviously reluctant to discuss the experimental treatment, even though it was astonishingly successful."

"I do not believe we should…"

"Experimentations along this line have been conducted in the USSR for some years, didn't you tell me, Doctor?"

But…"

"Everything else that is done here, McGee, can be classified as acceptable therapy. But in this country we have such a sentimental approach to the value of the human animal, that if this line of inquiry became known, mobs would probably appear to burn this place to the ground. It makes Doctor Varn nervous. Please tell Mr. McGee how Doris Wrightson was treated, Doctor."

The two men stared at each other in silent conflict. I saw a gleam of sweat on Varn's bald head. Suddenly Varn gave a small shrug of acceptance. In a perfectly flat voice he said, "After a complete series of tests, an electrode in the form of a very fine alloy wire was inserted into that area of the patient's brain-that deep area which can loosely be defined as the pleasure area. Proper location was achieved through trial and error. A transistorized field-current setup was then adjusted as to the volume of the signal to give a maximum stimulus. In effect this resulted in an intensified pleasure rensation, a simultaneous experiencing of all pleasures, emotional and physical. The patient was given physical tasks, within the limits of her capacities, with the equipment set up in such a manner that the completion of the task would close a contact and give a ten-second stimulus. It was discovered that once the patient had been started on such a cycle, she would continue of her own volition until totally exhausted. Following these procedures, we have made detailed observations of muscle generation, the psychology and physiology of sleep, nutrition, the pleasure phenomenon and related matters."