Psychomech (14 page)

… And the fact that Garrison had drawn to himself a small core of his fellows, a circle of close friends—one might almost say disciples—with whom he would spend a great deal of time in the discussion of subjects or experiences or beliefs as far removed from his apparent character as chalk from cheese. Matron would not be at all surprised to find them one night in the middle of a seance or other esoteric experiment; but usually it was just drink and talk. The warm evenings would find them down on the beach where (this time characteristically) Garrison had already been warned about his reckless attitude towards swimming alone, in the night, with no possible hope for survival in the event of a failure of his sense of direction.

These then were some of the traits (Matron might balk at the word ‘qualities’) which set the ex-MP aside from the majority, the run of the mill sick and disabled servicemen; but there were others which were less obvious and far more puzzling. Of these there was the fact that he seemed unaccountably well off for a Corporal in the Military Police(his bank statement showed a monthly interest of amounts well into the four-figure bracket), and also that he numbered among his friends and acquaintances an important German industrialist and a world-wandering heiress—or at least a lady of considerable wealth—whose cards were invariably postmarked in impossibly exotic and, to Matron’s way of thinking, incredibly expensive places. Garrison got cards from Istanbul, Tokyo, Melba, Niagara, Johannesburg, the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus, Berlin and Hong Kong; and they were not merely ‘get well soon’ cards but thoughtful little reminders from someone who had obviously been a lover. Never wordy, always full of meaning, they would say: ‘I loved the way you loved me.’ Or: ‘You were
very
forward—thank goodness!’ And by Garrison’s expression whenever such as these were read out to him by one of his circle, Matron knew that if ever one of the cards said ‘Come’—simply that—then Garrison would discharge himself and go. It must have been a very strange affair, that love could linger and hurt, and both parties feel it, and yet remain apart.

There were, too, letters from Germany (of a business nature, Matron suspected) but she never got to see or learn of the contents of these. And eventually there was the parcel…

That was towards the end of September, in the third month of Garrison’s sojourn. The parcel arrived out of the blue, special delivery. It was taken to him where he sat in a quiet room enjoying the autumn sunshine falling on him through great bay windows. .Opening it (no easy task for the thing was extraordinarily well-wrapped and padded), Garrison took out a pair of wide gold bracelets and built-up, gold-plated spectacles with fixed, wide sides and ‘blind’ lenses in a reflective silver. There was no accompanying note, no instructions, no batteries or wires.

Under Matron’s eagle eye he put on the bracelets and the headpiece (he would never think of the device as a pair of spectacles; ‘spectacles’ as a word had quite lost its meaning for him personally). Tiny claws, on the inside of the headpiece arms where they fitted exactly to his temples in front of his ears, gripped and irritated a little, but not much. The claws were of course a necessity, for through them he ‘heard’ the sound-pictures which would take the place of his sight. And then for a week he did nothing but practice, so that soon he even had to be reminded about meals.

Now he knew what Schroeder meant when he told him that those other instruments had been merely ‘for demonstration’. In less than a month his new possessions had made him almost totally independent.

Near the end of Garrison’s fifth month at the centre (he must be out of the place and fending for himself before Christmas) he was called to the telephone. He knew it would be bad. His sleep had been poor for days, full of a tossing and turning, which had left him with an erratic temper. He had suffered a good many ‘phantom’ pains, originating in his guts and causing nauseous headaches and even vomiting; and yet he knew somehow that his physical health had never been better. He was suffering, in fact, someone else’s symptoms, and he knew who that someone must be. So that even as he picked up the telephone the name ‘Thomas?’ came automatically to his lips.

‘Richard,’ came the ragged whisper over the wire. ‘Yes, it is Thomas. I called to say many things—but chiefly to say that it won’t be long now.’

Garrison caught his breath. ‘Now listen,’ he answered, his throat treacherously dry, ‘I won’t—’

‘
Please
’ whispered Schroeder. ‘Even speaking is painful. Just hear me out. Then you can talk and I’ll listen…

‘My place in the Harz, it’s yours. You are always to allow Saul Siebert access to the surgery, and Adam Schenk into the library and observatory, but apart from that the place is yours to do with as you will—except you must not dispose of it. It will run itself. It is funded separately. Willy Koenig knows all of the ins and outs. Now listen carefully, Richard. Quite apart from the three hundred thousand pounds I settled on you after our meeting, I have deposited eleven and a half million Deutsch Marks in a numbered Swiss account. Again, Willy is the key. This is basically “working money” and should be very fruitful; that is to say, profitable. I foresee the annual interest to be somewhere in the region of three to three and a half hundred thousand pounds. You are extremely rich, my boy.’

‘Thomas, I—don’t know what to say.’

‘Say nothing. We made a pact and I have kept my side of the bargain.’

‘I’m still half inclined to believe you’re a crazy man. All that money!’

Schroeder’s chuckled was a rasp over the wire. ‘What good is money to me now, Richard? Anyway, it will all wait for me—for us! And Richard—if only you knew how
much
there is, salted away in so many places, all growing as the years pass. One day—oh, yes, it will happen—we will be among the richest men in… the… world!’ He began to cough.

‘Thomas! For God’s sake don’t!’ Garrison clutched the telephone and doubled over. ‘Thomas, I can feel something of it, inside me.’

‘Your pain!’

‘Ah’
, the voice on the line gasped. ‘That was not intended. I must… try to make sure it does not… happen again. But in any case, it won’t be long.’

‘Thomas,’ Garrison felt the pain ebbing slowly away, ‘why must you always—’

‘I know, my boy, and I’m sorry, but… Listen, Richard. I have to go now. But when the time comes I won’t be able to control it. I’ll try, but… I hope it won’t be too bad. Well—’

‘No, wait!’ Garrison cried. ‘Listen, we’ll share it. The pain—
final
pain, I mean. I’m strong, I can take it. Don’t hold it in, Thomas. When the time comes, I’ll take my share.’

‘Richard, oh Richard—’ the whisper was a sad small thing, and Garrison had a vivid mental picture of the other shaking his head. ‘Ah, you’re a fool! Do you know what dying is?’

‘No, I don’t. But I do know that I don’t want you to suffer it all.’

After a long pause Schroeder said, ‘I made a good choice in you, Richard Garrison—if, indeed, I had anything at all to do with it…’ And after another pause: ‘One more thing. Do not attend the cremation. There will be nothing there for you. It could even be dangerous. Well, I won’t say goodbye, Richard. Let’s simply make it auf wiedersehen, eh?’

Then there came the click of a handset replaced… and after a moment, the continuous and staccato stutter of a disconnected line. In Garrison’s ears, much more than a telephone’s death rattle…

The pain came in the night four days later. It was a Tuesday late in November, a date which would burn itself into Garrison’s mind forever. For now at last he was to learn what dying was like, or at least what Thomas Schroeder’s death was like.

It had been working up in him over the preceding Sunday and Monday, a burning in his chest, guts and loins, like some virulent poison or acid eating away internally. And he knew that these were not pains he could dispel with pill or hypodermic. What use to drug his body when it was not
his
body that produced the pains? For the pains were Thomas Schroeder’s.

Up until that Tuesday night they had been bearable, coming and going in regular spasms Which Garrison guessed must coincide with the pain-killers Schroeder’s doctors were giving him, but on Tuesday night…

He had looked so ill towards nightfall that Matron, who knew he had been sleeping poorly, prescribed sleeping pills and an early night in bed. Garrison, weakened by his attacks and desiring only a break from them, succumbed easily enough. By 10.00 P.M. he was asleep—and by midnight he was suffering agonies. Only half-conscious as a result of Matron’s draught, half-awake through the steadily increasing pains, he was too weak and confused to cry out but could only lie there, clutching at himself and sweating until his bed seemed awash.

Then, about 1.00 A.M., he came awake and sat bolt upright. Schroeder was in his mind.

Richard, this is it. I can no longer hold it in. Too weak. What you have known is nothing to what you will know now. I am sorry. Damn these doctors. I thought they were mine, but… they have ethics. They will not kill me. And—God help me-I don’t know what it will be like in the other place, and I fear it!

Then—

A blinding light in Garrison’s mind, an incredible agony in his body. His entire being disrupted by pain!

He tried to cry out but could not. Pain froze the cry in his throat, turning it to a gurgle. He fought to draw air, and his expanding lungs seemed to crush organs already burning in their own hell. His body contorted, twisted, his guts seeming to knot inside him. He writhed, thrashed, banged his head against the wall in a wash of searing agony. He clawed at his belly and chest, felt blood flow and mingle with the sweat that coursed from his every pore in a hot, sticky tide.

He could not scream for gasping at air, could not gasp at air for the pain it brought, could not subdue agonies which were not his but those of another, flooding in on him from Thomas Schroeder’s mind amok.

By 2.00 A.M. Garrison knew that he too would die. Twice he had blacked out, only to recover, swept aloft on fresh waves of agony. Bile steamed where he had thrown up, over himself and on to the floor. There was blood in it. Blood seeped from his nostrils, his bitten-through lips, the raw grooves he had torn in his chest and stomach.

Thomas!
he cried in silent agony.
Thomas, you’re killing me, fool.

No answer but a fresh flood of torment, a rolling, rippling swell of nerve-endings dissolving in vitriol, a mental scream that echoed and echoed in his mind. Bent almost double, Garrison’s spasms grew so violent that he crashed from his bed, his body throbbing on the floor like a pinned worm.

Die, you bastard, die!
he screamed into the telepathic void between minds.
Die, for Christ’s whoring, screwing, fucking sake! Die, Thomas, die!

Acid dripped in his eyes, ears, brain. Fire licked his lungs, heart, his very soul. The core and spirit of Garrison threatened to leave him. Blood spurted from his nose, dripped from his convulsed mouth.

Damn you, Thomas. If you won’t die, then I will!
He banged his head on the floor, again and again. Jesus, he didn’t have the strength to brain himself! He found a bottle, knocked from his bedside table and smashed in its fall. The broken neck’s razor edge cut his hand as he lifted it spastically to his throat. One lunge with that glass dagger, one quick slash that he wouldn’t even feel in the torrent of tortures already racking him…

… The door burst open and a young physiotherapist, the night duty intern, rushed in. He had spent the last couple of hours chatting up a nurse in the centre’s grounds, had actually got to the point of seducing her, entering her on the grass in the cool shade of a shrub, when the loud crash had come from Garrison’s room. There had been noises from that same source all night, but Garrison was a bit of a lad and probably had a nurse of his own in there. That had been the thought in the intern’s mind, but the crash convinced him otherwise. That and Garrison’s choked, frenzied screaming: ‘Die—die—die—
die?

The intern kicked the broken bottle from his jerking hand, threw himself on top of him and pinned his thrashing body to the coarse-carpeted floor. Garrison had no strength left. He could not fight the intern off. His writhing was not conscious but born of the pain within. He threw up again, violently, and started to black out.

Alerted by the intern’s nurse friend, others of the staff were now on the scene. Even Doctor Barwell, who had been working late on reports in preparation for an administrative inspection. On the doctor’s orders Garrison .was carried out of his room to emergency, gurgling and spewing all the way. He emptied his bowels into his pyjamas, clawed open the face of one of the interns. He bit his tongue through and arched his back until they thought it must break. And finally, as they stretched him on a padded table-He went limp… life seemed to rush out of him.

Doctor Barwell immediately put his ear to Garrison’s chest. ‘Cardiac arrest—’ he began, but in another moment contradicted himself. ‘—No, there’s a spark, a flutter! A beat, stronger now but erratic. Strengthening. That’s better.’ He glanced up at a sea of damp faces, not really seeing any of them.

‘What was it?’ the duty intern asked, pale and trembling.

‘A fit—epilepsy—I don’t know,’ the doctor shook his head. ‘Someone get on the phone to St Mary’s. I want an ambulance right now. Two of you get dressed, quickly. You’ll go with him. I’ll speak to some people I know in Portsmouth. I want him under strict observation for a week. Whatever that was, it nearly killed him.’

But as it happened, Garrison would only stay in St Mary’s for three days…

On Thursday he was back to normal, or as normal as his bruised and battered body would permit. He had broken two fingers, was fortunate not to have fractured his skull, and the left side of his face was one massive bruise. His tongue and lips were twice their normal size. He kept choking on his tongue and couldn’t eat; and his throat was raw from choking and vomiting. Bruises on his arms, body and legs gave him a sort of Dalmatian appearance, but worse by far was the look of his eyes. Where before they had been smooth and uniformly white, like the rolled-up eyes of a dead fish, they were now quite scarlet, as if filmed over with blood. The doctors at St Mary’s said something about ruptured blood vessels and that the effect would wear off, but it never did.