Seeking the Mythical Future (5 page)

‘It might kill him. Have you thought of that?'

‘There are always risks in any experiment,' Black conceded. ‘In any case a post-mortem would be almost as valuable; and just think of the prestige if we succeed!'

Dr Hallam went to the window and gazed silently into nothingness, then looked directly at Black. ‘Do we have the necessary equipment?'

‘We have a galvanoscope which Benson was using for the separation of alkaline solutions. He's being transferred to the King's Commission, so he won't miss it. And it shouldn't be beyond us to rig up a galvanic battery and belt.' He gripped Dr Hallam's arm. ‘What do you say? Is it worth a try?' His hand moved downwards and gripped Dr Hallam's left buttock. There was a wicked gleam in his eye.

Dr Hallam shuddered. ‘You always know the best way to get round me. I should say no—'

‘But you won't,' said Black, his other hand unfastening the buttons on the white coat and slipping inside.

‘Oh Mathew—' Dr Hallam's lips were red and moist and yielding. Black pushed her on to the desk and opened her legs with his knee and standing between them inserted himself with a quick stab. She moaned and gripped his shoulders.

‘You'll help me, Sarah, won't you?' Black was thrusting in and out. ‘We'll wire him up together, you and I, and give him the Treatment.'

‘Yes, Mathew, yes.' Her voice was shaking with the movement and her own emotion. ‘You won't be unfaithful to me?'

‘What put that idea into your head?' Black said, panting like a dog.

‘The new blonde girl on Reception is very attractive. I thought you might fancy—'

‘Forget it,' said Black, grunting. ‘All I'm interested in is medikal science.'

*

Permission was granted for a period of deferment, though it was made clear that responsibility for the patient rested entirely with Doktors Black and Hallam. The few days during which the equipment was being assembled and set up were actually pleasant for the man in isolation – being unaware of the forthcoming treatment he was able to relax, to regain his strength, under the impression that once the ‘tests' were completed he would be moved to another wing of the sanatorium. Black became quite friendly, dropping in at various times during the day and bringing him reading material. The man known as Q seemed to have a vacuum inside his head which was ready to be filled with whatever was to hand. Black brought him Packshape's
The Tailor of Valencia
, which Q much enjoyed; he particularly liked the scene where the young female advocate, masquerading as a man, resorts to a striptease in order to disconcert the prosecuting counsel and so win the case.

Dr Hallam was less comfortable in the presence of Q. It was something she couldn't articulate but which, nonetheless, she could almost feel as a tangible aura: not unpleasant exactly, just inexplicable. On one occasion he asked about the relationship between herself and Dr Black, and when she replied that
they were professional colleagues and nothing more he looked at her sceptically and said, ‘I see you both as a single entity, as two halves of the same person.' He regarded her with large soft grey eyes, the colour of a winter sky, and it seemed to Sarah that he must know many things, and yet he professed to remember nothing.

She said to him: ‘You have no past, not even a name. You're curious about the world but not about yourself, where you came from, how you happen to be here.'

‘The world is nothing until we think of it in a certain way,' Q said. ‘It doesn't exist as objective reality, only as a subjective perception.'

Sarah was upset by this. ‘I don't understand,' she said, intimidated by his knowingness. ‘Do you mean to say that nothing exists, that people don't exist?'

‘Not separately of perception,' he answered. ‘Would the reflection of the moon in a pool of water exist if there was no one to look at it?'

‘Why … yes … ' She was confused. ‘I think so. We know that the moon is there, we can see it, and the pool of water is there.'

‘And the reflection?' Q said. ‘When you move, it moves too. Where is it any one moment?' He opened his hands, his wrists still bound to the metal frame of the bed.

Sarah laughed, not very convincingly. ‘And what does that prove?'

‘It proves that we each exist through the perceptions of others. You live in my brain. Why is it that Dr Blake—'

‘Black,' she corrected him.

‘Black: of course. I must try to remember. Why is it that he denies the existence of the seven senses? I read somewhere that radiovision is being developed, which means you must have knowledge of electromagnetism. You might even know of the EMI Field, though I haven't seen a reference to it.'

‘This is subversive talk, I refuse to listen,' Sarah said abruptly. ‘Every sane person knows there are only six senses, the rest are aberrations.'

Q was unperturbed. ‘Name them.'

She looked at him defiantly and rattled them off. ‘Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing, sex.'

‘At least two of those are electromagnetic in source. The sense you omitted—'

‘I will report this conversation to the Authority,' she said harshly. ‘There are worse things than deportation, believe me.' Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes hard and bright. ‘Everything you say is pure delusion.'

She stood up. Then it was true: the man was fit only for Psy-Con. For a while she had been deceived into thinking of him as a normal, rational being, but now there was no doubt that his mind was unhinged. She removed the book he had been reading (Disraeli's
Presidential Days)
and for good measure tightened the straps another final notch. Mathew had been so right about him – to suggest that human brains were responsible for creating the world when it was evident that reality was all around – in her own warm body and the hard wooden floor and the sound of boots marching along the corridor …

But she had to get out. She was suffocating. The room was oppressing her with its heavy, cloying stench. It was only outside – when steadying her breathing and feeling her knees to be filled with water – that she realized the root of her panic: she had been sexually approached by him and had, almost without realizing, responded. The bond had been made and she was as weak and as wet as a new-born babe.

Alone in the room Q closed his eyes and entered the continuing dream of another time and place; his limbs were trembling and saliva was forming thickly in his mouth. In this dream he sees black fathomless spaces, without stars or the faintest light, in which the laws of the natural world have no meaning. The world he inhabits is an arbitrary place in space and time. Within him he feels the urging of a greater knowledge, as of a pattern forming through mist, dimly perceived, the blurred image hardening into definition. And the straps holding him to the metal bed dissolve and his body rises up and floats unhindered above the city, higher still into vacuum; and he is bathed in the cold pure light of a million galaxies.

*

Dr Mathew Black was bent on achieving success: nothing would deflect him from the course he had single-mindedly envisioned for himself. He would become known as the foremost practitioner of the technique known as Gestalt Treatment. It had yet to be decided what was its precise function and purpose; nobody was absolutely sure. In 18.19 a young scientist, Pierre Boorman, working in the specialized sub-field of genetic heritage, had accidentally discovered that a paralytic tension could be induced in living tissue by the action of certain chemicals. The apparatus he devised – the galvanic battery and pile – became the basis for a new experimental branch of physiological science known as galvanology, and Boorman the very first galvanologist. As with most discoveries it was, in the beginning, an interesting phenomenon but lacked a medikal application, and it wasn't till the 18.30s, when the Gestalt Proposition was formulated, that research workers began to see how galvanology could be applied to obtain valid and useful data. Not a great deal of work had been done since then, and the results so far had been patchy and inconclusive. The theory – the idea – was that by attaching patients to the apparatus (the galvanic belt) it would be possible to purge them of all non-associative thoughts. Healthy human beings, as everyone knew, conformed to a strict pattern of behaviour without any deviation from the norm, whereas those who were ill were afflicted by random notions (‘imaginative leaps' was the medikal term) which made them behave in strange and unpredictable ways. Rid them of these non-associative thoughts, the theory went, and you would have healthy, happy human beings in place of the thousands deported each year to Psy-Con. Whether Gestalt Treatment was the answer, or even a workable alternative, nobody knew; Dr Mathew Black, at the frontier of medikal knowledge, was one of those determined to find out. And not only would it be a tremendous leap forward, it would also make his reputation and assure him of a long and distinguished career.

At the moment, however, there was need for secrecy, and Black had to proceed circumspectly; the Authority must be presented with a
fait accompli
 – positive and conclusive evidence
that the technique was viable and would produce the desired effect. In his office he had over the previous months assembled a small library pertinent to galvanology and the theories relating to Gestalt Treatment. He had already coined the phrase ‘Black's Procedure', and in his mind's eye could see it emblazoned in Gothik script on the title page of the treatise he would have the proud pleasure of presenting at the MDA Annual Conference. No one, not even Sarah, knew of this. Subversion and treachery were everywhere; one's colleagues especially were not to be trusted. Give that idiot Benson a whiff and he'd poke his long beaky nose in.

On the morning of the day chosen for the experiment, Black and Sarah Hallam sat in his office working out the final details. The rats had been busy during the night and the papers on the desk were littered and smeared with droppings. There were two packs which roamed the sanatorium, one black, one grey, continually at war over which should have the choice bits of dead flesh in the disposal chutes in the sluice rooms; the greys were in the ascendancy, their fat sleek bodies rustling behind cabinets and their high-pitched squeaks plainly audible as they fought the blacks for a tasty tit-bit.

‘It's time the Authority did something about this,' Black said angrily, picking up each piece of paper and shaking it. ‘All this might have been ruined. How am I expected to work?'

‘You should consider yourself fortunate.' Sarah took a handkerchief from her white coat and rubbed the desk. ‘Penney came in one day last week and found half of one of his patients gone.'

‘Which half?' Black asked with a sly grin.

‘The legs and feet.'

‘At least he had something left to work with,' Black said, and his humour was so infectious that she couldn't help smiling. That was one of the reasons, Sarah realized, why she loved him so much. The others in the sanatorium were such dull, featureless people. She lifted her head at the sound of tramping boots: another deportee on his last journey. She had never visited Psy-Con, though Black had promised to include her name on the rota of visiting medikal staff; he himself went there twice a year on regular tours of inspection.

He said, ‘Do you feel confident you can handle the battery? The amount of current applied is most important. We don't want to kill him right off. Keep within the limits and watch for fluctuations in the current. Benson warned me that a sudden increase in the charge can cause permanent damage.'

‘You've mentioned the experiment to him?' Sarah said, her eyes widening.

‘I said we were carrying out a routine test. He doesn't know we have a guinea-pig.'

‘How do we know the amount of charge the patient can withstand? Surely it will vary.'

‘There are two conditions to watch out for,' Black said, wiping the seat and sitting down. ‘Eyeball retraction and the erection quotient. The eyeballs retract and roll upwards so that only the whites remain visible, and the patient – providing he's a man, of course – exhibits an erection which increases with the amount of charge applied. When he's fully extended we're roughly at the limit of tolerance, so you'll have to keep your eye on it and judge when he's had enough.'

Sarah nodded and looked down at the papers on the desk. She tried to give the impression of not breathing.

Black said: ‘Think you can handle it?'

‘I'll do my best.'

‘Good girl.' He held up his two clenched fists. ‘Think what this could mean! We could be on the verge of a radical new departure that will make Gestalt Treatment and galvanology standard procedure throughout the country. Aren't you excited?' He was like a child about to open a Christmas present, his eyes agleam, his hands fluttering.

Sarah smiled. She was restless herself. ‘What results are we looking for? Will there be actual signs of purging or will it be an interior process? I find it hard to visualize exactly what will happen.'

‘That's going to be the interesting part – seeing precisely how it works and what effect it has. I should imagine there will be a good deal of pain and perhaps the patient will bleed, vomit and have diarrhoea. But almost certainly there's going to be an
outpouring of non-associative thoughts, a stream of random and meaningless gabble.'

‘Not very pleasant to watch,' Sarah commented.

‘No, perhaps not,' Black agreed. ‘But vitally interesting, all the same. He'll empty the contents of his mind and rid himself of all the crazy notions which get in the way of rational thinking and acceptable social behaviour. It's going to be thrilling.'

‘Yes,' Sarah said, her mind conjuring up visions – quite inexplicably – of the erection quotient. ‘I think you're right.'

The apparatus was less complicated than she had feared, consisting of a galvanic battery connected by wires to a galvanic belt, which was simply a strip of leather with metal studs inserted into it: the belt fastened round the patient's chest over the heart and was tightened so that all the studs were impressed into the body. The other piece of equipment was the galvanoscope – a small square box with knobs and dials – used for detecting and indicating the direction of the electric charge.