The Lost Perception (11 page)

Once again, he remembered the woman who had stumbled down the corridor of the Central Isolation Institute in Rome, muttering that she “knew” what the Screamies were. Had she really known?

“How beautiful the garden zylphs! Don’t you agree, Greg?”

He flipped his cigarette into a mirror-surfaced pool and watched Sharon O’Rourke stroll up behind him. The Irish girl’s eyes were open but unfocused as she apparently concentrated on hyperperception.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I’m not zylphing.”

She walked along with him, closing her eyes. And he could almost feel the intense concentration of her glial receptors upon him.

“You are a… peculiar one,” she offered.

“Why? Because I’ve had enough zylphing for one day?”

“Of course not. It’s that you don’t seem impressed with the potential of the gift we share in common—what it implies—the power.”

He started at her words. Ever since he had come to Versailles, he had sensed a subtle atmosphere about the place. It was almost as though he bad received the impression hyper-perceptively, so vaguely that he couldn’t identify it. But now this blond Irish girl had nailed it down for him with one word—“power.” An anticipatory attitude. That of a predator anxious for the kill because it knows the weakness of its prey.

“Does power mean that much?” he asked.

“Perhaps not to you. Nor to the other American. But then, I understand Simmons was unbalanced during isolation.”

She searched his eyes. “Greg, don’t be like Simmons. Accept what’s happening and realize that the advantage belongs to us, as it has never before belonged to any small, elite, ruling group!”

He drew back from her vivid enthusiasm.

“We stand above an entire world!” she exclaimed. “Ours can be a modern feudal system, with each one of us as the lord of a manor!”

Absorbed in her own provocative thoughts, Sharon strolled on ahead, apparently forgetting that she had even paused to talk with him.

Half an hour later Gregson had still not left the grounds. He had wandered into the southern garden when he saw in the gathering dusk ahead the huge, hulking form of Henri Lanier. The superintendent of the Academy at Versailles was hurrying towards his private residence.

Impulsively, Gregson closed his eyes and zylphed. He was surprised at the almost instant response of his glial receptors, the surging flood of hypervisual impressions that engulfed him, the considerable detail he could sense, the minimum amount of distortion.

As he perceived it, the palace was in its proper place, almost as precisely proportioned and ordered as though he were viewing it visually, each architectural feature whole and firm and recognizable. And the horticultural beauty of the southern garden was a flawless perfection.

He was aware, it seemed, of each blossom and each leaf in the entire garden; of even the most inconspicuous fibrillae of every root system; the wrongness of parasitic presences; the quiet, toilsome dedication of each nitrogen-fixing bacterium as it assimilated that element for symbiotic delivery to the plant to which it clung.

But nowhere in his composite appreciation of all the things he was zylphing was there even the hint of an impression that might be identified as Henry Lanier.

Then he surmised the cause behind this inconsistency. Lanier must be carrying a rault suppressor.

But why? Was it that, by shielding himself from the hyper-radiance and making it impossible for his thoughts to be zylphed, he was concealing information forbidden to the students? Again—why the secrecy; why the duplicity?

It was almost night now and a rustling of leaves attracted Gregson’s attention to a hedge on his right. Almost reflexively he began zylphing and was again reminded, by the instant flood of rault, that nocturnal darkness did not have its natural counterpart in sixth-sense perception.

And then he sensed the presence of Simmons, hidden from his vision among the shrubbery.

The other American lunged into the open. “Help me!”

Gregson tensed. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re going to kill me!”

“Who?”

“Lanier. I caught him with his suppressor off and zylphed what he was thinking. He’s going to have his guards kill me!”

“But why?”

“I’m not interested in power. So they don’t want me here! But they can’t let me go! You see, I found out…”

In the distance, a pair of Guardsmen met as they paced oft their assigned areas, then turned to retrace their steps.

“You found out what?” Gregson coaxed.

Simmons’ eyes caught pale light from a gibbous moon and hurled it frantically back into the darkness. At the same time Gregson’s hyperperception was distorted beyond recognition by the other’s surging terror. It must be as the Irish girl had said—that the man had been unbalanced by his isolation as a Screamer.

Casting a distressed glance at the guards, Simmons charged off down the terraced slope and Gregson hypervisually traced his progress past tinkling fountains, through soft, rault-caressed woods. Then, exhausted from so much transsensory perception, he let his glial receptors settle into the endocrinal balance of nonsensitivity, knowing that the security forces would find Simmons and do whatever had to be done.

Against the crisp sound of spraying water, Bill Forsythe’s quavering voice rose in anguished shouts. He clutched at his sightless eyes as he hopped about on a wet, naked foot. His lacerated toe throbbed unbearably as the shower’s jets lanced into the open wound. And Gregson felt the pain as though it were his own.

But the shower stall turned into an isolation ward and Forsythe’s screams became jagged explosions of terror as nonradiant fires swept across his consciousness. Enraged by his shouting, the other Screamers snapped their bonds and chased him down an endless corridor.

Only, it wasn’t Forsythe shouting at all. It was the American named Simmons as he raced through the formal garden at Versailles, crushing vivid blossoms, splashing through shallow pools and stumbling among the umbrageous trees of the palace’s horse chestnut groves.

In relentless pursuit was an army of International Guardsmen, charging the calm air with the slicing beams of their laserifles. But, as though through some hyperperceptive hallucination, the troops changed into a mob of screeching Madame Carnots who hobbled through the forest on gold-handled canes, shrilling Forsythe’s name—until they all became fire-breathing Valorians with foot-long fingernails.

Abruptly Gregson, clad only in pajamas, found himself racing along with Simmons-Forsythe and dodging the taloned laser beams of the Guardsmen-Carnots-Screamers-Valorians. Simmons turned Forsythe’s frantic, blind eyes upon Greg-son and blurted out:

“They-don’t-want-me-here-but-they-can’t-let-me-go-help-me-help-me
—”

Tangled in his sheets, Gregson lurched awake and squinted against the assault of sunlight through the lofty casement window. The aftereffects of the dream quickly faded, for the nightmare itself was hardly more uncanny than the distortions of perception he had experienced during two weeks of hectic sixth-sense indoctrination.

Yet the chimerical episode of Forsythe in trouble reminded him that Bill
was
having a difficult time and that it might be a matter of only days before the latter encountered his first uncontrollable, violent seizure.

Concerned, he dressed hurriedly and went down to the lounge. But as he strode for the comviewer booth, an International Guardsman blocked his way.

“No outside calls,” the man said stiffly. “Superintendent Lanier’s orders.”

“Get Lanier on your squawk box and tell him Gregson says if he can’t
call
outside, he’s
going
outside… permanently.”

The guard returned to his desk and relayed the message. Within minutes he was back.

“The superintendent says it’s okay.”

Again, the advantage of special privilege, Gregson mused appreciatively as he placed his call to Pennsylvania.

But, after a long while, he received only the frozen face and impersonal voice of the operator at the Security Bureau Communications Center in New York. Indifferently, she reported no answer from his party.

In a subsequent call to the Monroe County Central Isolation Institute, he learned Forsythe had not been admitted. Then he finally got an answer from Bill’s nearest neighbor, who revealed, “I ain’t seen nobody around that place for days; figured they pulled out.”

Confounded, Gregson went into the dining room and ordered
croissants
and coffee, while he considered the possibility of asking Radcliff to send a special agent to the farm, or of going there himself.

He was still wrestling with the decision when Karen, fresh and sprightly in a pleated skirt and gauzy blouse, joined him at the table.

“Beautiful morning for zylphing,” she greeted.

He shoved his bun aside. “How does one go about getting out of here, Karen—say, on a temporary leave?”

She shrugged. “For anybody else, there are appropriate application forms. For you…”

She shook her head. “You’re getting the de luxe crash course treatment. Super priority. Critical VJO assignment waiting in the wings. You have troubles?”

“Possibly.”

When he said no more, she reminded, “I could zylph it out of you, you know.”

He had no objections. She might even be sympathetic enough to help him get in contact with Radcliff.

But she seemed satisfied that he didn’t pursue the subject. She glanced down into her cup. “Greg—suppose the Security Bureau isn’t exactly what you think it is. Suppose its policies, its actions, its methods could be open to various interpretations.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not always possible to avoid tailoring the means to fit the end. And… well, the bureau is doing a wonderful job leading humanity through the Screamies, even finding a way to end the ‘plague’ by canceling out the hyperradiation.”

“If Operation VJO works,” he reminded.

“Oh, it’ll succeed. But, well, through this whole crisis—the Nuclear Exchange, the epidemic, the Valorian expedition—we’ve had to exercise arbitrary authority over practically everything.”

Gregson drained his cup. “It’s only provisional.”

“Provisional. But nonrepresentative, authoritarian.”

He had the vague impression she might be zylphing his thoughts, trying to lead him to certain concessions. “That’ll all be straightened out after Operation VJO is complete and Earth gets back to normal. Then authority can be returned to representative hands.”

She hesitated. “Suppose authority
remains
with the bureau.”

“I’m sure national governments will reassert themselves.”

Bluntly she said, “It would be a shame if they did, wouldn’t it?”

“Why—hell no. Delegated self-government is the only…”

“But isn’t
world
government more important—centralized authority? No more Nuclear Exchange. One single source of power emanating from the pinnacle of the pyramid, securing Earth against any return by the Valorians, shielding all of us from hyperradiation, maintaining domestic order.”

She touched his hand and went on. “It might be Utopia, Greg. It might be sudden, full realization of the goal toward which society has evolved ever since the time when there were as many fragmented seats of authority as there were cave families.”

He stared obliquely at the Dutch girl. It was almost as though she might be trying to indoctrinate him politically.

A whistle shrilled on the palace grounds and he stared out the window to see several Guardsmen converging on one of the pools in the distance.

Grateful for the interruption, he said, “Let’s find out what it is.”

With Karen following, he drew up eventually at the crowded poolside and stared at Simmons, floating face up and half concealed by spray-spattered lily pads clustered about the fountain.

The full impact of Simmons’ almost incoherent words in the garden the previous night pressed in on him. Had Simmons been sane, sincere? Or had this merely been an accident?

Pushing to the edge of the pool, he instinctively tried to zylph. But it was like opening his eyes in a darkened room. There was practically no hyperradiance at all.

“I can’t zylph anything!” someone complained.

“Temporary eclipse,” one of the guards explained.

This puzzled most of the others. But Karen had told Gregson there decreases in the rault level as Earth drifted in and out of shadow rifts on the Stygumbra’s edge. Still, even in the scant hyperradiance, he was able to zylph, but just barely, that what had happened to Simmons had been no accident.

There was a great wrongness about the body and evidence of struggle was unmistakable. Beneath the soggy matting of hair, he could almost
feel
the crushed skull.

Latent stresses in flesh and bone betrayed the shape of the laserifle butt. And there was no zylphable water in the lungs.

Suddenly the meager rault was snuffed out, as though a final candle had been extinguished to surrender a cavernous cathedral back to sepulchral darkness.

Superintendent Henri Lanier shoved through the crowd and Gregson saw that his pocket bulged with the outlines of the rault suppressor which he always carried.

The superintendent—an obese but powerful man who wore a tasteless, dark blue suit—spoke softly with two of the Guardsmen. Beneath shaggy, dark brows, his eyes crouched deep in the puffed creases of his face as he pointed occasionally to Simmons’ body.

Why, Gregson wondered, must Lanier shield his thoughts with a suppressor? So that those who were about to be culled out of the Academy at Versailles wouldn’t learn of their impending elimination? But if that were the purpose, then certainly Simmons’ body would have been spirited away. Was this, then, also a warning to others?

Dismayed, he struck out for the palace. The elements of his confusion were profound: Simmons’ murder, the power obsession that seemed to grip almost everybody at Versailles, his own devious sixth-sense indoctrination when he should instead be going about the task of reconditioning Vega Jumpoff Station, Karen’s suggestion that the Security Bureau’s authority might be extended indefinitely, Lander’s cloak of secrecy.

And he wondered whether he might eventually zylph what was in the superintendent’s mind, as Simmons had done. But, even if the opportunity presented itself, did he possess
that
degree of rault sensitivity? And, now that he had considered this course of action, how could he hope to avoid having his possible intentions zylphed?

It suddenly occurred to him that, since his suspicions had condensed so clearly, he might not be any safer at Versailles than Simmons had been. But how could he escape?

Fortunately, the stygumness remained impenetrable. Even without the benefit of the Stygumbra’s metadarkness, however, Gregson’s thoughts would have remained private.

For, throughout both the morning and afternoon session, the instructor kept a rault suppressor in view on the table, its pilot bulb indicating constant output.

While Alvarez labored the point that rault was propagated at infinite velocity and that sixth-sense impressions were transmitted instantaneously, Gregson worried over the possibility that his own rebellious thoughts might at any moment be laid bare by the instructor’s sudden employment of a rault caster.

Toward the end of the late afternoon session, his attention was drawn partly back to the lecture when Alvarez spread his arms and said, “Can you think of the historic connotations suggested by Chandeen, by Earth’s current movement out of the Stygumbra?”

When there was no answer, he leaned back against a marble bust of Louis XIV. “Ah, yes—and mythological implications too. Consider that some fifty thousand years ago, Earth moved behind the Stygum Field. As that time man was probably in his infancy, aesthetically inclined, his society developing along nonmaterialistic lines.

“As Earth entered the Stygumbra, it must have been as severe a physiological incapacitation as if modern man should suddenly be forced into a world of eternal darkness. There must have been intellectual regression, reversion to savagery. Is it any wonder we should have the allegorical account of man’s Banishment from Paradise?”

After a pause, he continued with animated gestures.

“Yes, I
am
suggesting that life based on transsensory perception might be more fulfilling, more profound than we could possibly conceive of now. We are just on the brink of glial receptivity. It may be years before the faculty is fully realized. We are merely infants, opening the eyes a few moments after birth.”

His voice rose, almost trembling. “Don’t you understand? In a society in which everybody zylphs, there will be room only for the strong-willed! Bourgeois affection for self-determination will be instantly exposed! There will be no chance for sanctuary in private thought. No one will have even an initial opportunity to reject the body of accepted behavior subscribed to by the group.”

Gregson was appalled by the philosophical discourse. But if zylphing were so desirable, from that fanatical perspective, and if the Security Bureau subscribed to this philosophy, then wasn’t it unlikely that the bureau would envelop the world in total, permanent stygumness just to stop the Screamie epidemic?

Gregson felt certain he was caught up
in
just such a conspiracy. But where could he verify that suspicion? Here at Versailles? At
17 Rue de la Serenite
in Paris?

Alvarez was still talking about his “body of accepted behavior subscribed to by the group.” And it occurred to Gregson that the Latin was laying ideological groundwork. For the “group” could be intended to imply not humanity as a whole, but merely the bureaucratic oligarchy. In which case the “accepted behavior” would certainly not conform with any previous appreciation of morality.

The lecture ended and students and instructor alike began filing through the doorway.

Reluctantly, Gregson followed.

Out there in the corridor—beyond the field of the classroom’s rault suppressor—would there be sufficient natural hyperradiation to convey his unsubmissive convictions to the others? Would his escape attempt be blocked?

Then, from up ahead, he heard the Irish girl Sharon O’Rourke exclaim, “Oh, zylph the rault! It’s returning in full force! And there’s Chandeen! Isn’t it glorious?”

He eased back into the room. Uncertain, he crossed over to the table and studied the rault suppressor. If such a device could shield Lanier’s thoughts, then why not his own? Of course, he would have to avoid others until he had a chance to escape—so that they wouldn’t wonder why he could be seen but not zylphed.

Thrusting the suppressor into his pocket, he stepped cautiously into the now deserted corridor.

Only as he welcomed the descent of deep twilight, beside one of the Grecian statues in a chestnut grove, did he savor the success that had attended the first phase of his flight to safety. And he settled down to await a later hour when the guard would have been changed and vigilance possibly relaxed—visually, at least.

Before then, however, his gaze was attracted by Lanier’s lighted cottage, not too far from the grove. Between him and the superintendent’s home there were few obstructions… and no guards.