The Lost Perception (7 page)

He simply remained silent, letting her believe that his duties were the only barrier between them, pretending even to himself that the so-close threat of the Screamies didn’t exist.

“Did you find out anything else about what the cells are supposed to do?” he asked.

“The important thing now, as I understand it, is to expand and consolidate their position. Oh, of course I knew there were the aggressive cells that had finally armed themselves enough to start attacking bureau outposts. But the rest of us was just starting to organize.”

It was apparent that Helen, even though her experiences with the cell had been limited, could provide vital information on the aliens’ plans. But how to place that information in the proper hands without implicating her?

“I suppose the bureau will get around to me eventually,” she said distantly.

“Maybe not. We’re filling the quarantine compound with prisoners. We won’t be able to question all of them.”

“I’ll be ready when they come,” she said softly.

But they
wouldn’t
come, Gregson promised himself. After all, he should be entitled to some privileges. Radcliff would understand when he explained.

The next morning Gregson walked into a kitchen delightfully provocative in its savory redolence. Helen, refreshingly composed in contrast to the distress she had shown the night before, wagged a ladle in his face and said, “No breakfast for late risers.”

But, basting the turkey, she relented. “Of course, we might scrape up enough dressing for, say, half a sandwich.”

He stood by the door, basking in the warmth of the kitchen and squinting against the glare of brilliant sunlight on a newly-laid mantle of snow. Humming a tune, she spread the dressing and bent the bread back upon itself. It had been ages since he’d seen her so pleasantly disposed. She wore snug snow slacks and the same heavy-knit red sweater whose collar flared up like petals to call attention to naturally rouged cheeks and large, soft eyes.

“And that,” she said, handing him the half sandwich, “will have to hold you until twelve.”

Until twelve. Another couple of hours and he would have shown Lady Sheffington up for a fraud. “I wouldn’t go counting on no turkey dinner,” she had said. But, then, hadn’t Wellford also imagined he had disproved the prophecy?

“If you were an early riser,” Helen went on facetiously, “you might have helped me this morning with my snowman out by the barn. Care to inspect it?”

Outside, he advanced on the grotesque, glistening construction, surveying its leering face. As he stood there, a soggy snowball squashed against the back of his head and, when he turned, Helen let a second fly.

He grabbed for her, but she twisted from his reach and scooped up another handful of snow. But before she could ball it, he tackled her above the knees and sent her nailing into a drift.

His momentum carried him forward and the stumbled and fell on top of her. He trapped her squirming body beneath him and she laughed and twisted her head frenziedly.

Snow silvered her hair. Sunlight washed down on her face, deepening the azure of her eyes. Her teeth, exposed behind moist lips, were fascinating in their pure whiteness. She was motionless beneath him now and frivolity had fled her expression. Still pinning her wrists, he kissed her.

It was a moment before he remembered he hadn’t wanted anything like this to happen.

He sat up and ran a hand through his hair. “I…”

But there was no chance to complete the thought. The sun itself, blazing in all its vehemence, exploded in his skull. It was an awful, wrenching agony that seared every neuron, fused every synapse, ruptured each cell wall.

He was aware somehow of his own coarse shouts of terror and anguish, while he sensed in all his desperation that this was not just another sporadic seizure—that the Screamies in their entirety, in their final and permanent fury, had descended upon him.

The prick of the hypodermic needle and the stridency of its siren went unnoticed among the merciless excruciations.
interlude

Against a backdrop of galactic brilliance, the Valorian observation ship
Starfarer
lay to in interstellar space, her endless curving corridors and vast compartments obscured by their own sepulchral darkness. It was an eternal blackness broken only by thermionic emission emanating from various control instruments.

Whatever light was accidentally generated aboard the vessel came as a tolerable by-product of raultronic processes, just as noise was a necessary consequence of machinery. Incandescent or fluorescent fixtures to illuminate the interior of the
Starfarer
would have been as wasteful and incongruous as use of sound-producing apparatus by humans to help them “hear their way” about one of their own ships.

Thus did Mission Leader Lanurk think in terms of analogies as he paced the polished deck of his conference compartment.

He listened to the rault generators (“light casters” would be the nearest human equivalent, since comprehension of the concept would be limited by their meager five senses) as the great dynamos labored to hold back the stygumness (which the Earthmen would probably call a “sort of metaphysical darkness”). But here, in this position in space, the Stygumbra (and how could you explain
that
to an Earthman?) was of awful intensity and he was afraid.

Indeed, how
could
you go about explaining the Stygumbra to a human? First, you would have to tell about Chandeen, that magnificent concentration of cosmic forces at Galactic Center. You might say that Chandeen hyperradiated all the natural rault which made zylphing possible. But here you would have to elucidate that “rault” existed in the same relationship to “zylphing” as did “light” to

“seeing.”

Then you would tell him about the Stygum Field near the center of the Galaxy—a counterforce capable of blocking off all rault emanations and throwing into impenetrable raultlessness everything that lay beyond it—as far out as the galactic rim. And you would say that, in the dread Stygumbra, no one could zylph—not even a Valorian.

Lanurk prided himself over having put it in terms which an Earthman might appreciate. Then he returned to his apprehensions.

Here, on the very fringe of the Stygumbra, fear imparted an almost palpable tremor to his hearts. He imagined he felt much the same stifling insecurity an Earthman would experience on standing at the edge of a yawning abyss in the floor of a dimly-lighted cave. Here, Lanurk drew little comfort from Chandeen, rising like a raultburst of reassurance over the edge of the cancerous Stygum Field.

The stygumness was so dense that he could hardly zylph the cerebrations of Evaller and Fuscan, who were awaiting the strategy session. Why, he could scarcely zylph the soft spatter of visible and hard radiation against the hull of the
Starfarer.
They must be drifting farther into the Stygumbra!

No, Lanurk,
he zylphed Evaller’s thought, The
anchor holds. But we’ve had to turn down the rault generators to prevent overheating.

Through scores of bulkheads Lanurk sensed the wrongness of the dynamos. Their coils were charred from sustained peak voltage. Anxiously, he conveyed the order to pull farther out of the Stygumbra lest they be marooned without any rault at all.

The drive system throbbed to life and the
Starfarer
got under way.

Lanurk seated himself at the head of the table. Speaking orally, too, he said, “We can readily zylph that things have not gone well with our expedition. We’ve heard no word from them at all. It’s obvious something must have happened to their communications gear.”

“Perhaps we should dispatch another party,” Fuscan suggested.

SB

Lanurk had unconsciously zylphed in on the microstructure of the table’s surface, fascinated by one of the lignocellulose molecules that was being dislodged from its lattice by the assault of air particles. There was another impact. And another. Then it was free.

He resumed oral conversation. “No, I don’t think we should place another party at the mercy of those savages—not at the moment.”

“Should we try to maneuver into orbit around their world?” Evaller asked.

“Great, rault-shedding Chandeen
—no!”
whispered Fuscan.

Lanurk agreed with the latter. “It would be insane to take the
Starfarer
into that infernal Stygumbra. Perhaps we
should
consider another pod drop.”

“That would take time,” Evaller pointed out, ” —training, language lessons, digital surgery. And…”

Had Lanurk not been concentrating on the conference, he might have zylphed the trouble. But, as it was, there had been no warning whatever when, in the next moment, all the rault generators shorted out.

In the insufferable raultlessness, Lanurk was stricken with an intense fear. God, it was so stygum! And he had only his eyes!

The Screamies were a brutal assault that seared the brain, cleaved the soul, trapped the spirit on the brink of a vast chasm of insanity. For Gregson, time was a flow of terror interrupted only by the hypodermic that came, oh, so seldom and brought only token relief.

The fires of the Screamies were neither radiant nor incandescent. Yet, without heat, they scorched the mind, blinded the senses with a fierce light that could be measured in neither wave length nor magnitude.

It was as though a fissure had opened into his brain to admit all the hallucinatory terror and pain ever spawned in a deranged universe. At times his entire being seemed to expand vertiginously through unknown dimensions to encompass all time and space, while the distant, fiery stars burned like embers into the weft of his soul. And his spirit appeared to wander among bewildering surroundings where he sensed, rather than saw, the orderly arrangement of contented forces humming indifferently in their inscrutable latticeworks of design and purpose.

Once he was lucid long enough to ask the date. The nurse’s appalling disclosure that he had gone Screamie more than a year earlier sent him plunging into a new abyss of despair and brought the Screamies back upon him in all their vehemence.

Soon thereafter he realized it was also his lot to share the writhing anguish of the other Screamers. For there were times when his whole consciousness seemed to encompass all the suffering and terror that arose about him like a stifling miasma. In this strange, false perception, each physical feature of the Screamer institute was grotesquely distorted, as though reflected in an incredibly warped mirror.

Without seeing, but as though through some incomprehensible means of
knowing,
he sensed the walls of his sprawling ward—ominously restraining but unbelievably small and insignificant. The illusional beds cried out shamefully of a wrongness which suggested that not even the least part of any one of them could be contained within the entire institute. And the Screamers themselves were monstrous entities that glowed invisibly but gave no implication of form and crowded one another out to the farthest infinity.

With them Gregson seemed to share a strange familiarity—as though they all existed within the finite boundaries of his mind. And he participated in their agony, and they in his—until the experiences were overwhelming in their brutality and invariably sent him plunging mercifully into an abyss of unconsciousness.

It was after one such occasion that, utterly crushed beneath bitter helplessness, he dedicated himself to the only possible release—suicide.

Three hours later, perhaps, he finally squirmed out of the straps that held him in bed. All the while he cringed before the demoralizing possibility that he would be engulfed in the throes of another seizure before he could accomplish his purpose.

Somehow he managed to haul himself off the floor, where he had fallen. And he stood there—debilitated and confused, almost unable to recall the simple movements of walking.

Suddenly nauseated, he clung to the bedstead, retching and shuddering.

Then he shoved off, summoning infinite effort in order to place one trembling foot in front of the other. Far in the distance, the nearest window mockingly beckoned.

Plodding and weaving from one bedstead to the next, he advanced toward his taunting objective. An eternity later, he found himself only a few yards away, but too exhausted to continue. Hoarse Screamer cries welled all about him, however, becoming a frightening stimulus that drove him onward.

Rational shouts of warning and the sound of footsteps racing down the aisle were like the splashing of cold water upon his face and he knew the attendant had come back. But it was not the sudden challenge to his suicide that galvanized him into effort beyond physical capacity. Rather, it was the instant return of all the horrible hallucinatory agonies of the plague.

The ward whirled about him. All the beds and the Screamers confined in them seemed to implode upon his senses, and driven by his own desperate shouts, he lunged across the remaining distance and hurled himself through the window.

But he had no way of knowing beforehand that his ward was on. the ground floor and that his plunge would land him in soft shrubbery after a drop of only a few feet

When next he was conscious it was winter and through the same window, he could see the bare branches of a tree veined with the silver of snow and wavering before a bitter wind.

Beyond loomed a huge, new wing that had been added to the Monroe County Isolation Institute.

“Greg.” The voice, anxious and soft, was scarcely audible above the screams that were inseparable from the basic nature of the ward.

He turned his head and saw Helen standing there, trying bravely to hide her concern.

But her mere presence, the strong and competent manner in which she bore herself, the blush of health and outdoor exposure upon her high-boned cheeks, all silently mocked Gregson’s own wasting life.

“You’re going to make it, Greg!” she promised, touching his shoulder.

But he shrank away, embarrassed by the gauntness which pulled at his face.

“We’ll be waiting,” she said. “Bill has faith in you too. He
knows
you’re going to come through all right.”

He tried to answer, but discovered, only then, that months of shouting had left him voiceless. And he was seized with another convulsion. He clamped his eyes shut and his limbs stiffened in an attitude of rigid resistance so she might not know of the attack. But rasping sounds tore from his throat as he cringed before the inner rivers of fire.

He plunged into a phantasmagoric gulf in which he imagined himself utterly lost among all the grotesque things of his fancy. And somehow he was aware of Helen, now one of the formless entities about and within him, being led away. Again—the hallucination of knowing without seeing or hearing.

For his eyes were still shut and his ears were open only to the frantic shrieks of the other Screamers.

Abruptly, a huge, ominous thing took unseen shape in the ebon brilliance of Oregon’s internal universe, bringing a horrible sense of alarm, but at the same time a wave of relief.

Then he recognized the new object as a hypodermic syringe and welcomed its thrust into his arm.

In early February, 1999, he experienced three hours of wakefulness without a Screamie attack. On the twenty-fifth and again on the twenty-seventh, he was rational for an entire evening. In early March, there was a whole day during which his mind was spared the fiery assault of invisible light, savage hallucinations, terrifying disorientation. At the end of the month he strung together, like beads on a rosary of hope, three horror-free days.

The next morning his ward supervisor asked, “Want a scenery change?”

Gregson only stared at him, not comprehending.

“You’re getting along in withdrawal now,” the man said.

“But,” Gregson rasped, “I don’t feel like I’m being cured.”

“There
is
no cure. Return to normal life depends upon your ability to beat the attacks down by the sheer force of will power. You are showing that ability. We’ve curbed your injections. Almost on guts alone you’re fending off most of the seizures.”

The new ward was smaller. Through its broad windows he could gaze out upon a vista of towering new additions to the institute. Beyond, fields were green with the life of spring.

No one screamed here. Nor were injections administered. But each patient was a brooding, silent island of isolation who fought off his occasional attacks alone, without crying out in agony.

Eventually Gregson remembered that even the majority of those Screamers who recovered sufficiently to be withdrawn from sedation ended up as suicides. And he could understand why. A life dedicated only to endless, intense concentration on warding off the next Screamie seizure could hardly be worth living.

Suddenly, in early June, he was released.

Helen met him at the entrance and helped him into the car. Soon the immense institute disappeared behind a range of hills as they bore southward toward Forsythe’s farm.

She was purposely effusive, chatting on inconsequential subjects—the two men Bill had hired on a part-time basis to help with planting, this lovely spring weather, how she and her uncle would see that he regained all the weight he had lost.

Her ebullience was undulled by his withdrawn concentration on not having a Screamie attack in front of her.

At the farm, Forsythe helped him from the car and into the house. Helen went off to warm the coffee, while he dropped listlessly into an upholstered chair and was conscious of the sharp, bony knots that his elbows and knees made under the material of his suit.

“I feel so out of touch,” he said, exhausted, “—as though I’ve stood still for two whole years while everything passed me by.”

“We’ll reorient you,” Forsythe assured.

“At the institute, they wouldn’t tell us about what was going on outside. Guess I have a lot to catch up on.”

“Quite a lot. But it’ll all come to you in due time.”

“The Valorians?”

“Pshaw! All over with—almost, anyway. At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about any more.”

All over with—
just like that!
Gregson thought. Gone, as though by the light brush of a hand. But, of course, two years had been a long time.

“Took almost a year,” Forsythe went on, staring unseeingly ahead. “But we rooted ’em out. Oh, there’re a few cells left. But the minute any of ’em pop their heads up, we lower the boom.”

Helen returned with the coffee, but had to stir Gregson’s when she saw that he was trembling too much to manage the spoon.

“On the other hand,” Forsythe said, “there’s the economic situation. On top of having our treasury drained to stamp out the Valorian threat, the Security Bureau has this new crash research project under way that…”

Helen frowned at her uncle, but said lightly, “I don’t think Greg is up to listening to the world’s woes.”

“I was just getting around to the good part.”

“Research on what?” Gregson asked, almost indifferently.

“The Screamies.”

Gregson sank dismally into the chair.

Helen apparently understood that he should be spared any suggestion of the Screamies. But there was no way she could warn her uncle without being obvious.

“Bureau’s all excited over a research breakthrough,” Forsythe pushed on cheerfully.

“They don’t think the disease’s organic at all—but a condition caused by something in the region of space the Solar System’s going through. Some sort of radiation that’s supposed to affect the mind directly.”

“Bill,” Helen broke in tactfully as perspiration began to appear on Gregson’s forehead, “I think I left the fire on under the coffee. Will you check it please?”

“Eh? What’s that? Oh—of course.” He shuffled out chuckling to himself, apparently convinced he had merely been called upon to accommodate the couple’s desire to be alone.

But Gregson had been oblivious to the exchange between the two as he reeled on the edge of a seizure.

Helen knelt before him and took his hands between hers. “Everything’s going to be just like it was two years ago, darling,” she assured. “Only much better.”

He looked down at the promise that glowed on her face, drawing courage from her sincerity, and his mind closed itself against the horrible ravages that had come so close.

Over the weeks that stretched into mid-July, Helen was a constant and devoted attendant, forcing upon him calorie-laden sweets and large amounts of rich food. Never did she appear discouraged by the silence he occasionally displayed whenever he withdrew into himself to muster his resistance against the next seizure.

Of course the attacks came despite his intense resolution—but with less frequency. And they were generally limited to those quiet moments just before falling asleep or after awakening. On these occasions, his mind was hurled open, as though by a violent wind, and exposed once more to blinding, dazzling torment almost as fierce as during his first Screamie assault.

Generally, though, not much was to be seen of Forsythe. He appeared at tunes to direct the two men who drove out several mornings a week to help with the crops. But, for the most part, he stayed to himself, even to the extent of taking meals in his room.

At first, Gregson hardly noticed Bill’s preference for solitude. And, when he had become sufficiently observant to detect the anomalous behavior, he charged it off to a grudging decision on the old man’s part to avoid complicating the recovery of his guest But with returning strength came increasing attention to details and Gregson was eventually able to note that Helen, too, seemed to be under some sort of strain.

He was reluctant to discuss it with her at first. And, when he finally did, it was during another stroll in the pasture where they had walked together almost two years earlier.

Underneath the same tree against which she had leaned then, he came sharply to the point of concern.

“What’s wrong with Bill? Why’s he staying to himself?”

He thought he caught a flicker of uncertainty on her face before she smiled and said, “Bill’s fine. He may be sulking a bit, perhaps. I told him to stay out from under your feet.”

But Gregson couldn’t dismiss the impression that there was considerable concern beneath her bland expression. “I’m no longer the little fellow who’s always getting sand kicked in his face at the beach. Put on thirty pounds in the last six weeks. Haven’t had a Screamie attack in the last four. See? I can even talk about them now. In other words—you don’t have to hide anything.”

It seemed she
was
ready to tell him something. But she simply laughed and said, “Only thing I’m hiding, is plum pudding with rum sauce for supper.”

She leaned back against the tree, just as she had done so long ago, and the pleasant warmth of this July Saturday seemed to bring a special softness to her eyes.

No longer was he emaciated and hollow-eyed, as he had been on leaving the institute.