Virtual Unrealities, The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (52 page)

“I don’t know anything,” he said slowly. “I don’t understand anything. Anything. But I know I don’t like you. I don’t believe you and I don’t trust you.” He finished with a rush: “I don’t want to be a keeper. I don’t want to be a guard. No, I will not. I will not join you, whatever you are. Let us say that.”

“Oh. A pity.” The mangled voice died away, then resumed. “In that case I make my second statement. Your potential must be destroyed. You will be neutralized.”

“You mean killed.”

“Just one way of putting it, Doctor. Let us say … if you will not volunteer, you will be drafted.”

“You mean killed.”

“Just another way of putting it, Doctor. When, Arno?”

“Some time this evening. I’ll arrange everything.”

“Very good.” The jet eyes caught Granville. “Thank you again for keeping this appointment, Doctor. You may go now.”

Granville got to his feet. “If it’s murder, why wait? Why not—”

“Don’t say anything, Doctor. Just go.”

Suavely, Arno led Granville to the door and opened it for him. From the couch Coven said: “You understand we have another appointment for later today? You understand that you always keep the appointments we make for you?”

Backing through the door, Granville stammered: “You’re d-dead, Coven. I don’t believe anything.”

The dead man laughed his imitation laugh and called: “Au revoir, Doctor.”

The door closed. Granville turned and weaved through aisles toward the street. He was dizzy and choked. Through pounding rubble in his ears he heard Sharpe, then Gertrude, then the telephone girl calling bright farewells. Red evening sunlight blinded him in the street. He lurched toward the car, saw Jinny in triplicate open the door for him, and then stare, her mouth making soundless motions. There was a roaring and a stunning blow on his temple … and then night.

“Yes,” said Charles to the shapes that filled him with awe. “Because it’s not true because the sound and the light talk with voices and a man walks on music and feels with thought yes with thought and—
“What’s that?”
Without speaking he repeated:
“What’s that? Who?”

He dismissed the urgency and twisted about with feverish haste. “The two pieces of a soul are music and pain,” he lectured energetically, “and the colors clashing, singing, chiming, crying, and crying in fear and pain to see the sound of—
Who?
”

Thrusting his head upward he cried: “Who?
Who? WHO?
”

“Starr,” repeated the urgency. “This is Starr.”

“Oh, the voices that sing the ring and mingle with music that mangles with most marvelous tongue with diapason and profound parallax—”

“Charles Granville.”

“What?”

“Dr. Granville.”

“You said something? You spoke? You boke you moke you koke you loke you …”

“This is Starr. Will you listen? Can you listen? This is an emergency.”

“Who?”

‘Try to remember this. You must remember …”

“Who’s that?”

“Charles, we can help you if you’ll—”

“I can’t hear you. What? What?”

“We’re going to give you the key. You must remember the key as it’s unfolded. Charles, listen. Listen. Listen. This is the unfolding. Listen to the pattern. Listen, Charles. Listen …”

The palm jolted his jaw and made a sound like water in the ears. Granville turned his head away. The slaps continued. Gardner repeated: “Listen, Charlie. Listen to me, boy. Listen, Charlie-boy. Snap out of it, boy. Wake up, little man.”

Thrusting his arms up wildly, Granville said: “I don’t want to be touched. Don’t touch me.”

Gardner gripped his wrists and peered down at him. “Easy, fella …” Deftly, he thrust an ammonia bottle under Granville’s nose. The thrust of sharp vapor stung his eyes open. He was in emergency at County, on the enameled table. Jinny was silhouetted against the window, her hands clasped.

“No more ammonia,” he muttered. “I’m all here. I—” Suddenly he cried: “Don’t say anything. There’s something I’ve got to remember. Something …” He tried to recapture the dissolving patterns.

“Now kid …” Gardner began softly.

“Will you be quiet!” But he could not silence the street traffic and the hospital, and the memory fled. “No … I can’t hold it.”

Jinny came to the edge of the table, her face in a panic. “Charles …” She swallowed and tried again. “Oh Charles, I …”

“Hey. Jinny? Hi, Jinny.” He hoisted himself and felt a bandage on his temple. “Who put out the lights?”

“You pulled a faint.” Gardner steadied him. “Flopped into the car. Nosedive. Jinny drove you back to the hospital with your ankles waving in the breeze. Most educational and entertaining spectacle for the multitude.”

“We aim to please …” Granville got to his feet and teetered against Jinny, who clutched him violently. “What a day this has been.” His eyes wandered uneasily around the glazed tile walls, and were finally drawn to Jinny’s face. “Well, I saw Coven.”

“Coven,” Gardner echoed. “Guy who was killed?”

“I saw him.”

“And ran out in a tizzy? Since when do corpses scare you, Doctor?”

“He wasn’t dead.”

“Now come on. Come on!”

“He wasn’t dead,” Granville insisted. He took Jinny’s hand and held it. “Jinny talked to him this morning. I talked to him this afternoon. He isn’t dead. He told me he took the dive under the truck to wake me up … to keep me from dreaming.”

“Are we going to kick that around again?” Gardner snarled.

“He said a few other things I don’t quite understand. Something about me being dangerous because I’m a poetic scientist. I … I’m going to find something out.”

“What, in a word?”

“I don’t know. Something about a hoax. A fraud. We’re all being duped.”

“How? Out of what?”

“I don’t know. It’s like describing color to a blind man. He can’t understand. That’s us. We’re all blind. We’re missing something. We—”

Granville broke off as Gardner laughed. It was a laugh without laughter, the laugh of a parrot. Dispassionately he examined the face … the arched red brows, the crinkled eyes. Then he said quietly: “Hello, Gardner.”

Still wheezing, Gardner said: “Excuse it, please. I’m subject to fits.”

Jinny’s hand tightened in his. “Charles … What is it now?”

“I’m meeting your brother for the first time, Virginia. I think maybe I’m meeting the world for the first time.”

“Now have a heart, Doctor.” Gardner sobered and reached for Granville’s pulse.

“It’s the laugh, Gardner.” Granville pulled his arm out of reach. “The laugh tags you.”

“If I hurt your feelings, pal, I’m sorry; but—”

“It’s exactly the same as Coven’s and Arno’s. D’you recognize it, Jinny? No … of course you wouldn’t. You never heard them laugh. I did.”

“So help me, Chuck,” Gardner began in exasperation.

“Who was it said once … Man is a laughing animal. Something like that. You’re not a laughing animal, are you, Gardner? You’re something else … the Covens and Arnos and Gardners … the ones that can’t laugh. What am I supposed to call you? Keepers? Guards? Trespassers?”

“For heaven’s sake, Charles!” Jinny cried.

Gardner thrust an angry red face close. “Are you finished, pal? Then listen to me. I don’t give a damn for your dreams and animals and hoaxes. That’s your business. My business is Jinny and your career. How old are you, Doctor? Twenty-five? How long have you been training? About nine years? How much has it cost so far? About ten grand.”

“Yes. Here it comes.” Granville turned away. “The social pressure. Coven mentioned that.”

“Just let me finish.” Gardner swung him back. “You go on broadcasting like this and you’ll be out of the hospital so fast it won’t even be funny. Your license? Pfui. Who’d license you to practice? What are you going to do? Throw away nine years, ten grand, a career, and Jinny because you have bad dreams? You should lay there and bleed!”

“I’d listen to you, Gardner, if it wasn’t for your laugh, and one small detail. I’ll be dead tonight. Yes. That’s the word from Coven. He’s made an appointment.”

Jinny caught her breath, then turned to her brother. Gardner grimaced at her. “It’s paranoia,” he said. “Pure persecution complex. We can’t let him go on talking like this. You know how gossip spreads in a hospital. It’ll be all over the shop he’s gone off his rocker. He’s got to lay off.”

“I can’t,” Granville said.

“What about Jinny?”

“Don’t bargain with me,” Jinny said. “I’ll do my own talking.”

“You heard me, Chuck. What about Jinny? She goes down the drain too? Look, I’ll put it to you fair and square. You think you’re right about this mish-mash. I think you’re crazy …”

“But you can’t laugh.”

“Will you listen,” Gardner cried. “Let’s put all the evidence up to a third party and see what he thinks. If he says: ‘Chuck, you are the savior of the human race.’ by God, I’ll become the Number One Disciple. But if he says: ‘Doctor, take a vacation quick.’ You’ll take it and forget everything else. A deal?”

Granville nodded wearily.

“Okay. Come on. We’re going up to the Psychiatry and lay it all in Pop Berne’s lap.”

In the narrow office smelling of cigars and British Museum Book Dressing, Pop Berne bulged placidly in his squeaking chair like a porcelain stein. His fat face and bald head gleamed. His quiet voice was like the long grey ash that silted down on his vest from his cigar. Berne said: “All dis iss most interesting. Most interesting. I do not say it iss unique. No. Not unique. I haff seen many such cases …”

“Dr. Berne …” Granville broke in.

Berne held up a pudgy hand. “You be quiet, Charlie, eh? I haff listen for twenty minutes. You listen for two, eh?”

“Tell him, Pop,” Gardner muttered. “Tell him good.”

“The preliminaries I waive, Charlie, eh?” Berne murmured. “I proceed directly to the point.
Alzo:
Every moment in life, Charlie, iss a crisis. You understand, eh? Every moment we must make new adjustments … decisions … choices. It iss like stepping off the sidewalk to cross the street. Suddenly we look up and there iss a car coming at us. A crisis, eh?”

“I understand.”

“The human animal does one of three things. He leaps forward to avoid the car and keep going … He stands still, paralyzed with fear … or he leaps backward to safety. Eh? You still understand?”

“I still understand.”

“Very good.” Berne relit the cigar and continued. “Forward iss an active attack on the situation. You fight to overcome the crisis and achieve the goal, eh? Still-standing iss a passive submission to what the human animal calls fate … But the leap backwards … Dat is an escape. Ah? So. It iss what you are trying to do. You have lapsed backward from something.”

“But Dr. Berne …”

“Wait. I explain. You leap backward. You escape from something … I do not know what … but you escape. You turn your back on dis something and separate yourself from it. So of course it becomes unreal.
Naturlich
… But you haff imagination, eh?”

“The poetic scientist.”

“Ah? So. Very good. The poetic scientist is escaping from something … A difficult adjustment, perhaps. Marriage or career, maybe. Perhaps as the time approaches for you to leave dis safe hospital and go out into the world on your own, you grow more and more afraid. I do not know. All I know is, you turn your back.”

“And that is responsible for everything today?”

“Yes. Dat iss what I tell you. Dis mind of yours must justify itself. It cannot say: I am a coward. I am afraid to make the adjustment. No. It says: There iss no adjustment to make because there iss no world. The world iss a fraud … a hoax … unreal. I am being duped …
undsüweiter
. It will go on appearing like dis to you until you discover what you are refusing to face … and face it.”

“And Coven?”

“Ach! Dis Mr. Coven and Mr. Arno and the laughter. Your mind fabricates evidence to support itself. Perhaps you did not meet them and only imagined you did. Or you did meet them and turned harmless men into imaginary monsters. Dere are a hundred explanations, but your mind will not recognize them.”

“And the threats? What Arno said? And that business about his black glasses?”

“Charlie, Charlie …” Berne waved the cigar patiently. “You are a poetic scientist, eh? Dis Mr. Arno … he iss a most poetic creation. I do not say he iss unreal. He iss real to you … and most artistically drawn. But I am glad to say he iss not real to me. Dat would be bad for me because I am poetic too, eh?” Berne chuckled and then laughed. It was the same laughter without laughter. The parrot laugh.

Granville listened carefully, almost tasting the laughter as he slowly arose from his chair. “Thank you and goodnight, Papa Berne,” he said grimly. “It’s been a magnificent performance. Magnificent. You know, you almost had me convinced for a moment.”

Gardner leaped to his feet angrily. “What the hell now … ?”

“Until I heard you laugh. That tore it wide open, Dr. Berne. So all the neat answers of psychiatry are fairy tales … part of the camouflage. First you try to kid us out of it. Then you try to shame us out of it. When everything fails you try to explain us out of it. I’m not buying any.”

“Does that mean you’re selling me?” Jinny snapped, her face white with fury.

“I—” Granville faltered.

“We’re supposed to be in love. I know I am. I’d like to know what you think. Am I supposed to be part of this big propaganda campaign? A kind of cosmic Mata Hari?”

“I … don’t know.”

“Or maybe I’m the adjustment you don’t want to make.”

“I don’t know, Jinny. I swear I don’t know.”

“Charles …” Her mouth trembled as she fought for composure. “Remember the snapshot album and the pictures? Let’s start now. Right away. Vacation is the answer.” She appealed to Berne. “Isn’t vacation the answer?”

Berne nodded his gleaming head.

“Three weeks, darling … together.”

“Four weeks at least,” Gardner put in. “Four weeks in Maine. I’ll pay for it.”

“We can start this weekend, Charles. We’ll go away together. We can get married … or we don’t have to get married. Anyway you want …”