Zelazny, Roger - Novel 07 (16 page)

 
          
 
"I don't think you have to."

 
          
 
He smiled and stood. She rose to meet him.

 
          
 
"You're full of good ideas," he
said. "I think Til try both of them."

 
          
 
The facility lay within a small crater in the
southern lunar hemisphere. Cleaned-out, built-up, domed-over, air-conditioned,
nuclear-powered, fountained, ponded, treed, painted, furnished and filled with
the small noises of life, it was home to a great number of wealthy geriatric
patients whose conditions precluded their ever returning to the bluegreen ball
in the dark sky, save to dwell within it. It was not noted as a psychiatric
facility save in the areas of senile dementia and arteriosclerotic brain
disease.

 
          
 
The new patient, a teenage boy, sat on a bench
near a fountain, as he did every day at the same time. A therapist, Alec Stern,
sat beside him reading a book, as he did every day at the same time. If Alec
were to reach out and move the boy's arm into a new position, it would remain
there. If he were to ask him a question, more often than not it would be met with
silence. Occasionally, though, it would be answered with an inappropriate
muttering. As today:

 
          
 
"Pretty, isn't it—the way the colors
dance on the water?" Alec asked, lowering his book for a moment.

 
          
 
The boy, whose head was turned in that
direction, said, "Flowers..."

 
          
 
"It reminds you of the colors of flowers?
Yes, that is true. Any special kind?"

 
          
 
Silence.

 
          
 
Alec withdrew a notebook from his pocket and
scribbled in it.

 
          
 
"Would you like to walk with me and look
at some flowers?"

 
          
 
Silence.

 
          
 
He placed the book on the bench and took the
boy's arm. There was no resistance as he drew him to his feet. Once he started
him moving he kept walking, mechanically. He steered him around the fountain
and up a walkway, coming quickly to the area of controlled lighting where the
flowerbeds lay.

 
          
 
"See. Tulips," he said, "and
daffodils. Reds, yellows, oranges. You like them?"

 
          
 
Nothing.

 
          
 
"You want to touch one?"

 
          
 
He took the boy's hand, pushed him forward,
brushed his fingertips against the red petals of a huge tulip.

 
          
 
"Soft," he said, "isn't it? Do
you like it?"

 
          
 
The boy remained bent forward. He helped him
to straighten.

 
          
 
"Come on. Let's go back."

 
          
 
He took hold of his arm once again and led him
down the walkway.

 
          
 
Later, after the boy had been fed and put to
rest in his room, Alec spoke with Dr. Chalmers.

 
          
 
"The boy," Dr. Chalmers said,
"Dennis?"

 
          
 
"No change. Moves only with assistance.
An occasional word."

 
          
 
"But inside? What is his mind doing? What
are his reactions to the new environment?"

 
          
 
"Nothing special. He is barely aware of
the change. He is a collection of pieces, most of them submerged, surfacing in
a random fashion, sinking again—flashes here and there, occasional
interactions. Most of them a matter of personal preoccupation."

 
          
 
"Do you feel we ought to shift to brain
stimulation?"

 
          
 
Alec shook his head.

 
          
 
"No. I would like to continue along the
lines suggested by his former therapist. She was getting results near the end.
Things just developed too suddenly for her to keep control in the saturation
environment down there." He gestured vaguely overhead. "She foresaw a
dormant period such as this following his transfer. But she also felt that the
experiences he has undergone would then cause him to come out of it and seek
new stimulation after a time."

 
          
 
"Well, it has been almost a month."

 
          
 
"Her guess was a month to six
weeks."

 
          
 
"And you buy that?"

 
          
 
"She was good. I can see the results of
her work whenever I am with him. I do not understand everything that she did.
But there is some sort of effect, almost a kind of cyclical sequencing in the
recurrence of imprinted personality aspects. I think we are safest in sticking
with her program for now. I still do not know as much about the boy as she did.
Too bad she could not have stayed on."

 
          
 
"Something about a divorce and her not
wanting to take sides. She was in favor of the boy's transfer up here,
though."

 
          
 
"Yeah, a certain amount of it is in
Dennis' mind. Very low-key, though. And I've always been an admirer of his old
man, so I am prejudiced. Whatever, it is not really material to Dennis'
problem."

 
          
 
"I have to send Mr. Guise a report this
week. I wish you would stop around the office after lunch and give me a hand
with it. He wants one every month."

 
          
 
"Okay. By next time, we may have
something more positive to say."

 
          
 
It was almost two weeks later that Alec went
to fetch him in the morning and found Dennis crouched on the floor, tracing
geometric designs with a forefinger moistened with saliva. Dennis did not seem
aware of Alec's entry into the cell, so Alec stood by the door, watching. After
a time, he extended his awareness, slowly, carefully. But he was unable to get
beyond the most intense concentration he had ever encountered, a concentration
focused entirely on the properties of triangles.

 
          
 
For the better part of an hour he stood there,
fascinated by the action, the concentration, hoping to be noticed. Finally, he
moved forward.

 
          
 
When he stood behind him, he reached out and
touched Dennis' shoulder.

 
          
 
The boy turned suddenly and looked up at him.
It was the first time he had seen those eyes focus, the first time he had
witnessed anything resembling intelligence in the way that they moved, in the
expression which accompanied their regard.

 
          
 
Then Dennis screamed—a sentence or two. And
then he collapsed, falling forward across his moist diagrams.

 
          
 
Alec raised him in his arms and carried him to
the bed. He deposited him upon it and checked his heartbeat, his pulse. Both
were rapid. He drew up the chair and seated himself at the bedside.

 
          
 
As he waited for Dennis to regain
consciousness, the sounds of that scream still echoed within his awareness. He
had shouted in a foreign language—he was sure of that. The sounds were too
regular, too organized, to be random gibberish. Alec had not recognized the
tongue, but he was certain it was a bona fide patterned utterance. Everything
else about the boy's attitude—his actions, his concentration, his
expression—had been informed with too much purposefulness for the picture to
fall apart when it came to the vocalization. When Dennis awakened, it should
not be too difficult to determine what lunar mind he had invaded....

 
          
 
But it was a long while before Dennis
awakened, and when he did his eyes regarded nothing in particular and his mind
was almost as it had been the day before. Only the faintest hint of some recent
contact remained, a tone, a touch of mood, indefinable, which had not been
present previously. Nothing more, nothing of sufficient substantiality to permit
an identification.

 
          
 
Alec led him out, for a walk about the
compound, attempting to apply neural emphasis to various sensory effects, with
the usual results. He finally led him back to the bench by the fountain. It was
there that he decided to attempt an exercise based on the recent phenomenon he
had witnessed.

 
          
 
Opening his notebook to a blank page, he
sketched a triangle, a circle, a square. Then he thrust the notebook before
Dennis and held it there.

 
          
 
After a time, Dennis lowered his head. His
eyes focused, moved. He reached out and took the notebook in his hands. He
moved it to his lap and bent above it He traced the figures' outlines with his
forefinger.

 
          
 
"What are they?" Alex said.
"Can you tell me what they are?"

 
          
 
Dennis' lips moved. He whispered,
"Circle, square, triangle..."

 
          
 
"Excellent! Here." Alec thrust his
pencil into his hand. "Can you draw more?"

 
          
 
Dennis stared at the pencil, then handed it
back. He shook his head. He leaned forward again, outlined the figures once more
with his finger, then looked away. The notebook slid from his lap and fell to
the ground. He did not seem to notice.

 
          
 
"What are they?" Alec said.
"Can you tell me again?"

 
          
 
Dennis did not reply. His thoughts were
shifting in random patterns once more.

 
          
 
Alec retrieved the notebook and began writing.

 
          
 
Dennis' condition remained unchanged for most
of a week following this. Attempts were made to interest him in various of the
recreative and rehabilitative classes available, and though he began paying attention
to music he had no apparent desire to learn to play an instrument. Entered in
an art class, he confined himself to the drawing of circles, triangles and
squares. His skill in reproducing these figures freehanded soon reached a state
of near-mechanical perfection. His conversational abilities were restricted to
a word or two— three at most—in response to numerous and simply phrased
repetitions of simple questions. He never initiated a conversation.

 
          
 
All of this, however, could be taken as
considerable improvement, and was. The next report sent to his parents
indicated progress in manual, verbal and ideational skills. What it did not
include was the French episode and its aftermath.

 
          
 
When Alec went to fetch him one morning, he
found Dennis pacing back and forth in his room, muttering in French. On
attempting to speak with him, he received replies only in French. Probing
telepathically, he discovered a new identity pattern. He left Dennis pacing and
went in search of a young French physician recently assigned to the facility.

 
          
 
Marcel spent the entire afternoon with Dennis
and came away with a sheaf of notes.

 
          
 
"He believes he is the Marquis de
Condorcet," he announced later that evening, arranging the notes on his
desk and looking up at Alec. "In fact, he almost convinced me of it."

 
          
 
"What do you mean?" Alec said.

 
          
 
"He possesses incredible amounts of
information about the Marquis' life—and the times."