Zelazny, Roger - Novel 07 (19 page)

 
          
 
"Want to try eating in the cafeteria? Or
would that be too much excitement for one day?"

 
          
 
"Let us try it and find out."

 
          
 
As they rode the elevator down, Alec remarked,
"We will probably never know what specific thing it was that set off this
improvement of yours."

 
          
 
"Probably not."

 
          
 
"... And there are many things about it
which I do not understand."

 
          
 
Dennis smiled.

 
          
 
"... But the one that puzzles me the most
is where you could have picked up an Italian accent."

 
          
 
"If you ever find out, tell me,"
Dennis said.

 
          
 
Dr. Timura could detect no signs of
neurological dysfunction. His main remarks centered about Dennis' interest in
the testing equipment and his questions concerning localizations of function
within the brain. He spent half an hour more than he had intended with Dennis,
going over neural anatomy charts.

 
          
 
"Whatever did it," he told Alec
later, "it was something functional—and you are asking the wrong man when
it comes to that. It is more your area than mine."

 
          
 
"I had figured it was," Alec said.
"We actually know so little about telepaths...."

 
          
 
"For whatever it is worth, it looks as if
the idea behind his being sent here in the first place has proved valid. It got
him away from the adverse stimuli, gave him a breather, he took advantage of it
and now he is pulling himself together. It just took a while to have its
effect."

 
          
 
"Yes, there is that. But to come this far
from borderline sentience in one day is—remarkable. He's got paint and canvas
and a box of tapes now. He is asking questions about everything—"

 
          
 
"Long-suppressed curiosity coming to the
fore? For that matter, there is no way of knowing what his intelligence level
really was. Quite high, I'd guess."

 
          
 
"Granted, granted. But what about the
time he thought he was Condorcet?"

 
          
 
"He had to have picked that up through
some use of his telepathic faculty. You will probably never know exactly
where."

 
          
 
"I suppose you are right, but there is
something peculiar about his present state of consciousness, also."

 
          
 
"What is that?"

 
          
 
"I can't read him. I am a pretty good
telepath myself, or I would not have gone into TP therapy work. But every time
I try a scan, I never get a millimeter beyond his immediate object of concern.
He possesses the concentration of a tournament chess player—at all times. That
is not normal."

 
          
 
"There are other people like that.
Artists, for example, when they are wrapped up in a piece of work. And he is
interested in art."

 
          
 
"True. For that matter, he is an
extremely powerful telepath, and it may be some sort of unconscious block he
has set up. Do you think he might be moving too fast now, heading for some sort
of reaction?"

 
          
 
Dr. Timura shrugged.

 
          
 
"There will probably be a reaction of
some sort. Depression ... Fatigue certainly, if he keeps going the way that he
is. On the other hand, it might be worse to try to head it off at this point,
while he is trying to learn everything he can. When he gets his belly full he
will quit and digest his gains. It will be after that that your real work will
begin. That's just my opinion, of course."

 
          
 
"Thanks. I'm grateful for any advice on
this case."

 
          
 
"You have monitors in his room, don't
you?"

 
          
 
"Of course, ever since he came here—and a
few extras since the incident when he was Condorcet."

 
          
 
"Good, good. Why don't you give him some
more time to himself now—since he is covered on that front—and see what he
makes of it?"

 
          
 
"You mean stop therapy and give him his
head?"

 
          
 
"Nothing quite that radical. But you are
going to want to observe him a while before you decide what course of therapy
is now in order. You do not want to keep things as highly structured as when he
was barely able to get around on his own, do you?"

 
          
 
"No. That is true. I guess I will he low
a bit and let the machines do the watching. I will just drop in on him later to
see how the painting is going—and observe. I will see you."

 
          
 
"Take care."

 
          
 
Alec knocked on the door, waited.

 
          
 
"Yes?"

 
          
 
"It's me—Alec."

 
          
 
"Come on in."

 
          
 
He entered, to find Dennis seated on the bed,
a portable viewer set up at his side. Across the room stood an easel bearing a
completed canvas. It was the skyscape as seen from the deck, the Earth
prominent within it. Alec moved to stand before it.

 
          
 
"You did the whole thing that fast?"
he said. "It's wonderful! And this is your first painting. It is very
impressive."

 
          
 
"Acrylics are really something,"
Dennis replied. "No fooling around, and they dry fast. A lot better than
oils when you are in a hurry."

 
          
 
"When did you ever use oils?"

 
          
 
"Well— What I meant was that it seemed
that way. I had watched people using them back in class."

 
          
 
"I see. You continue to amaze me. What
are you doing now?"

 
          
 
"Learning things. I have a lot of
catching up to do."

 
          
 
"Maybe you ought to take it a bit easy at
first."

 
          
 
"No problem. I am not tired yet."

 
          
 
"Care to take another walk?"

 
          
 
"To tell you the truth, I would rather
stay here and keep working."

 
          
 
"I meant to ask you about
reading...."

 
          
 
"I seem to have absorbed the basics
somewhere along the line. I am working on expanding things now."

 
          
 
"Well, that is just great. What about
dinner? You have to eat. The cafeteria is open."

 
          
 
"That is true. All right."

 
          
 
He turned off the viewer and rose, stretched.
101

 
          
 
"On the way over, you can tell me what
things are like back on Earth," he said, "and tell me about the
telepaths."

 
          
 
Dennis let him out, listening.

 
          
 
That evening, Alec made a full report to Dr.
Chalmers.

 
          
 
"... And I got through to him at
dinnertime," he said. "He agrees that he is Dennis Guise, but he does
not really believe it. He says it for our benefit. He is personally convinced
that he is Leonardo da Vinci." Dr. Chalmers snorted. "Are you being
serious?" "Of course."

 
          
 
Dr. Chalmers relit his pipe.

 
          
 
"I don't see any harm in it," he
finally said. "I do see possible harm in trying to rid him of such a
delusion at this point, when it is allowing him to make such fine
progress."

 
          
 
"I agree on leaving the da Vinci aspect
alone," Alec said. "But my concern with it goes far deeper. I am not
at all certain that it is a delusion." "What do you mean?"

 
          
 
"I got through to him at dinnertime. He
was relaxed, his thoughts drifting. I tried a probe and succeeded. He believes
he is da Vinci, does not want us to know it, is doing everything he can to make
us believe he is a recovering Dennis Guise. At the same time, he is trying to
learn everything he can about the world in which he now finds himself."

 
          
 
"That does not make it anything more than
a paranoid situation—one which we are fortunately able to capitalize on."
Alec raised his hand.

 
          
 
"It seems more than just the belief,
though. With Condorcet, he picked up the man's thinking as well as the French
language. Now, with da Vinci, he has acquired artistic skills, and he shifted
hands—da Vinci was left-handed, I just looked it up—and an almost pathological
curiosity with respect to just about everything—"

           
 
'Then why isn't he speaking Italian?"

 
          
 
"Because this time he has taken his
thought patterns from one of the greatest minds that ever existed, and he has
decided to play along with us, to fit himself into the situation in which he
finds himself. He has therefore been learning modern English all day, at a
phenomenal rate. If you listen to him, though, you will hear that he speaks it
with an Italian accent, which he is already attempting to cover. He is trying
to adapt himself."

 
          
 
"The entire notion is preposterous. But
even granting it for a moment, by what possible mechanism could he be achieving
it?"

 
          
 
"All right. I have been doing a lot of
thinking. How does telepathy work? We are still not certain. Our approach has
been mainly practical. All of our telepathic security guards, communication
specialists, psychological therapy workers, semantic engineers, precision
translators, have worked out various ways of exploiting the faculty without
really advancing our understanding as to its mechanism. Oh, we have our
theorists, but they've really very little substance on which to base their
guesses."

 
          
 
"So you've another guess to add to the
list?"

 
          
 
"Yes. This is really all that it is. A
guess—or a strange feeling. The reason Dennis was sent here in the first place
was the phenomenal range of his ability. He is the most powerful telepath on
record. Here, he was effectively blocked from reaching the sorts of minds for
which he seemed to have an affinity—a matter of distance. He simply could not
reach far enough to make the contacts he seemed to require. Now, what did that
leave him?"

 
          
 
"He had to fall back on his own
resources. He finally did so, according to plan, and he has now begun the
recovery we had hoped for."