Zelazny, Roger - Novel 07 (5 page)

 
          
 
Vicki nodded.

 
          
 
"Can you recommend a therapist?"

 
          
 
"Actually, I have several possibles in
mind. I will have to check their availability. The best course of treatment
would probably involve a therapist who could live in and work with him every
day—at least for a while. I will investigate as soon as I get back and let you
know—sometime tomorrow."

 
          
 
"All right," Richard said.
"Tell them we have a nice guest room."

 
          
 
Winchell began to rise.

 
          
 
"We would like you to stay to
dinner," Vicki said

 
          
 
Winchell eased himself back down.

 
          
 
"I thank you."

 
          
 
Richard Guise smiled for the first time that
day, rose to his feet.

 
          
 
"What are you drinking?"

 
          
 
"Scotch and soda."

 
          
 
He nodded and swung off toward the house.

 
          
 
"Forty miles . . ." he muttered.

 
          
 
Lydia Dimanche came to stay at the Guise
house, a small, graceful woman with a musical voice and eyes which almost matched
the black twists of her hair. They guessed that she might be Polynesian.

 
          
 
Lydia
saw Dennis every day, feeding, channeling,
directing, organizing sensory and extrasensory input. When she was not with
Dennis she kept to herself, back in her room, down in town, up in the hills.
She took her meals with the Guises, but never volunteered information
concerning her patient. When asked directly, she normally replied that it was
still too early to see clearly, to say anything for certain.

 
          
 
Months later, when Richard Guise departed on a
lengthy business trip, Dennis' condition still seemed unchanged. The daily
sessions went on. Vicki spent more and more time with her plants. The few
minutes, mornings and afternoons, grew into hours. Evenings, she began reading
gardening books; she obtained more plants, had a small greenhouse constructed.

 
          
 
One morning,
Lydia
emerged from Dennis' room to find the
taller woman leaning against the wall.

 
          
 
"
Victoria
," she said, a beginning smile falling
toward its opposite.

 
          
 
"I want to read him,
Lydia
. All this time ... I have to see what he is
like now "

 
          
 
"I have to advise against it. I have been
controlling him quite strictly, and any intrusive thoughts or feelings might
upset the balances I am trying to—"

 
          
 
"I am not going to broadcast. I just want
to look."

 
          
 
"There is not really that much to see at
this point. He will seem as he always has—"

 
          
 
"I have to see. I insist."

 
          
 
"You give me no choice,"
Lydia
said, stepping aside. "But I wish you
would think about it for a minute before you go in."

 
          
 
"I have already thought about it."

 
          
 
Vicki entered the room, moved to the side of
the bed. Dennis lay on his side, staring past her at the far wall. His eyes did
not move, not even when she passed directly before him.

 
          
 
She opened her mind and reached, very
carefully, toward him.

 
          
 
Her eyes were dry when she emerged. She walked
past
Lydia
, through the front rooms and out into the courtyard. She seated herself
on the bench and stared at the geraniums. She did not move when
Lydia
came and sat beside her.

 
          
 
For a long while, neither spoke.

 
          
 
Then, finally, Vicki said, "It's like
giving isometrics to a corpse."

 
          
 
Lydia
shook her head.

 
          
 
"It only seems that way," she said.
"The fact that there are no obvious changes cannot be held as too
important right now. At any time during the months to come, the exercises in
which we are engaged could suddenly become crucial, making all the difference
between stability and continued dysfunction. This is another reason I did not
want you to check on him now. Your own morale is an important part of his
environment."

 
          
 
"I had to see," Vicki said.

 
          
 
"I understand. But please do not do it
again."

 
          
 
"I won't. I do not want to."

 
          
 
After a time, I do not know about the morale
part, though, Vicki indicated. I do not see how I can manage it. I do not know
how to change responses, reactions — here, inside. I was afraid of things so
much of the time. ... When I was a child it was my sister Eileen. She was not
TP; I could read her thoughts of me. Later there were teachers. Then the whole
world ... Going to hell in a handbasket ... Then my first husband ... Paul ...
Life was a lousy place till I met Dick. I wanted someone like him — older,
stronger, who knew how to do all the things I could not do — to keep things
safe, together. And he did, too. Before I met him, it always seemed as if the
world was on the verge of falling apart all about me. He made the feeling go
away — or kept it a good distance off. The same thing, I guess. I had felt
there was nothing he could not do, that things would always be good with him.
The world would work the way that it should. I would not be hurt. Then — this —
happened — with Dennis. Now, I am afraid again. ... It has been growing and
growing ever since it happened. I watch the news and I remember only the
stories of breakdown, disaster, malfunction, pollution. I read, and I am
impressed only by the bad parts of life. . . . Is it the world, or is it me? Or
could it be both of us? Now Dick is gone away again and Dennis stays the same.
. . . I do not know. I just do not know....

 
          
 
Lydia
put her arm about her shoulders.

 
          
 
You have looked and seen and you are afraid,
she told her. Fear is often a good thing. Despair is not. Fear can increase
your awareness, strengthen your will to fight. Despair is withdrawal —

 
          
 
But what is there to fight? And how do I fight
it?

 
          
 
There is hope for Dennis. I would not persist
in my efforts if I did not believe this. I could as easily be working on other
cases where the results are more readily apparent. Yet, somewhere along the
way, a therapist develops a feeling about a patient, about his chances for
recovery. I have such a feeling here. I do not believe that it will be easy, or
that it will occur soon. It may even take years, and it will be extremely
difficult. But remember, I know him better than anyone else — even yourself —
and I feel there is reason for you to have hope. You have had only a brief
glimpse of that which is within him. I have seen more. As to your other fears,
perhaps it is that there is some correspondence. At some level within yourself,
it may be that the fragmentation of his developing personality is analogous to
all the things which affected you so strongly until you met Richard. Perhaps
Dennis seems the image of a schizoid world. The fact that Richard can do
nothing to help him may have stirred up these other matters with the arousal of
this anxiety. It is easy to see how Dennis’ condition might symbolize for you
the spirit of the times. He is not a single person, but pieces of the many he
has touched. And these pieces do not fit together. They clash. Still, he is
there, somewhere, fust like humanity. — What is there to fight, and how do you
fight it? You hold with the hope, which is not unwarranted. You do not let your
fear slide over into despair. You do not withdraw. You feed your fear to the
hope. Burn it. Transform it into a patient expectancy.

 
          
 
You counsel a hard course,
Lydia
.. ..

 
          
 
I know. I know, too, that you will do it.

 
          
 
I will — try.. ..

 
          
 
A cold wind from the mountains came and
rustled the geraniums. Vicki leaned back and felt it on her face, her eyes
looking past the adobe wall, up to the place where the shadow-clad mountain
seemed suddenly poised above them.

 
          
 
"He is a child of a special time,"
she said then. "I will learn to wait for him."

 
          
 
Lydia
studied her profile, nodded finally, rose.

 
          
 
"I wish to be with him again for a
time," she said.

 
          
 
"Yes. Go."

 
          
 
Vicki sat until night with its stars came
above her. At length, she realized it was cold and withdrew.

 
          
 
Autumn, winter, spring... Summer.

 
          
 
The evening before, I had had a drink in the
bar of La Fonda, the old hotel at the end of the
Santa Fe Trail
. Now, I regarded the front of the building
and waited. Hot up here, atop the row of buildings across
San Francisco
. I looked past the low screening wall and
up the street to my right. All the buildings were low. Very few things in this
town over three stories. La Fonda itself is an exception. Adobe, stucco.
Varying shades of brown, set off here and there with brick and tile. No
problem, getting to this spot before daybreak, coming across rooftops as I had.
But now, the sun ... God! It blazed down on the plaza, on my back. Should have
worn a long-sleeved shirt. Then I would only be roasting now. This way, I would
shortly be a sunburnt corpse or a living lobster. Depending on how things went
... life is more a process of what happens to you while you are waiting for
things than it is the collection of things themselves.

 
          
 
The weapon lay at my feet, a .30/06. It was
covered by the dark jacket I had worn last night. I had spent a day with it up
in the hills, and even slept with it for several nights running. Yesterday, I
had stripped it down, cleaned it, oiled it. Now it was loaded, ready. No need
to touch it again until it was time to use it. Another might pick it up, fondle
it, fool with it, replace it, return to it. Since the bulk of life is waiting,
my feelings have always been that one should learn to do it well. The world
comes at you through the senses. There is no way to prevent this wholly, short
of death, nor should I desire to. It forces a model of itself upon your inner
being. So, willing or not, I have it inside me here. Its will is therefore
stronger than my own, and I am part of everything it has shown me. Truly, the
highest form of activity in which I might engage is its contemplation. But who
can be continuously comfortable with ultimates? I would not have minded smoking
as I waited, a thing I did in earlier days before I saw how things worked. The
other Children of the Earth would say that it is bad for the health and an
incidental air pollutant. For me, the air pollution is enough. Too much,
actually. Though the world is greater than I am, I know that it can be hurt. I wish
to refrain from doing so in as many areas as possible. Even if the results are
negligible, I would see them entered into the image of the world within me with
an awareness of myself as their agent. This would disturb me at times of
waiting and contemplation; that is to say, much of the time. As to its effects
on my health, this would trouble me not at all. I do not much care what becomes
of me. A man is born, lives, dies. Given infinity, I will be dead as long as
anyone else. Unless there is something to reincarnation, as some of them say
... In that case, though, it does not matter either. All that does matter is to
build the image and enjoy it, to keep from disturbing its balances, to refrain
from harming it.... Or, as I am going to do now, some positive thing to improve
it or protect it. That is virtue, the only virtue I can see. If I die bearing
with me a better image than would have existed but for my efforts, then I will
have passed fulfilled, having rendered the Earth my mother some payment for my
keep, some token of gratitude for the time of my existence. As for what becomes
of me in the process, let them write: Roderick Leishman. He didn't much care
what became of him.