“I was telling Dake how you always liked his stuff, Mig.” All right, so I missed it. But when you assign two and they assign five, it keeps you busy. I see what you mean. Carelessness. Something about a fingernail.
“I’ve missed your column, Mr. Lorin. Used to get a charge out of it, the way you hacked at everybody.” Yes, they should have had somebody there ready with an illusion, checking to see if Lorin accepted the doll. “Have a drink, folks? Sit down.”
They took poolside chairs. “Gee, I’d go for a collins. How about you, Dake?” Are you getting what I’m getting, Miguel? He’s balanced on the edge. It’s a little beyond his credibility, and he is wondering about his own sanity.
Miguel pushed a button. The servant appeared almost at once. He gave the orders. So we must be very careful, girl. A little push might send him over the edge. Once we use him, maybe we can run a check and see. But I don’t think he’d make it. Rigidity there. Father image. Streak of the Puritan. Somber messiah. They seldom check through. Too dependent on the nature of reality.
“Hasn’t Mig got a nice place here, Dake?” Don’t forget the quota. He might do very nicely.
“I guess I could be classified as unemployed right now, Mr. Larner,” Dake said. “I’ve been working for the government for a year. And today my... superior died. A bit suddenly. It was sort of unofficial employment, so I guess that ends it.”
“Weren’t you working for Branson?” Miguel asked.
“Why, yes! How did you know that?”
“I got sources. I have to keep in touch. Anything Branson did might effect imports and exports. And anything that effects those, changes my income. You got any plans, Mr. Lorin?”
“I’m writing a newspaper article for Thursday publication.”
“Hot?”
“It would have been hotter if Mr. Branson hadn’t died. It will probably be classified as a Disservice to the State.”
“Putting your head in the noose, eh?”
“I suppose you could call it that. It just seems... more important than what can happen to me. Trouble, though, is that it’s critical of Darwin Branson. He’s the man who died today.”
“You need a place to work?”
“Thanks, no. A man is letting me use an office.”
“If it doesn’t work out, I got a place here you can use. A nice setup.” Do you want to fix Kelly, girl? Now that we have him here I want him to stay.
“This would be a nice quiet place to work, Dake,” Karen said. Let Dale do it. I’ve been outside too long. It made hash of my nerves, Miguel. See how restless he is getting? He wants to leave.
“I changed my mind, Karen,” Miguel said. “This is easier. I just put him under full control.”
She looked quickly at Lorin, saw the automaton rigidity of his posture, the eyes in trance. But how can you...
“Aloud, please. Para-voice is an insidious habit on tour. The easiest way to keep him here is to take full control. Let him believe he went back to Kelly and Kelly changed his mind and gave him a refund of his money, and backed out. Then we’ll release him up above in the lobby with the idea he has come here to take up my offer. It just seems simpler. Ready now, and I’ll turn him over to you. Take him to one of the rooms upstairs and give him the complete memory pattern of seeing Kelly and coming back here at, say, nine this evening. Leave him in stasis up there and then you can rest and take him up to the lobby at nine.”
Karen waited. When Miguel released Lorin she caught him deftly. There was a split second of release in which Lorin stirred and made a faint sigh, almost a moan. Then she had him. As she went through the wide doors into the main room and toward the elevator, she looked back and saw him following her with that odd walking-on-eggs stride of the controlled. There was always a pathetic vulnerability about the controlled which touched her. It seemed particularly poignant in this case, all the tall hard strength of the man following as docile as a lamb.
She took the elevator up two levels and walked him down a corridor to an empty room. Lorin sat on the edge of the bed, turned stiffly, lifted his feet up, and lay back, eyes open and staring, arms rigid at his side.
Karen sat on the edge of the bed and quickly took him through all the mechanical actions of returning to New Jersey, talking to Kelly, listening to the man’s protestations, accepting the refund, returning to the city. She took him on an aimless walk, had him eat a solitary meal, decide to take Miguel’s offer, and return to the apartment. She stopped the visualization the moment he stepped through the door, through the barrier. It was the work of but five minutes to give him the entire visualization, and it took another few seconds to push consciousness even further back so that he would remain in stasis until she called to get him.
With an impulse that surprised her a bit, she bent over and kissed his unconscious lips lightly. Poor big oaf. Poor bewildered earthling, torn this way and that. Pawn in a game he’d never know. She kissed her fingertip, touched the middle of his forehead, smiled down at him, and left the room, shutting the door quietly, even though it would have made no difference at all if she had slammed it.
Six
Kelly stubbornly pushed the money back across the desk. He said, “Now take it, Mr. Lorin. I already told you. I’ve reconsidered. I don’t think that disclaiming the article would give me enough immunity. They’d wonder why I accepted it.”
Dake wearily pocketed the money, stood up. “I guess there’s nothing I can do but look for someone else.”
Kelly leaned back in his chair. “Now if you’d come to me with a little better backing. Say with a note from Mig Larner, or somebody like that...”
“What made you mention his name?”
“I was just using him as an example. If Mig says you won’t get in trouble, you won’t. He keeps all the right wheels greased, that lad does.”
Dake left Kelly’s place. It was after six. He had a long search for a cab. Once he was back in Manhattan he got off at New Times Square. Strange day. Darwin... or what was supposed to be Darwin... dying like that. He felt strange. Almost unreal. It was an odd sensation, as though his side vision were impaired, as though he could only see straight ahead, and everything else was a grayness, a nothingness. It was the same with sounds. He kept hearing sharp individual sounds, but the background noise of the city seemed to be missing. It seemed to him as though there were some serious impairment of all his senses. Yet, oddly, he could not seem to bring himself to stop and check that impairment — to turn his head quickly, to listen consciously for all the background noise. And those people he did see, those normal characters of the streets were subtly altered. Colors had slightly different values. And his instinctive and automatic appraisals seemed distorted.
He saw a lovely girl looking into a cluttered shoddy store window, examining the ersatz fabrics. He found himself looking at her with a peculiar feeling of envy and jealousy. And he was conscious of the breadth of shoulder of the men. He could not be certain, or even investigate the fact, but he had the wry idea that he was mincing along rather than walking. The world had a dreamlike aspect, and it seemed to him that, almost on an unconscious level, he was trying to tell himself that he was dreaming, yet not being able to force the thought up to the level of action.
He found a quiet restaurant where he had never been before. He ordered a sweet drink which normally he despised. And found it surprisingly good. He ordered a very light meal, and yet it seemed to satisfy him completely. The world was a bit out of focus, and yet he could not capture his wandering attention and apply his intelligence to a thorough appraisal of exactly where and why it was out of focus.