“Not too. You couldn’t expect me to follow everything you could say.”
She brought him a tall drink. “Kashmiri Dew. Eight years old.” She perched on the arm of his chair, rather disturbingly warm against his arm. “Mind?”
“N-no. I guess what’s troubling me the most is wondering if I’m losing my mind.”
“Don’t they say that if you’re wondering about it, you aren’t?”
“I don’t have much faith in that. I’ve always been a sort of functional pragmatist.”
“Don’t make the words too big, Professor.”
“If I could see something, feel it, touch it, smell it, hit it with my fist, then it existed. And my actions were based on thought which in turn was based on realities.”
“I sort of get it, sugar.”
“So today reality began to go sour on me. Typewriter keys don’t bleed. A man’s fingernail doesn’t grow a quarter of an inch in two days. And ever since I left here this afternoon, until I got back, everything was curiously unreal. Like I was walking and talking in a dream. When I couldn’t find that money in my pocket, I began to think it was a dream.”
“What’s this typewriter keys and fingernails routine?”
“Little things where my senses didn’t send the right messages to my brain. As if I suddenly saw you walk across the ceiling.”
“Shall I?”
“Don’t look at me like that. I begin to think you can. Anyway, what has a man got to hold onto except reality?”
“Okay, sugar. I rise to ask a question. I’ll name a list. Faith, hope, love, honor. Can you touch them, smell, them, hit them with your fist?”
“Those items are the result of thought regarding other concrete items which can be detected with the senses.”
She turned and kissed him suddenly. Her eyes danced. “I’m beginning to get it, Professor. You could feel that, couldn’t you. But if it ended up in you loving me, you would only get that from... from inference.”
“I get the damndest feeling that you’re way ahead of me. And don’t do that again.”
“If you don’t like it, I won’t. Let’s continue the discussion, Professor. Let’s play suppose. Like that guy Midas. Everything he touched turned to gold. Okay. According to you he should have gone nuts. But he didn’t. He starved to death. What was that? Strong brain? Suppose an ordinary guy. A guy like you. His world starts to frazzle on the edges. Wouldn’t he have enough pride to keep telling himself that he was okay? That something was doing it to him, on purpose?”
“Persecution complex, eh. So he’s crazy anyway.”
“Suppose another thing. Suppose this precious reality of yours that you like so well, suppose all that is fiction, and when you begin to see crazy things, you’re seeing the real reality.”
“You have a very unique mind, Karen.”
“The adjective has been used on me before. But not that way, sugar.”
“You should have done more with yourself. That quality of imagination is rare.”
“You know, Dake, you’re a little on the stuffy side. How about if I like me the way I am? How about that?”
He grinned. “My reformer instinct always crops out. Forgive me.”
“You said it was funny this afternoon after you left here. How?”
“Colors looked odd. People looked odd. I had the feeling that I wasn’t seeing or hearing as much as I should.”
“So this style started in Crete. How veddy veddy interesting!”
He quickly averted his eyes and felt his face get hot again. She laughed at him. “It’s no trick to read your mind sometimes, Lorin, man.”
“Look, I don’t want to be too stuffy, but...”
“I have the idea Patrice wouldn’t care.”
He frowned at her. “Dammit, that’s about enough. I know I didn’t mention her to you. You’ve got a lot of extra-sensory perception or something.”
“I read the gossip columns. Sort of a cold dish, isn’t she?”
“Miss Voss, you pry. Now, out! I’m going to try to do some work.”
She slid off the arm of the chair, winked blandly at him. “All right, dear. Use the phone for food. They bring it down. All the office stuff is through that door. Your clothes and things ought to be over soon.”
She went to the door, burlesquing her normally provocative walk. She winked again, over her shoulder, and left. He sat for a time thinking of what she said about reality. What if all the “normal” things were illusionary, and all the things that went bump in the night were fragments of reality, seen through the mist of illusion? He shrugged off the idea. Maybe a table top is a matrix of whirling bits of energy. Maybe all the true matter that makes up a man, once you eliminate the spaces between nucleus and perimeter electrons, is no bigger than the head of a pin. But you can beat on a table with your fist, and the wood hurts your hand. And you can break a man’s jaw and hear the bone go.
He found that the small office was beautifully equipped, and as clean as an operating room. He worked on the article, regaining the free flow of words which he had experienced in the office borrowed from Kelly. He used the same lead, tightening it a bit, altering it to include the death of Branson.
After an hour of work he went out to phone for food. He was famished again. His clothes had been brought, neatly unpacked in the bedroom. The food was brought. He worked for another hour and then went to bed. He sat on the edge of the bed in his pajamas. He put his feet up and lay back. A funny example of déjà vu, he thought. As though he had been in this room before. Or a room very like it. With Karen. She had sat on the edge of the bed. Later she had kissed his lips. She had told him something. Something about Kelly. It was so difficult to...
Sleep came quickly. The dream was as crazy as the day. Myriad voices echoing inside his skull. He couldn’t get them out. They were little people, trudging around in there. Pinching and prodding his brain. Nibbling at the edges with tiny rodent teeth. Yelling at each other. All talking at once. Commenting on him. Hey, look at this. And this over here! What do you know? Pinch and prod and nibble, and all the voices going like too many records playing at once. Definitely latent. And a receptive. But a fracture line here, and here. Father image. Won’t do. Won’t do at all. But look at this!
He woke up, sitting up, hearing his own roar of “Get out!” still lingering in the silent air-conditioned room. He was sweaty and chilled. He pulled the blanket up over him. He could hear faint music. Very odd music. He couldn’t recognize the instruments. Probably some new Pak-Indian fad, he decided. Damn stupid to accept Miguel Larner’s hospitality. Well, use any means if the end is good. Damn destructive philosophy, however, if you overdid it. Question. Who was using who, whom?
Seven
It was a fine summer morning on Manarr. The sun beamed hot on the shallow placid seas, on the green rolling traces of the one-time mountains. The fi-birds dipped over the game fields, teetering on membranous green wings, yelping like the excited children. Picnic day. Picnic day. Everyone was coming, as everyone had always come. Hurrying from the warm pastels of the small houses that dotted the wide plains, hurrying by the food stations, the power boxes. Hooray for picnic day. The smallest ones set their tiny jump-sticks at the widest settings and did crazy clumsy leaps in the warm air, floating, sprawling, nickering. The maidens had practiced the jump-stick formations and groups of them played towering floating games of leapfrog on the way to the game fields, spreading wide their skirts, swimming through the perfect air of this day. The young men watched and bounded and set their jump-sticks narrow to do the hard quick tricks. Picnic day. Today there would be water sculpture, and sky dancing, and clowns. Day of laughter, evening of the long songs, night of mating. Time for work tomorrow. The hard work that cramped the brain and so often brought tears, under the unforgiving eye, the cold trim face of the earthling. Someone had said that today the earthling would judge the water sculpture, lead the sky dance. Few believed it.