Infinite Dreams

  The psychiatrist had no use for the traditional props: no soft couch or bookcases lined with obviously expensive volumes. No carpet, no paneling, no numbered prints; not even the notebook or the expression of slightly disinterested compassion. Instead, she had a hidden recorder and an analytical scowl; plain stucco walls surrounding a functional desk and two hard chairs, period.

  “You know exactly what the problem is,” she said.

  John nodded. “I suppose. Some … residue from my early upbringing; I accept her as an authority figure. From the few words I could understand of what she said, I took, it was …”

  “From the words penis and woman, you built your own curse. And you’re using it, probably to punish yourself for surviving the disaster that killed the rest of your family.”

  “That’s pretty old-fashioned. And farfetched. I’ve had almost forty years to punish myself for that, if I felt responsible. And I don’t.”

  “Still, it’s a working hypothesis.” She shifted in her chair and studied the pattern of teak grain on the bare top of her desk. “Perhaps if we can keep it simple, the cure can also be simple.”

  “All right with me,” John said. At $125 per hour, the quicker, the better.

  “If you can see it, feel it, in this context, then the key to your cure is transference.” She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and John watched her breasts shifting with detached interest, the only kind of interest he’d had in women for more than a week. “If you can see me as an authority figure instead,” she continued, “then eventually I’ll be able to reach the child inside; convince him that there was no curse. Only a case of mistaken identity … nothing but an old woman who scared him. With careful hypnosis, it shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “Seems reasonable,” John said slowly. Accept this young Geyri as more powerful than the old witch? As a grown man, he could. If there was a frightened Gypsy boy hiding inside him, though, he wasn’t sure.

  “523 784 00926/ /Hello, machine,” John typed. “Who is the best dermatologist within a 10-short-block radius?”

  GOOD MORNING, JOHN. WITHIN STATED DISTANCE AND USING AS SOLE PARAMETER THEIR HOURLY FEE, THE MAXIMUM FEE IS $95/IIR, AND THIS IS CHARGED BY TWO DERMATOLOGISTS. DR. BRYAN DILL, 245 W. 45TII ST., SPECIALIZES IN COSMETIC DERMATOLOGY. DR. ARTHUR MAAS, 198 W. 44TH ST., SPECIALIZES IN SERIOUS DISEASES OF THE SKIN.

  “Will Dr. Maas treat diseases of psychological origin?”

  CERTAINLY. MOST DERMATOSIS IS.

  Don’t get cocky, machine. “Make me an appointment with Dr. Maas, within the next two days.”

  YOUR APPOINTMENT IS AT 1:45 TOMORROW, FOR ONE HOUR. THIS WILL LEAVE YOU 45 MINUTES TO GET TO LUCHOW’S FOR YOUR APPOINTMENT WITH THE AMCSE GROUP. I HOPE IT IS NOTHING SERIOUS, JOHN.

  “I trust it isn’t.” Creepy empathy circuits. “Have you arranged for a remote terminal at Luchow’s?”

  THIS WAS NOT NECESSARY. I WILL PATCH THROUGH CONED/GENERAL. LEASING THEIR LUCHOW’S FACILITY WILL COST ONLY.588 THE PROJECTED COST OF TRANSPORTATION AND SETUP LABOR FOR A REMOTE TERMINAL.

  That’s my machine, always thinking. “Very good, machine. Keep this station live for the time being.”

  THANK YOU, JOHN. The letters faded but the ready light stayed on.

  He shouldn’t complain about the empathy circuits; they were his baby, and the main reason Bellcomm paid such a bloated salary, to keep him. The copyright on the empathy package was good for another 12 years, and they were making a fortune, timesharing it out. Virtually every large computer in the world was hooked up to it, from the ConEd/General that ran New York, to Geneva and Akademia Nauk, which together ran half of the world.

  Most of the customers gave the empathy package a name, usually female. John called it “machine” in a not-too-successful attempt to keep from thinking of it as human.

  He made a conscious effort to restrain himself from picking at the carbuncles on the back of his neck. He should have gone to the doctor when they first appeared, but the psychiatrist had been sure she could cure them; the “corruption” of the second curse. She’d had no more success with that than with the impotence. And this morning, boils had broken out on his chest and groin and shoulderblades, and there were sore spots on his nose and cheekbone. He had some opiates, but would stick to aspirin until after work.

  Dr. Maas called it impetigo; gave him a special kind of soap and some antibiotic ointment. He told John to make another appointment in two weeks, ten days. If there was no improvement they would take stronger measures. He seemed young for a doctor, and John couldn’t bring himself to say anything about the curse. But he already had a doctor for that end of it, he rationalized.

  Three days later he was back in Dr. Maas’s office. There was scarcely a square inch of his body where some sort of lesion hadn’t appeared. He had a temperature of 101.4°. The doctor gave him systemic antibiotics and told him to take a couple of days’ bed rest. John told him about the curse, finally, and the doctor gave him a booklet about psychosomatic illness. It told John nothing he didn’t already know.

  By the next morning, in spite of strong antipyretics, his fever had risen to over 102°. Groggy with fever and pain-killers, John crawled out of bed and travelled down to the West Village, to the YGAC office. Fred Gorgio, the man who guarded the place at night, was still on duty.

  “Mr. Zold!” When John came through the door, Gorgio jumped up from the desk and took his arm. John winced from the contact, but allowed himself to be led to a chair. “What’s happened?” John by this time looked like a person with terminal smallpox.

  For a long minute John sat motionlessly, staring at the inflamed boils that crowded the backs of his hands. “I need a healer,” he said, talking with slow awkwardness because of the crusted lesions on his lips.

  “A chóvihánni?” John looked at him uncomprehendingly. “A witch?”

  “No.” He moved his head from side to side. “An herb. doctor. Perhaps a white witch.”

  “Have you gone to the gadjo doctor?”

  “Two. A Gypsy did this to me; a Gypsy has to cure it.”

  “It’s in your head, then?”

  “The gadjo doctors say so. It can still kill me.”

  Gorgio picked up the phone, punched a local number, and rattled off a fast stream of a patois that used as much Romani and Italian as English. “That was my cousin,” he said, hanging up. “His mother heals, and has a good reputation. If he finds her at home, she can be here in less than an hour.”

  John mumbled his appreciation. Gorgio led him to the couch.

  The healer woman was early, bustling in with a wicker bag full of things that rattled. She glanced once at John and Gorgio, and began clearing the pamphlets off a side table. She appeared to be somewhere between fifty and sixty years old, tight bun of silver hair bouncing as she moved around the room, setting up a hot-plate and filling two small pots with water. She wore a black dress only a few years old, and sensible shoes. The only lines on her face were laugh lines.

  She stood over John and said something in gentle, rapid Italian, then took a heavy silver crucifix from around her neck and pressed it between his hands. “Tell her to speak English … or Hungarian,” John said.

  Gorgio translated. “She says that you should not be so affected by the old superstitions. You should be a modern man, and not believe in fairy tales for children and old people.”

  John stared at the crucifix, turning it slowly between his fingers. “One old superstition is much like another.” But he didn’t offer to give the crucifix back.

  The smaller pot was starting to steam and she dropped a handful of herbs into it. Then she returned to John and carefully undressed him.

  When the herb infusion was boiling, she emptied a package of powdered arrowroot into the cold water in the other pot, and stirred it vigorously. Then she poured the hot solution into the cold and stirred some more. Through Gorgio, she told John she wasn’t sure whether the herb treatment would cure him. But it would make him more comfortable.

>   The liquid jelled and she tested the temperature with her fingers. When it was cool enough, she started to pat it gently on John’s face. Then the door creaked open, and she gasped. It was the old crone who had put the curse on John in the first place.

  The witch said something in Romani, obviously a command, and the woman stepped away from John.

  “Are you still a skeptic, John Zold?” She surveyed her handiwork. “You called this nonsense.”

  John glared at her but didn’t say anything. “I heard that you had asked for a healer,” she said, and addressed the other woman in a low tone.

  Without a word, she emptied her potion into the sink and began putting away her paraphernalia. “Old bitch,” John croaked. “What did you tell her?”

  “I said that if she continued to treat you, what happened to you would also happen to her sons.”

  “You’re afraid it would work,” Gorgio said.

  “No. It would only make it easier for John Zold to die. If I wanted that I could have killed him on his threshold” Like a quick bird she bent over and kissed John on his inflamed lips. “I will see you soon, John Zold. Not in this world.” She shuffled out the door and the other woman followed her. Gorgio cursed her in Italian, but she didn’t react.

  John painfully dressed himself. “What now?” Gorgio said. “I could find you another healer …”

  “No. I’ll go back to the gadjo doctors. They say they can bring people back from the dead.” He gave Gorgio the woman’s crucifix and limped away.

  The doctor gave him enough antibiotics to turn him into a loaf of moldy bread, then reserved a bed for him at an exclusive clinic in Westchester, starting the next morning. He would be under 24-hour observation; constant blood turnaround if necessary. They would cure him. It was not possible for a man of his age and physical condition to die of dermatosis.

  It was dinnertime and the doctor asked John to come have some home cooking. He declined partly from lack of appetite, partly because he couldn’t imagine even a doctor’s family being able to eat with such a grisly apparition at the table with them. He took a cab to the office.

  There was nobody on his floor but a janitor, who took one look at John and developed an intense interest in the floor.

  “523 784 00926/ /Machine, I’m going to die. Please advise.”

  ALL HUMANS AND MACHINES DIE, JOHN. IF YOU MEAN YOU ARE GOING TO DIE, SOON, THAT IS SAD.

  “That’s what I mean. The skin infection; it’s completely out of control. White cell count climbing in spite of drugs. Going to the hospital tomorrow, to die.”

  BUT YOU ADMITTED THAT THE CONDITION WAS PSYCHOSOMATIC. THAT MEANS YOU ARE KILLING YOURSELF, JOHN. YOU HAVE NO REASON TO BE THAT SAD.

  He called the machine a Jewish mother and explained in some detail about the YGAC, the old crone, the various stages of the curse, and today’s aborted attempt to fight fire with fire.

  YOUR LOGIC WAS CORRECT BUT THE APPLICATION OF IT WAS NOT EFFECTIVE. YOU SHOULD HAVE COME TO ME, JOHN. IT TOOK ME 2.037 SECONDS TO SOLVE YOUR PROBLEM. PURCHASE A SMALL BLACK BIRD AND CONNECT ME TO A VOCAL CIRCUIT.

  “What?” John said. He typed: “Please explain.”

  FROM REFERENCE IN NEW YORK LIBRARY’S COLLECTION OF THE JOURNAL OF THE GYPSY LORE SOCIETY, EDINBURGH. THROUGH JOURNALS OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL LINGUISTICS AND SLAVIC PHILOLOGY. FINALLY TO REFERENCE IN DOCTORAL THESIS OF HERR LUDWIG R. GROSS (HEIDELBERG, 1976) TO TRANSCRIPTION OF WIRE RECORDING WHICH RESIDES IN ARCHIVES OF AKADEMIA NAUK, MOSCOW; CAPTURED FROM GERMAN SCIENTISTS (EXPERIMENTS ON GYPSIES IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS, TRYING TO KILL THEM WITH REPETITION OF RECORDED CURSE) AT THE END OF WWII.

  INCIDENTALLY, JOHN, THE NAZI EXPERIMENTS FAILED. EVEN TWO GENERATIONS AGO, MOST GYPSIES WERE DISASSOCIATED ENOUGH FROM THE OLD TRADITIONS TO BE IMMUNE TO THE FATAL CURSE. YOU ARE VERY SUPERSTITIOUS. I HAVE FOUND THIS TO BE NOT UNCOMMON AMONG MATHEMATICIANS.

  THERE IS A TRANSFERENCE CURSE THAT WILL CURE YOU BY GIVING THE IMPOTENCE AND INFECTION TO THE NEAREST SUSCEPTIBLE PERSON. THAT MAY WELL BE THE OLD BITCH WHO GAVE IT TO YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE.

  THE PET STORE AT 588 SEVENTH AVENUE IS OPEN UNTIL 9 PM. THEIR INVENTORY INCLUDES A CAGE OF FINCHES, OF ASSORTED COLORS. PURCHASE A BLACK ONE AND RETURN HERE. THEN CONNECT ME TO A VOCAL CIRCUIT.

  It took John less than thirty minutes to taxi there, buy the bird and get back. The taxidriver didn’t ask him why he was carrying a bird cage to a deserted office building. He felt like an idiot.

  John usually avoided using the vocal circuit because the person who had programmed it had given the machine a sacharrine, nice-old-lady voice. He wheeled the output unit into his office and plugged it in.

  “Thank you, John. Now hold the bird in your left hand and repeat after me.” The terrified finch offered no resistance when John closed his hand over it.

  The machine spoke Romani with a Russian accent. John repeated it as well as he could, but not one word in ten had any meaning to him.

  “Now kill the bird, John.”

  Kill it? Feeling guilty, John pressed hard, felt small bones cracking. The bird squealed and then made a faint growling noise. Its heart stopped.

  John dropped the dead creature and typed, “Is that all?”

  The machine knew John didn’t like to hear its voice, and so replied on the video screen. YES. GO HOME AND GO TO SLEEP, AND THE CURSE WILL BE TRANSFERRED BY THE TIME YOU WAKE UP. DEL O DEL BAXT, JOHN.

  He locked up and made his way home. The late commuters on the train, all strangers, avoided his end of the car. The cab driver at the station paled when he saw John, and carefully took his money by an untainted corner.

  John took two sleeping pills and contemplated the rest of the bottle. He decided he could stick it out for one more day, and uncorked his best bottle of wine. He drank half of it in five minutes, not tasting it. When his body started to feel heavy, he creeped into the bedroom and fell on the bed without taking off his clothes.

  When he awoke the next morning, the first thing he noticed was that he was no longer impotent. The second thing he noticed was that there were no boils on his right hand.

  “523 784 00926/ /Thank you, machine. The counter-curse did work.”

  The ready light glowed steadily, but the machine didn’t reply.

  He turned on the intercom. “Martha? I’m not getting any output on the VDS here.”

  “Just a minute, sir. Let me hang up my coat, I’ll call the machine room. Welcome back.”

  “I’ll wait.” You could call the machine room yourself, slave driver. He looked at the faint image reflected back from the video screen; his face free of any inflammation. He thought of the Gypsy crone, dying of corruption, and the picture didn’t bother him at all. Then he remembered the finch and saw its tiny corpse in the middle of the rug. He picked it up just as Martha came into his office, frowning.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  He gestured at the cage. “Thought a bird might liven up the place. Died, though.” He dropped it in the wastepaper basket. “What’s the word?”

  “Oh, the … it’s pretty strange. They say nobody’s getting any output. The machine’s computing, but it’s, well, it’s not talking.”

  “Hmm. I better get down there.” He took the elevator down to the sub-basement. It always seemed unpleasantly warm to him down there. Probably psychological compensation on the part of the crew; keeping the temperature up because of all the liquid helium inside the pastel boxes of the central processing unit. Several bathtubs’ worth of liquid that had to be kept colder than the surface of Pluto.

  “Ah, Mr. Zold.” A man in a white jumpsuit, carrying a clipboard as his badge of office: first shift coordinator. John recognized him but didn’t remember his name. Normally, he would have asked the machine before coming down. “Glad that you’re back. Hear it was pretty bad.”

  Friendly concern or lese majesty? “Some sort of allergy, hung on for more than a week. What’s the output problem?”

  “Would’ve left a message if I’d known you were coming in.
It’s in the CPU, not the software. Theo Jasper found it when he opened up, a little after six, but it took an hour to get a cryogenics man down here.”

  “That’s him?” A man in a business suit was wandering around the central processing unit, reading dials and writing the numbers down in a stenographer’s notebook. They went over to him and he introduced himself as John Courant, from the Cryogenics Group at Avco/Everett.

  “The trouble was in the stack of mercury rings that holds the superconductors for your output functions. Some sort of corrosion, submicroscopic cracks all over the surface.”

  “How can something corrode at four degrees above absolute zero?” the coordinator asked. “What chemical—”

  “I know, it’s hard to figure. But we’re replacing them, free of charge. The unit’s still under warranty.”

  “What about the other stacks?” John watched two workmen lowering a silver cylinder through an opening in the CPU. A heavy fog boiled out from the cold. “Are you sure they’re all right?”

  “As far as we can tell, only the output stack’s affected. That’s why the machine’s impotent, the—”

  “Impotent!”

  “Sorry, I know you computer types don’t like to … personify the machines. But that’s what it is; the machine’s just as good as it ever was, for computing. It just can’t communicate any answers.”

  “Quite so. Interesting.” And the corrosion. Submicroscopic boils. “Well. I have to think about this. Call me up at the office if you need me.”

  “This ought to fix it, actually,” Courant said. “You guys about through?” he asked the workmen.

  One of them pressed closed a pressure clamp on the top of the CPU. “Ready to roll.”

  The coordinator led them to a console under a video output screen like the one in John’s office. “Let’s see.” He pushed a button marked VDS.

  LET ME DIE, the machine said.

  The coordinator chuckled nervously. “Your empathy circuits, Mr. Zold. Sometimes they do funny things.” He pushed the button again.

  LET ME DIET. Again. LE M DI. The letters faded and no more could be conjured up by pushing the button.