“I suppose Mother sent you here,” Mazzo was saying. “What is it, a plot of some kind?”
“We’re not in a conspiracy, if that’s what you mean. She told me to tell you that she loves you. But you already know that.”
“Do I?”
“Yes. You should. She doesn’t want to interfere in your life. What you’ve got left of your life. She finds it hard to let you go. She finds it hard to accept what’s happening to you. But if you keep giving her the cold shoulder, she’ll find it impossible, Alberto.”
Alberto. To Barney he’d always been Mazzo, always would be. As if nobody in the world but Cassie had the right to call him Alberto.
“Don’t try to con me, Cassie. Don’t try to soften me up,” Mazzo said. “It won’t work.”
Red blotches had appeared on his face, angry blotches, as if the anger in his words was being expressed by his body, the way pictures in a book illustrate the text.
“Where was she when we needed her?” Mazzo said. “Caught up in her own little world of the country club. What she did to Papa, who wouldn’t hurt a soul on earth. She killed him, Cassie.”
“He died of a heart attack,” Cassie said.
“Screw the idea of a heart attack. He died because he was stabbed in the heart. By what she did. Divorcing him like that.”
Cassie blew air out of the corner of her mouth, patient, as if she were saying words she’d said a thousand times.
“We can’t be the judges, Alberto,” she said. “We don’t know what it was like for them. Somehow the marriage fell apart. And then Papa died. Nobody can prove there was a connection. They were like night and day. Maybe they shouldn’t have married in the first place. But they did. And we were born. She’s our mother. We’re her children. Twins, for God’s sake. And we almost killed her when we were born. I found out later that she almost died.”
“There’s no almost in my case, kid,” Mazzo said. “Look, I was a good son to her for a long time. But the rules are changed now. I don’t want her around for my final moments. I don’t want anybody around.”
“Does that include me?” Cassie asked.
“Yes,” Mazzo said, the word no louder than the sound a leaf makes touching earth after tumbling from a tree.
I’ve got to get out of here, Barney thought. I don’t want to be listening to this.
As if she had read his mind—a touch of the witch, maybe—Cassie Mazzofono turned toward him and said: “Why don’t you go?” Not a question, not a suggestion, but an order. Delivered gently but an order just the same.
Barney looked at Mazzo, but Mazzo was up to his old trick, studying the sheet as if he could find answers there, as if the world didn’t exist outside the bed he occupied. In the absence of any protest from Mazzo, he felt free to go, having kept his end of the bargain.
Yet as he moved toward the door, he felt a sense of loss. And something else. He didn’t want to leave without saying something to Cassie Mazzofono, anything, establishing himself as a person in her eyes. As Barney Snow. Not just a stooge, a buffer.
He waited for something to happen as he arrived at the door. An intervention. Mazzo calling back or Cassie curious about him: What did you say your last name was? But he knew that nothing would happen. He was a cipher in their lives, zero, nothing. He took a good long look at her. But her eyes were on Mazzo. He left the room without saying good-bye. They probably wouldn’t have heard him anyway.
At the far end of the corridor he found Billy the Kidney waiting. Out of his wheelchair, leaning against the wall. Eyes flashing with more than pain.
Billy told him that Ronson was dead, had died suddenly in Isolation, all functions ceasing even as the nurses monitored the actions and reactions of his body.
Ronson was in the Ice Age forever.
7
WHO is that masked man?” Barney asked, trying to keep it light, to cover his nervousness as he sat in the barber’s chair.
“Not the Lone Ranger,” the Handyman answered behind his own mask. Barney was surprised that someone like the Handyman had even heard of the Lone Ranger. He never connected the Handyman with the world outside the Complex. “Actually, Barney, this is Dr. Croft, whom I told you about. He will carry on the demonstration.”
Demonstration, Barney noted. Instead of experiment or test.
Dr. Croft loomed over Barney and the chair, a tall thin man, face hidden by the surgical mask. Except for his eyes, which were gray and flat and expressionless.
“You are in good hands,” the Handyman said from somewhere to his right. Barney couldn’t see him now and did not move his head. Could not move his head. His head was enclosed in a kind of helmet, doodads connected to his temples. The chair was not a barber’s chair, of course, and resembled a dentist’s chair more than anything else but wasn’t that, either. Straps bound Barney’s arms and legs. He’d felt a surge of claustrophobia when his arms were first pinned down but fought the feeling of being trapped, letting the blood flow, tempo, rhythm.
“This is for your protection,” the Handyman had explained. “We have secured your arms and legs to keep you stationary.” As usual, Barney figured, the Handyman was using words like secured and stationary as a smokescreen, more double-talk, and he let it pass, wanting to get it over with, whatever the Handyman and Dr. Croft had in mind.
“Let me tell you what is going to happen, my boy,” the Handyman said. “Dr. Croft will administer a drug. A routine injection in your left arm. You will grow drowsy, a not unpleasant sensation, and then fall asleep. While you are asleep, we will administer other drugs. These you will not feel or know about. You will not be in this chair at that time. You will become conscious in sixty minutes. In a room on this same floor. You will be under observation for a period of forty-five minutes. You will then be interrogated for perhaps thirty minutes or so, depending on your responses. You will then sleep again for several hours, the sleep induced by the introduction of a final drug into your system. You will be in no physical danger. There will be no distress of any kind.” He recited all this as if reading from a blackboard to a backward pupil.
“During the questioning,” Barney asked, “will I know who I am?” Barney wriggled his toes and felt the small wad of paper he had hidden under the Band-Aid in the crease next to his big toe on his right foot. He felt good, knowing the slip of paper was there. Felt crafty and clever. Gave him confidence and lessened the panic he ordinarily felt when new merchandise was injected.
“I will know who you are, Barney. I will be questioning you.”
“You didn’t answer my question, doctor,” Barney said, feeling a flicker of panic now despite the Band-Aid.
“You always said to spare you details, Barney. I was only complying with your wishes.”
“I don’t want all the details. I just want to know if I’ll remember anything. Like my name.”
“You will not remember your name. But consider this: You will also not remember not knowing your name. When you finally awaken after the demonstration is over, you will not remember the interrogation. But you will awaken with a sense of well-being, as if you have emerged from a long, restful sleep.”
Barney swallowed, his throat dry, mouth parched. “Like when someone’s been hypnotized?”
“Exactly,” the Handyman said. “You must remember, my boy, what I promised when you first came here. We never demand more of you than you can provide or sustain. We know your capacities from earlier tests. We know how far to go, how long to go. You must trust me in this.”
Now Dr. Croft stood before him, the masked man, gray eyes, bushy eyebrows. “You’ll be just fine,” he said, in a Texas drawl slightly muffled by the mask. “Try to relax, boy.”
Somehow the doctor’s accent, bringing back the memory of a thousand cowboy movies, took the edge off Barney’s concern. He closed his eyes, let his body sag and go limp, submitting himself to whatever was needed as he always did, loosening his bones and muscles, feeling himself drifting, drifting, softly, gently.
The
prick of the needle was like a dart hitting his flesh.
He waited, eyes still shut.
Heard the beating of his heart like a punching bag hit by a boxer.
His hands clutched the arms of the chair, fingernails digging into the plastic or leather or whatever it was.
Then, it came.
First the roaring. From far off, like a storm gathering or a tidal wave forming or a volcano rumbling just before it erupts.
The sound coming closer. Like a thousand jets rocketing through the air, shattering windows. And Barney, thinking ridiculously, I’m glad I don’t wear glasses.
The roaring increased.
Not the passing jets now.
The roaring nearby. Close. Inside him.
I am roaring.
He began to spin and needed to open his eyes, to see what was happening, but he couldn’t. He found it impossible to make his eyelids move.
And suddenly he was glad he couldn’t, because he began to spin. Still sitting in the chair, strapped in, but spinning all the same. Spinning and whirling and, wow, twisting, too. In the air, here, everywhere. Body melting and flowing and always moving, moving.
He was glad that he was fastened in the chair. Otherwise he’d be actually flying through the air.
But wait.
That’s what he was doing.
Off and away.
Swirling and twirling, like he was orbiting the planet in a dizzying, dazzling flight.
Then
he
tumbled
into
oblivion.…
8
THE boy opened his eyes. There had been an explosion of light but no aftermath of smoke and rubble, the way there would be in a real explosion. For a moment the light was blinding, and he raised his hand to protect his eyes, blinking furiously. Then the light became less intense, not blinding anymore, regular daylight. Funny, there were no blind spots in his vision, the way it usually happens when a flashbulb pops or you look at the sun too long. Then he knew why, of course. The explosion of light had occurred inside him, not outside.
He was glad to find that he could move his head, and was surprised that this small act pleased him so much. He looked around cautiously, warily, and wondered why he should be so cautious. Nothing threatened him here. He was in an ordinary room, chairs placed against three of the walls, a coffee table holding various magazines and two glass ashtrays in the shape of maple leaves. Like a doctor’s or dentist’s waiting room. Impersonal. No one had ever lived here. An oval mirror on the wall to his right reflected a painting on the wall to his left. The painting showed a mountain scene, flat, without distinction, like a picture on a calendar. His couch faced the door, which was closed. Atelevision set stood in the center of the room. Not a television set, really: There were no dials or switches. A monitor, then. The screen was dull green and blank.
He felt as if he should get up from the couch and test his body, to see if his arms and legs and the rest of him were in good order. He didn’t know why he felt he had to do this. But something vague and elusive troubled him. The way it happens when you awaken from a bad dream and don’t remember what the dream was but know it was terrible, threatening, leaving a shadow over your life.
Placing his feet tenderly on the floor, he stood up. He wriggled his toes in the slippers. The slippers were gray and fitted him tightly, almost like socks. Standing up, he was suddenly weak and giddy and his head began to throb. He sat himself down again, slowly, letting the sections of his body change positions to accommodate the sitting posture. He knew at once what was the matter. He felt like his body was in separate sections, held together loosely, was aware of his arms and legs being distinct from his torso, and his head a further extension of his body. Each of the separate parts connected by bones and tissues and muscles and veins and arteries. He didn’t like to think of all those connections. Suppose somehow they ceased to work, became disconnected? Would his arms and legs drop off, clatter to the floor, and lie there in disarray? Ridiculous, of course. They would not fall off, but they could cease to function, something wrong with the connections, like a telephone out of order but still connected to the wires.
He tried not to move, did not want to disturb the network of elements that held his body together, even though he knew nothing could happen. He just didn’t want to take a chance. He might get a headache. It felt good not to have a headache; he had a dim memory of a blinding headache just a moment ago when the light had exploded in his eyes. The room was chilly. His eyes sought a thermostat but found none. The color of the walls was orange, but a soft orange, soothing to his eyes, a sort of brown orange, dull brown, not brown really but beige, a muted kind of beige, so muted that it was almost colorless, certainly nothing as vivid as orange; why had he thought the walls were orange when clearly they were almost without color, bland, blank, except for the mirror and the painting?
He waited for someone to come in the door, to swing the door open and greet him. He would bet any amount of money that someone would come in at any moment now and explain all this and tell him he could go. He turned his head, left to right and then right to left again, appealing to the walls. Go where? He had a feeling he was being observed by the walls or someone on the other side of the walls with the power to observe him, and they could answer the question.
Where would he want to go, anyway? An answer to the question presented itself, inside him, inside his head. He could feel the answer coming and then another question but he didn’t want the answer to come, didn’t want to go inside, didn’t want to probe. He didn’t want to close his eyes, either, because he wanted to be here, here and now, in this room, with familiar things he could identify: chairs, magazines, the mirror, the painting, the coffee table, the monitor. He would check the magazines later to see what kind they were. He could see them clearly from this couch, but he did not care to identify them at this moment because he would have to squint his eyes to make out the names and faces on the covers and he didn’t want to take a chance with his eyes or any part of his body at the moment. He would simply sit here and wait and not move, and certainly he would not go inside himself.
The monitor hummed and the screen glowed with a soft light at the edges and then a bright blankness. A face emerged from the blankness. The face filled the entire screen. The face and the ears and the black hair and mustache and beard. The neck disappeared somewhere out of sight below the monitor, invisible, extending probably to the floor and through it to the ceiling of the room below and then through that. It amused him to think that.
“Hello,” the face said. Not the face but the mouth of the face. The lips moving.
He looked without recognition at the face, knowing it well all the same, feeling secure now that he wasn’t alone in the room anymore. No one had come through the door, but the man on the monitor was as good as someone actually in the room.
“Hello,” he answered.
“How are you feeling?” The voice of the monitor was well modulated, even, not loud or soft but just right.
“I’m feeling fine,” he said, but the response was automatic, wanting to please the man and win his approval. He didn’t want to think of his body or about how he was actually feeling. That would mean going inside, and he didn’t want to go inside.
“No discomfort?”
“No.”
“No distress?”
For some reason he wanted to laugh. No discomfort, no distress. The idea of no discomfort and no distress amused him very much, although he did not know why.
“You look just fine,” the face said.
Puzzled, he asked: “Can you see me?”
“Yes.” The face nodded. The entire head joined the nod.
“How?”
This was his first question. He really did not want to ask questions. It seemed important not to ask questions. Maybe just this one question. But no others. Because one could lead to another and another. And he didn’t want to start asking things. Danger lay that way. Asking things a
nd going inside himself, which also was a danger.
“We have many methods of scrutiny. Of observation. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded in agreement. Of course he knew. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain that he did. It wasn’t important to put it into words or even to think about it much. The knowledge was there, inside him. He could check out the knowledge if he wanted to, but that would mean going inside and he resisted the impulse. He wanted to stay outside. Definitely.
The man spoke again: “I am about to present you with three words. And I wish you to react. It doesn’t matter how you react. You won’t be judged by your reaction, but it is important that you do so.”
He was eager to react, to please, to keep the conversation going. He concentrated on the face on the monitor screen, concentrated on the lips, watching for the small dartings of the tongue when he spoke.
“Go ahead,” he said.
“Snow,” the mouth said.
“White,” he answered, quickly, distinctly, proud of his swift answer.
The face was blank, waiting. Wasn’t white enough? He paused, knowing he would have to go inside to think of more answers. But he didn’t have to go far: The answer was there at the top, close to white.
“Rain,” he said eagerly, watching for the reaction, but the face was still blank, no expression, a kind of waiting in the eyes. Ah, the eyes. Now for the first time he noticed the eyes. He had been concentrating on the mouth and the lips and the sly appearances of the tongue because the voice had been important. But now he realized the eyes were important, too. The eyes could speak. A silent language, but they could speak, after all. He looked at the eyes now, studying them, brilliant and green but also cold and remote.
“Rain,” he repeated, to give himself time to go inside just a little, just a little bit, just to dip under the surface to bring up enough to satisfy the doctor.