The Santaroga Barrier

  “Three twenty-four a.m. Do you want a sleeping pill?”

  “No … thanks.”

  He sat up, slid his feet to the floor, stared at the cheese.

  “Did you just want the time?” the speaker asked.

  “What does a full round of Jaspers cheese weigh?” he asked.

  “The weight?” There was a pause, then: “They vary. The smaller ones weigh about thirty pounds. Why?”

  “Send me a full round,” he said.

  “A full … Don’t you have some now?”

  “I want it for lab tests,” he said, and he thought: There! Let’s see if Piaget was being honest with me.

  “You want it when you get up in the morning?”

  “I’m up now. And get me a robe and some slippers if you can.”

  “Hadn’t you better wait, doctor. If …”

  “Check with Piaget if you must,” Dasein said. “I want that round now.”

  “Very well.” She sounded disapproving.

  Dasein waited sitting on the edge of the bed. He stared out the window at the night. Absently, he broke off a chunk of the cheese on his nightstand, chewed it and swallowed.

  Presently, the foyer door produced a wedge of light. A tall, gray-haired nurse entered, turned on the room’s lights. She carried a large wheel of golden cheese still glistening in its wax sealer.

  “This is thirty-six pounds of prime Jaspers cheese,” she said. “Where shall I put it?” There were overtones of outrage and protest in her voice.

  “Find a place for it on one of the lab benches,” he said. “Where are the robe and slippers?”

  “If you’ll be patient, I’ll get them for you,” she said. She shouldered her way through the lab door, returned in a moment and crossed to a narrow door at the far end of the room, opened it to reveal a closet. From the closet she removed a green robe and a pair of black slippers which she dumped on the foot of Dasein’s bed.

  “Will that be all—sir?”

  “That’ll be all, for now.”

  “Hmmmph.” She strode from the room, shut the foyer door with a final-comment thump.

  Dasein took another bite of the cheese from his nightstand, put on the robe and slippers, went into the lab. The nurse had left the lights on. The round of cheese lay on an open metal bench at his right.

  Alcohol won’t kill it, he thought. Otherwise, it couldn’t be incorporated in the local beer. What does destroy it? Sunlight?

  He recalled the dim red light of the Co-op’s cave.

  Well, there were ways of finding out. He rolled back the sleeves of his gown, set to work.

  Within an hour he had three-fourths of the round reduced to a milky solution in a carboy, set about feeding it through the centrifuge.

  The first test tubes came out with their contents layered in a manner reminiscent of a chromatograph. Near the top lay a thin silver-gray band of material.

  Dasein poured off the liquid, burned a hole in the bottom of a test tube and removed the solids intact by blowing into the hole he’d created. A bit of the gray material went on a slide and he examined it under the microscope.

  There was the mycelium structure, distorted but recognizable. He smelled the slide. It was redolent of Jaspers. He put a hand to the microscope’s variable light control, watched the specimen while rotating the control. Abruptly, the specimen began to shrivel and crystallize before his eyes.

  Dasein looked at the light control. It was the spectrum-window type and, at this moment, was passing light in the Angstrom range 4000-5800. It was cutting off the red end, Dasein noted.

  Another look through the microscope showed the specimen reduced to a white crystalline mass.

  Sunlight, then.

  What would do the job? he wondered. A bomb to open the cave? A portable sunlamp?

  As he thought this, Dasein felt that the darkness outside the hospital parted to reveal a shape, a monster rising out of a black lake.

  He shuddered, turned to the carboy of milky solution. Working mechanically, he put the rest of the solution through the centrifuge, separated the silver-gray band, collected the material in a dark brown bottle. The solution produced almost a pint of the Jaspers essence.

  Dasein smelled the bottle—sharp and definite odor of Jaspers. He emptied the bottle into a shallow dish, caught a bit of the substance on a spatula, touched it to his tongue.

  An electrifying sensation of distant fireworks exploded from his tastebuds through his spine. He felt he could see with the tip of his tongue or the tip of a finger. Dasein sensed his core of awareness becoming a steely kernel surrounded by desolation. He concentrated his energy, forced himself to look at the dish of Jaspers essence.

  Empty!

  What had destroyed it? How could it be empty.

  He looked at the palm of his right hand. How close it was to his face! There were specks of silver-gray against the pink flesh.

  Tingling pulses of awareness began surging out from his throat and stomach, along his arms and legs. He felt that his entire skin came alight. There was a remote feeling of a body slipping to the floor, but he felt that the floor glowed wherever the body touched it.

  I ate the entire dish of essence, he thought.

  What would it do—the active agent from more than thirty pounds of Jaspers cheese? What would it do? What was it doing? Dasein felt this to be an even more interesting question.

  What was it doing?

  As he asked the question of himself, he experienced anguish. It wasn’t fear, but pure anguish, a sense of losing his grip on reality.

  The steely kernel of selfdom! Where was it?

  Upon what fundament of reality did his selfdom sit? Frantically, Dasein tried to extend his awareness, experienced the direct sensation that he was projecting his own reality upon the universe. But there was a projection of the universe simultaneously. He followed the lines of this projection, felt them sweep through him as though through a shadow.

  In this instant, he was lost, tumbling.

  I was just a shadow, he thought.

  The thought fascinated him. He remembered the shadow game of his childhood, wondered what forms of shadows he could project by distorting the core of self. The wondering produced the effect of shapes. Dasein sensed a screen of awareness, a shapeless outline upon it. He willed the shape to change.

  A muscled, breast-beating hero took form there.

  Dasein shifted his emphasis.

  The shadow became a bent-shouldered, myopic scientist in a long gown. Another shift: It was naked Apollo racing over a landscape of feminine figures.

  And again—a plodder bent beneath a shapeless load.

  With a gulping sensation of deitgrasp Dasein realized he was projecting the only limits his finite being could know. It was an act of self-discovery that gave birth to a feeling of hope. It was an odd sort of hope, unfixed, disoriented, but definite in its existence—not a hope of discernment, but pure hope without boundaries, direction or attachments.

  Hope itself.

  It was a profound instant permitting him to grasp for a fleeting instant the structure of his own existence, his possibilities as a being.

  A twisted, dented and distorted something crossed the field of Dasein’s awareness. He recognized the kernel of selfdom. The thing had lost all useful shape. He discarded it, chuckling.

  Who discarded it? Dasein wondered.

  Who chuckles?

  There was a pounding sound—feet upon a floor.

  Voices.

  He recognized the tones of the gray-haired nurse, but there was a tingling of panic in the sounds she made.

  Piaget.

  “Let’s get him on the bed,” Piaget said. The words were clear and distinct.

  What was not distinct was the shape of a universe become blurred rainbows, nor the pressures of hands which blotted out the glowing sensation of his skin.

  “It’s difficult to become conscious about consciousness,” Dasein muttered.

  “Did he say something?” That was
the nurse.

  “I couldn’t make it out.” Piaget.

  “Did you smell the Jaspers in there?” The nurse.

  “I think he separated the essence out and took it.”

  “Oh, my God! What can we do?”

  “Wait and pray. Bring me a straight-jacket and the emergency cart.”

  A straight jacket? Dasein wondered. What an odd request.

  He heard running footsteps. How loud they were! A door slammed. More voices. Such a rushing around!

  His skin felt as though it were growing dark. Everything was being blotted out.

  With an abrupt, jerking sensation, Dasein felt himself shrivel downward into an infant shape kicking, squalling, reaching outward, outward, fingers grasping.

  “Give me a hand with him!” That was Piaget.

  “What a mess!” Another male voice.

  But Dasein already felt himself becoming a mouth, just a mouth. It blew out, out, out—such a wind. Surely, the entire world must collapse before this hurricane.

  He was a board, rocking. A teeter-totter. Down and up—up and down.

  A good run is better than a bad stand, he thought.

  And he was running, running—breathless, gasping.

  A bench loomed out of swirling clouds. He threw himself down on it, became the bench—another board. This one dipped down and down into a boiling green sea.

  Life in a sea of unconsciousness, Dasein thought.

  It grew darker and darker.

  Death, he thought. Here’s the background against which I can know myself.

  The darkness dissolved. He was shooting upward, rebounding into a blinding glare.

  Dark shapes moved in the glare.

  “His eyes are open.” That was the nurse.

  A shadow reduced the glare. “Gilbert?” That was Piaget. “Gilbert, can you hear me? How much Jaspers did you take?”

  Dasein tried to speak. His lips refused to obey.

  The glare came back.

  “We’ll just have to guess.” Piaget. “How much did that cheese weigh?”

  “Thirty-six pounds.” The nurse.

  “The physical breakdown is massive.” Piaget. “Have a respirator standing by.”

  “Doctor, what if he …” The nurse apparently couldn’t complete the statement of her fear.

  “I’m … ready.” Piaget.

  Ready for what? Dasein wondered.

  By concentrating, he found he could make the glare recede. It resolved momentarily into a tunnel of clarity with Piaget at the far end of it. Dasein lay helplessly staring, unable to move as Piaget advanced on him carrying a boy that fumed and smoked.

  Acid, Dasein thought, interpreting the nurse’s words. If I die, they’ll dissolve me and wash me away down a drain. No body, no evidence.

  The tunnel collapsed.

  The sensation of glare expanded, contracted.

  Perhaps, I can no longer be, Dasein thought.

  It grew darker.

  Perhaps, I cannot do, he thought.

  Darker yet.

  Perhaps, I cannot have, he thought.

  Nothing.

  13

  “It was kill or cure,” the yellow god said.

  “I wash my hands of you,” said the white god.

  “What I offered, you did not want,” the red god accused.

  “You make me laugh,” said the black god.

  “There is no tree that’s you,” the green god said.

  “We are going now and only one of us will return,” the gods chorused.

  There was a sound of a clearing throat.

  “Why don’t you have faces?” Dasein asked. “You have color but no faces.”

  “What?” It was a rumbling, vibrant voice.

  “You’re a funny sounding god,” Dasein said. He opened his eyes, looked up into Burdeaux’s features, caught a puzzled scowl on the dark face.

  “I’m no sort of god at all,” Burdeaux said. “What’re you saying, Doctor Gil? You having another nightmare?”

  Dasein blinked, tried to move his arms. Nothing happened. He lifted his head, looked down at his body. He was bound tightly in a restraining jacket. There was a stink of disinfectants, of Jaspers and of something repellent and sour in the room. He looked around. It was still the isolation suite. His head fell back to the pillow.

  “Why’m I tied down like this?” Dasein whispered.

  “What did you say, sir?”

  Dasein repeated his question.

  “Well, Doctor Gil, we didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  “When … when can I be released?”

  “Doctor Larry said to free you as soon as you woke up.”

  “I’m … awake.”

  “I know that, sir. I was just …” He shrugged, began unfastening the bindings on the sleeves of the jacket.

  “How long?” Dasein whispered.

  “How long you been here like this?”

  Dasein nodded.

  “Three whole days now, and a little more. It’s almost noon.”

  The bindings were untied. Burdeaux helped Dasein to a sitting position, unlaced the back, slipped the jacket off.

  Dasein’s back felt raw and sensitive. His muscles reponded as though they belonged to a stranger. This was an entirely new body, Dasein thought.

  Burdeaux came up with a white hospital gown, slipped it onto Dasein, tied the back.

  “You want the nurse to come rub your back?” he asked. “You’ve a couple of red places there don’t look too good.”

  “No … no thanks.”

  Dasein moved one of the stranger’s arms. A familiar hand came up in front of his face. It was his own hand. How could it be his own hand, he wondered, when the muscles of the arm belonged to a stranger?

  “Doctor Larry said no one ever took that much Jaspers ever before all at once,” Burdeaux said. “Jaspers is a good thing, sir, but everybody knows you can get too much.”

  “Does … is Jenny …”

  “She’s fine, Doctor Gil. She’s been worried sick about you. We all have.”

  Dasein moved one of the stranger’s legs, then the other until they hung over the edge of the bed. He looked down at his own knees. It was very odd.

  “Here, now,” Burdeaux said. “Best you stay in bed.”

  “I’ve … I …”

  “You want to go to the bathroom? Best I bring you the bedpan.”

  “No … I …” Dasein shook his head. Abruptly, he realized what was wrong. The body was hungry.

  “Hungry,” he said.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so? Got food right here waiting.”

  Burdeaux lifted a bowl, held it in front of Dasein. The rich aroma of Jaspers enveloped him. Dasein reached toward the bowl, but Burdeaux said, “Best let me feed you, Doctor Gil. You don’t look too steady.”

  Dasein sat patiently, allowed himself to be fed. He could feel strength gathering in the body. It was a bad fit, this body, he decided. It had been draped loosely on his psyche.

  It occurred to him to wonder what the body was eating—in addition to the Jaspers, which surrounded him and pervaded him with its presence. Oatmeal, the tongue said. Jaspers honey and Jaspers cream.

  “There’s a visitor waiting to see you,” Burdeaux said when the bowl was empty.

  “Jenny?”

  “No … a Doctor Selador.”

  Selador! The name exploded on Dasein’s conscience. Selador had trusted him, depended on him.

  Selador had sent a gun through the mails.

  “You feel up to seeing him?” Burdeaux asked.

  “You … don’t mind if I see him?” Dasein asked.

  “Mind? Why should I mind, sir?”

  Burdeaux’s not the you I meant, Dasein thought.

  There arose in Dasein then an urge to send Selador away. Such an easy thing to do. Santaroga would insulate him from the Seladors of the world. A simple request to Burdeaux was all it would take.

  “I’ll … uh, see him,” Dasein said. He looked around th
e room. “Could you help me into a robe and … is there a chair I could …”

  “Why don’t I put you in a wheelchair, sir? Doctor Larry had one sent up for when you awakened. He didn’t want you exerting yourself. You’re not to get tired, understand?”

  “Yes … yes, I understand. A wheelchair.”

  Presently, Dasein’s bad-fit body was in the wheelchair. Burdeaux had gone to bring Selador, leaving the chair at the far end of the room from the foyer door. Dasein found himself facing a pair of French doors that opened onto a sundeck.

  He felt he had been left alone in a brutally exposed position, his soul naked, wretched with fear. There was a heavy load on him, he thought. He felt embarrassment at the prospect of meeting Selador, and a special order of fright. Selador saw through pretense and sham. You could wear no mask before Selador. He was the psychoanalysts’ psychoanalyst.

  Selador will humiliate me, Dasein thought. Why did I agree to see him? He will prod me and I will react. My reaction will tell him everything he wants to know about me … about my failure.

  Dasein felt then his sanity had been corroded into a pitted shell, a thing of tinsel and fantasy. Selador would stamp upon it with the harsh, jolting dynamics of his aliveness.

  The foyer door opened.

  Slowly, forcing himself to it, Dasein turned his head toward the door.

  Selador stood in the opening, tall, hawk-featured, the dark skin and wildness of India encased in a silver-gray tweed suit, a touch of the same silver at the temples. Dasein had the sudden blurred sensation of having seen this face in another life, the lancet eyes peering from beneath a turban. It had been a turban with a red jewel in it.

  Dasein shook his head. Madness.

  “Gilbert,” Selador said, striding across the room. “In the name of heaven, what have you done to yourself now?” The precise accents of Oxford hammered each word into Dasein’s ears. “They said you were badly burned.”

  And thus it starts, Dasein thought.

  “I … my arms and hands,” Dasein said. “And a bit about the face.”

  “I arrived only this morning,” Selador said. “We were quite worried about you, you know. No word from you for days.”

  He stopped in front of Dasein, blocking off part of the view of the sundeck.

  “I must say you look a fright, Gilbert. There don’t appear to be any scars on your face, though.”