Syntax arrived an hour later, asked that the men be formed for inspection. He made no other significant comment.
Kane stood beside him watching formation minutes later in the courtyard. Syntax scruted him, after a time, his face a portrait in colors of shock. “I can’t … believe it! Colonel Kane, this is—well—well, I’m shaken to my roots! To my very—you know—foun-dation! This is absolutely (a very long pause) splendid!” finished the General.
Colonel Kane shared his bewilderment. First the keeping of his secret, then the behavior of the inmates set him to feverish, dizzying ponder. The inmates’ uniforms were immaculate, starched and without wrinkle. Their line was neat and trim as an honor guard’s, their posture stiff and proud. And as Groper called the roll, each man answered crisply, “Here, sir!”
“Marvelous!” burbled Syntax. “It’s simply—well—I mean—incredible change of—uh—the way they all—” Birdlike, he turned to Kane, and said, “You follow me?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
Syntax, unmoving, looked deep into his eyes. Then at last he said, crisply, “Good!”
“Sir—?”
“Whatever it is you’re doing, it’s getting—results! So keep—well, yes, keep (pause) keep doing it!”
Syntax sped back to report to Lastrade while Kane went to his office and pondered confusion. A questioning claw ripped at his vitals, probing deep for arteries of truth, tracing their course to the heart of decision. He found it at last in Cutshaw’s arrival.
The grinning astronaut slammed his door shut, quietly locked it and moved to the desk, leaning across it and savagely rhyming: “Twinkle, twinkle, ‘Killer’ Kane! How I wonder whom you’ve slain! Bet you thought I’d never get here!”
Kane replied like a snarling leopard. “Can it, bright eyes! Can the sermon! What the hell were you up to out in formation?”
“Didn’t you love it? A stirring sight! It was intended to convince you that we can be trusted, Colonel Caribou! That we’re dependable! Understand? We intend to keep your secret, ‘Little Flower of the Nut House’!”
“Why?”
“Come, now, don’t be obtuse. A favor here, a favor there. You’ll be notified, dear heart.”
“So that’s the deal.”
“Good! That’s settled! Now then, tell me, wizard ape, how does it feel to kill with your hands?”
Kane was learning what he had feared, and anger grew with the realization. He spat, “What’s eating you, Mighty Manfred? Bugged because you’d never have the guts to do the same?”
Cutshaw grabbed at a paperweight. “Why you crummy son-of-a—!”
Kane bolted up from his chair. “Go on, throw it, Moon Boy, throw it! That would give me a nice excuse to tear you limb from useless limb! Come on, throw it, you little phony, and then maybe on your deathbed you can tell me how it feels to throw a moonshot down the tubes!”
“Watch your tongue, sir!”
“Watch my foot, sir! Who are you kidding with your nut act!”
“Well, now, Spoor, I think, is crazy.”
Kane was stunned by the tacit admission. There it was. The door was closed. “I’m not making any deals,” he said, sick; sick at heart.
“Kane, you’re mad! Don’t you know where they’d send you? Idiot, Communist guerrillas have been infiltrating Fapistan! Outermost Fapistan!”
“Fine,” said Kane, “fine. ‘Hud, confess!’ That’s what you wanted? That’s what you’ll get. Because tomorrow I’m phoning the General and telling him who I am.”
“What?!”
“You really had me conned; had me conned all the way. I thought I could cut it; shape you up. But, Cutshaw, suddenly it’s clear to me I’ll never shape you up! You’ll play Bingo here ’til discharge day and I’ll wind up in a basket! You’re not crazy or psychotic, you’re just plain goofing off!”
“Look at who’s calling the kettle black!” said Cutshaw.
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. But I’m taking care of that tomorrow. And while I’m at it I’m telling the General that all of you are sane!”
Cutshaw leaped suddenly onto the sofa, springing from there onto the desk, bawling in frantic, desperate accents, “Hud, you’re crazy, we’re crazy! Out of our minds! Mad! Mad!” He ripped his shirt clear down to the navel.
Kane eyed him with contempt. “So was I ever to come here.” He strode to the door, yanked it open and went out.
Cutshaw leaped after him, raced to the door, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted wildly: “Shane, come back! Please, come back! Mother wants you, Shane, she needs you!” And then pitifully he wailed, “Shaaaaannnnnnnne! Come baaaaaaaack!”
Corfu appeared before him, dabbing his nose with royal blue, mourning, “Blue—the color of failure! You have lost for us our pigeon!” Then Corfu felt sudden shock as he saw the expression in Cutshaw’s eyes: chilling fear and desperation.
* * *
By the fall of night, Colonel Kane was drunk. At nine o’clock he emerged from his quarters, a bottle of bourbon in his hand. He walked down the stairs in rigid lurch, heading for Fell, who was in his clinic. They had been drinking together for hours. At the foot of the stairs stood Captain Groper, gently smirking as Kane approached. “Therapy, Colonel Kane?” Without breaking stride or turning his head, Kane flicked out a hand with effortless grace. It hit Groper’s arm and sent him toppling to the floor like a giant sequoia, branches crackling with incredulity. “Shock treatment, Captain,” murmured Kane, and entered the clinic.
Fell was seated on the accountant’s stool, deep in abortive effort to play the pinball machine with his feet. Kane lurched heavily up beside him. “Fell, I’m giving you one more chance.”
“Gimme the bottle,” slurred Fell. As he reached out a hand, Kane pulled back the bottle.
“After you tell me,” said the Colonel.
Fell eyed him severely with red-grained orbs. “Colonel Kane, have you been drinking?”
“Come on, tell me, wily medic: what do you think when you’re examining a pretty girl?”
“That’s a Hippocratic secret!”
“Final answer?”
“Final answer.”
“Then I will pray—pray on bended knees—for the advent of socialized medicine!”
“How I hate an ugly drunk,” said Fell.
“Choice. Take your choice.”
Fell’s expression was that of a hippo deep in the throes of painful decision. Then, “Okay,” he said at last, falling heavily from the stool. He walked to the examination table, sat on it, deeply resigned, then sighed and stretched out on his back. “Okay, you win, ‘Killer’ Kane.”
Kane had gone to him and told him after the final discussion with Cutshaw. He’d said to Fell, “I’m ‘Killer’ Kane.”
“I could have told you that, you idiot,” Fell had replied with drunken serenity. He had “suspected all along” that Kane was certainly no psychologist. And then the subject had been dropped. Fell showed no interest, and when Kane would come back to it, Fell would deliberately try to sidetrack, as though he found the topic painful. Kane gave up. He merely drank.
“What am I thinking,” said Fell, “when I examine a pretty girl.” Kane dragged over the stool, slowly hoisted himself upon it, so that he sat behind Fell’s head in classic patient-analyst relationship. “I try to think of elephant jokes and my vast investments in medical buildings; never what I’m doing.”
“Same with me,” maundered Kane. “Same with me, same with me. Always thought of something else. Burnt-out case by Graham Greene.”
“Dammit, what in the hell are you mumbling about?”
“Why should animals suffer?”
Fell reached out after a grimace. “Gimme the bottle; you’ve had enough.”
Kane ignored him—or did not hear him—as Fell took the bottle. “Your attitude toward women, Fell—hasn’t it gotten—clinical? Tough? Unfeeling?”
“Nothing,” said Fell emphatically, “that a change of scene hasn’t cured.”
“
I’d hoped the same,” murmured Kane, “would work for me … for me … God or Caesar?” he murmured thickly. Abruptly he stared at the back of Fell’s head. “Fell, are the men all goofing off?”
“That,” said Fell, exasperated, “is the twentieth time you’ve asked me! And the answer is the same: I don’t know and I don’t care!”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t. Not enough to make waves. That’s the lesson I’ve learned in the Air Force, Kane—don’t make waves! In a word, when you’re snug, and safe and secure in a sack of horseshit, buddy, don’t move!”
“I care,” murmured Kane. “I care … I care.”
“For them? Or yourself?”
The clinic door burst open. Spoor bounced in with his dog. “I’m in trouble! Big trouble!”
Fell eyed him blankly. “Take two aspirin,” he advised, “and call my service in the morning.”
Kane slipped off the stool, moved to the pinball machine and played. The sight of an inmate was unbearable.
Spoor advanced on Fell. “Captain, the problem isn’t medical! It’s purely motivational!”
“In that case, I can help you,” said Fell nipping at the bottle.
But Spoor swooped over to Kane. “Colonel Kane, I speak of Hamlet and the problem of his madness! I am having quite an argument, and maybe you can help!”
“Oh?” said Kane.
“Yes, oh! Look, some say Hamlet’s really nuts. Am I right? Am I right? Sure! But other Shakespearean scholars insist that Hamlet’s just pretending; that he’s putting on an act. Now I come to you as a colonel, as a lover of the Bard and a sympathetic pussycat. What is your opinion?”
Kane recalled that Spoor was the inmate named by Cutshaw as truly demented. “I don’t know,” said Kane. “What’s yours?”
“Lovely man!” exclaimed Spoor, leaping nimbly onto the machine so that the glass beneath him shattered. Spoor blithely ignored it, rattled onward with his theory. “I think it’s a combination! See? First, look at what Hamlet does. Just for openers he walks around the palace in his underwear! Then he calls the king his ‘mother’; tells his mother she’s a slut; tells a nice old man he’s senile; throws a tantrum at a theater party; almost jumps the girl! And what filthy things he says to her! Now then—is he crazy?”
Fell said, “Sure, he’s crazy, idiot.”
Spoor said, “Wrong!”
“What?”
“Wrong! Look, I’ll agree he’s got a reason. Sure, ’cause first his father dies, and then his girl leaves him flat and then his father’s ghost appears to him and tells him he was murdered! And by whom? By Hamlet’s uncle, whom his mother recently married! Now those are pretty tough potatoes for a high-strung kid! For a sensitive youth! They’re enough to drive him crazy! I mean, especially if you consider that all this happened in very cold weather!”
“That’s what I said,” said Fell. “He’s crazy.”
“No, he’s not! He’s pretending! But if Hamlet hadn’t pretended, then he would have gone crazy! Acting nutty is a safety valve!”
Kane, for the first time, looked at Spoor, a flicker of interest in his eyes. “Let’s have that again?”
“Pay attention! Look—Hamlet isn’t psycho. But he’s hanging on the brink! A little push, a little shove and the kid is gone, hear me, gone! So his subconscious mind makes him do what keeps him sane—namely, acting like he’s not! Acting nutty is a safety valve! A way to let off steam! A way to get rid of your aggressions, and all your fears, and all your guilts and all your heaven knows what else!”
Kane echoed “guilts,” in an odd tone of voice.
“Guilts! Yes, guilts!” repeated Spoor. “And he knows that it’s safe, understand me, safe! If I did what Hamlet does in the play, they’d lock me up! Put me away! But Hamlet gets away with it! And why, I ask you, why? ’Cause he knows that nuts are not responsible! He can get away with murder! Listen, let’s not get into that; that’s another hangup altogether!”
“Does Hamlet think that he’s crazy?” asked Kane.
Spoor eyed him with pity. “Does a crazy man ever?”
“No,” said Kane; “no.”
“Well, neither does Hamlet,” insisted Spoor. “And notice—the crazier he acts in the play, why, man, the healthier he gets!”
“What?”
“The crazier he acts, Colonel, the healthier he gets! Now, then, tell me, Colonel Pussycat—do you or don’t you agree?”
“I think I do,” murmured Kane.
“Hah!” Spoor leaped down from the pinball machine and pointed at his dog. “There! Now do you believe me,” he crowed, “you temperamental idiot!” Spoor looked up at Kane. “Thank you, thank you, Colonel Pussycat! You’ll have house seats opening night!” Spoor glided out of the office.
* * *
Cutshaw was waiting in the dorm. “Did he buy it?” he pounced on Spoor.
“Did he buy it? Listen, I bought it! I think something’s wrong with us!”
“We’ve got him!” exulted Cutshaw. “Now we pull out all the stops! We’ll drive him crazy just convincing him that we’re crazy! Got it?”
* * *
“Don’t you get it?” Kane demanded.
Fell’s voice was bleakly cynical. “Man, they’ll try anything to keep you from telling the General they’re goofing off. They’d have to leave this little paradise.”
“You don’t understand,” said Kane, exhilarated.
“It’s a con!” Fell insisted. “They dug up that Hamlet junk from your textbooks, man! Hell, haven’t you read them?”
“Desperation dug up that theory! You think they’re shamming? So do they! Because they can’t admit to themselves that they’re sick! But they are! They’re on the brink! These men are Hamlet down the line! And obviously desperate enough to dig up the cure and lay it right in my lap!”
“Cure?”
“The crazier they act,” said Kane, “the healthier they’ll get! I’m going to stay! I’m going to stay! I’m going to indulge their wildest whims!” Kane’s head was whirling with visions; then with schemes; then with doubts. A sudden notion slapped his face. Wasn’t his “great impersonation” just as mad an indulgence as Hamlet’s? as Cutshaw’s? as Zook’s? My God, he thought, even madder, madder than Spoor’s or any of the others! Kane thought he heard a cry of piercing agony from afar; a cry of terror; a cry for help. Then he realized, with sudden horror, why the voice that went on shrieking was so achingly familiar; the voice was his own.
Fell caught him as he fainted.
Chapter 11
Fell carried Kane up to bed. As the medic was pulling up the blanket, Kane opened his eyes. “Does Groper know?” he murmured.
“No,” answered Fell.
Kane closed his eyes again and slept. Fell looked down at him sadly, felt his pulse, then left the room.
Kane dreamed. And this time remembered. Although later he wasn’t sure that it was a dream; that it hadn’t happened. He thought he’d abruptly opened his eyes and seen Captain Cutshaw sitting beside him, smoking a cigarette by his bed. Kane said, “What? What do you want?”
“It’s about my brother, Lieutenant Spoor. You’ve got to help him.”
“Help? How?”
“Leslie Spoor is possessed of a devil, Hud, and I want you to cast it out. He is levitating nightly and it’s upsetting Lieutenant Zook. It reminds him of his belt. Also, Spoor talks to dogs, which is not entirely natural. I want you to exorcise him tonight. You’re a colonel and a Catholic and an unfrocked priest. It’s your duty, Colonel No-Face!”
Kane said, “I can’t!”
“You mean, you won’t!”
“I mean I can’t! I don’t know how! I really want to, but I can’t! I’ve forgotten how to do it!”
“All you have to do is care. Then you’ll remember,” Cutshaw told him.
Suddenly Spoor was in the room floating three feet off the floor. He was wearing a high-altitude flight suit. He looked at Kane and opened his mouth and out came the yappings of a dog. br />
Kane put a finger to his neck and felt a round Roman collar. He was a priest! It was true! He was a priest after all! He felt a surging exhilaration; felt a release; felt a joy. It was the feeling after confession that had long been postponed; that had long been feared and dreaded. He lifted an arm and pointed at Spoor. “Satan,” he commanded, “be gone! In the name of Christ Jesus!”
Spoor continued to levitate. He grinned evilly at Kane. Then he rasped, “You don’t care.”
“Yes, I care!”
“But not for yourself.”
Kane remembered what was wrong. He should have asked the demon his name. “I adjure you in the name of Christ, in the name of the living God, demon, to tell me who you are!”
Spoor’s tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, red and narrow and long. “Call me Legion, for we are many. We are eighty-two plus one.”
“Who is the one?” asked Kane, knowing.
“‘Killer’ Kane!” said Spoor, and vanished.
It was then that the dream changed in texture, seemed to be not a dream at all. Cutshaw was staring at him intently, his cigarette glowing in the darkness. “You awake?” said the apparition.
Kane moved his lips, tried to say “Yes,” but no sound would issue forth. He spoke with his mind, thinking—saying?—“Yes.”
“Do you really believe in an afterlife?”
“Yes.”
“No, come on. I mean, really.”
“Yes, I believe.”
“Tell me why.”
“I just know.”
“Blind faith?”
“No, not that; not that, exactly. Although it is partly feeling.”
“Then how do you know?” insisted Cutshaw.
Kane paused, dredging for arguments. Then at last he said (thought?), “Because every man who has ever lived has been born with desire for perfect happiness. But unless there is an afterlife, fulfillment of this desire is a patent impossibility. Perfect happiness, in order to be perfect, must carry with it the assurance that the happiness won’t cease; that it will not be snatched away. But no one has ever had such assurance; the mere fact of death serves to contradict it. Yet why should Nature implant—universally—desire for something that isn’t attainable? I can think of no more than two answers: either Nature is consistently mad and perverse, or after this life there’s another; a life where this universal desire for perfect happiness can be fulfilled. But nowhere else in creation does Nature exhibit this kind of perversity; not when it comes to a basic drive. An eye is always for seeing and an ear is always for hearing. And any universal craving—that is, a craving without exception—has to be capable of fulfillment. It can’t be fulfilled here; so it’s fulfilled, I think, somewhere else; sometime else. Does that make any sense at all? I think I’m dreaming, so it’s hard.”