All night long she watched, and all night long the leaf danced for her with frantic abandon in the gale.
At dawn the wind slackened and the leaf drooped.
One brief weary turn, like a bow, and it fell, zigzagging downward to lose itself in the multitude of other leaves on the ground below. Joan’s eyes followed it, then lost it.
The sun came up.
Joan sighed. She suddenly realized that she felt cold. Her skin had turned blue and was covered with goosebumps. Her teeth began to chatter and she shivered and rubbed herself vigorously, trying to get warm. Joan Hiashi had returned to normality, if by normality one meant this leafless world in which humans normally live.
Percy X stared stupidly at his bandaged left hand. He had cut it himself, smashed a drinking glass and attacked himself with one of the fragments; the sharp pain had dragged him back from that sucking void into which he had followed Joan, the void that drew her in and had almost drawn him in after her. He had realized with sudden terror that his whole personality had begun dissolving, evaporating, and he had tried to break his telepathic contact with her but had been unable to, at least not until he had cut himself.
Now he cautiously entered her mind again—and found himself a stranger there. Everything had been moved about. He withdrew again, icy sweat breaking out on his forehead.
All at once he sensed someone coming. Guards.
The door unlocked and opened; one of the guards leaned in and said in a bored voice, “Come along now, buddy. Make it fast.”
Presently, with a guard on each side, he made his way briskly down a long corridor, past endless processions of locked doors. I wonder where they’re taking me, he mused—and scanned their minds to find out. They were taking him to Joan, on orders from Balkani. But why had Balkani given such orders? On a whim, most likely; on a drug-induced impulse. Still, Percy felt uneasy. Even Balkani’s whims seemed to have some enigmatic, almost unnatural, purpose.
To his amazement he found the door to her cell unlocked; in fact it hung slightly ajar.
“A visitor for you Miss Hiashi,” one of the guards announced.
Joan, who had been lying on her bunk gazing blankly at the ceiling, sat up and smiled. “Hello, Percy.”
The change in her could be seen at once. A certain air of seriousness, of maturity, that he had never perceived before.
The guard closed the door, leaving the two of them alone.
“You look like a sleepwalker,” he said presently.
“I’m awake for the first time in my life. Sit down. I have something to say to you.”
Cautiously, he seated himself at the foot of the bunk.
Joan said, “I have always told everyone, including myself, that the thing that came first with me was my career in TV. But that was a lie, even though it was a lie I convinced myself I believed in. There have been times when I’ve told myself I was in love with one man or another. You, for one. But that wasn’t true either. I threw away my career when I went into the mountains looking for you, and I’ve goofed up every love affair I’ve ever had, one way or another. Time and again, when success in one project or another was almost in my possession, I did some damn fool thing that ruined everything for me. Now I know that the one thing I’ve always feared most, deep down inside, was to succeed, to get the things I thought I wanted. I’ve always thought that people were against me, or that I had bad luck, but my real enemy was me. All my life, whenever I’ve tried to get something, the same demonic figure has stepped into my path and commanded me to halt, the same relentless phantom with my face. Doctor Balkani gave me a knife and let me kill that phantom. She screamed, Percy; she screamed for hours as I slowly cut her to pieces, as I washed myself clean of her. Now she’s dead and if I feel anything for her it’s a kind of loneliness. I’m all alone now that Joan Hiashi is dead.”
“You’re psychotic,” Percy said sharply. “Because of the suffering you underwent; I know: I stayed in contact with you.”
“I’m not insane, Percy. And Balkani is only helping me to find what I’ve always wanted, all that time I pretended I wanted fame and prestige and money and you. He’s given me the courage to see—”
“He’s given you mental and spiritual death.”
“Oblivion,” Joan said.
“Can’t you see what he’s done to you?”
“Who, God?” Joan asked in a far-away voice.
“No, Balkani!”
“Doctor Balkani is my friend. If I have an enemy it must be God.”
He grabbed her by the arm, yanked her toward him. “I know what you experienced; don’t you understand? Because of my talent I was there in the water and silence with you—you’re not telling me anything I didn’t go through myself. What I’m telling you is that—” He broke off, tried to think it out. “You felt love for me; I did also, for you. What wasn’t real about that?” He clutched her arm, squeezing fiercely. “Answer me—”
“What do you see,” Joan said, “when you look at me? A little Japanese doll; isn’t that right? I don’t blame you for that. I gave myself to you for a plaything and you played with me. What could be more natural? But I’m more than a doll. I really am tall, Percy; tall as a mountain. I’m tired of hunching down.”
“Nobody is asking you to hunch down.” He tightened his grip on her arm.
“You’re a telepath; you read men’s minds. But you don’t understand them. Doctor Balkani does not read minds, but he understands completely. How do you explain that, Percy X? I know why it is.” She smiled her strange, distant smile. “Balkani has read one mind down to its darkest depths. His own mind. Because he understands himself completely he doesn’t need telepathy to understand others. Don’t be fooled by the fact that he takes drugs; if you saw yourself the way you really are, as he sees himself, you’d need drugs, too, to stand it. You might even kill yourself. Because we are all monsters, Percy. Demons from hell—foul, filthy, perverted and evil.” She spoke these words calmly, without a particle of emotion.
Percy said, “Stop talking like that.”
Carefully, she removed Percy X’s hands from her arm. “From now on I say what I wish. I’ve spoken to you honestly for the first time and you’ve acted as if I were insane; psychotic, as you put it. Okay. I expected that. I see that in order to be clear I must also be cruel. I’ve been trying to explain, all this time, that I don’t need you any more, Percy. Or anyone else.”
Late at night, after the last customer had left the fortune-telling parlor, Paul Rivers and Ed Newkom opened the crates which had arrived by rocket freight earlier in the day.
“Weapons, eh?” Ed said with satisfaction. “Something to fight our way into Balkani’s—”
“Not exactly,” Paul Rivers said, removing armfuls of plastic-foam padding from the foremost crate.
A robot lay in the crate. And, in the other crate, there would be a second robot. Both based on prototypes which Balkani himself had designed during the war. And now remodeled, Paul Rivers said to himself, to serve my own purposes.
“And what’s this?” Ed demanded. “A high-frequency transmitter?”
“No, a sensory distorter.” This, too, had been one of Balkani’s inventions, dating back to the pre-war Bureau of Psychedelic Research. “We’ll test these items out tonight, to make certain they work. Then contact Percy X and spring him as soon as we can.”
Dawn had almost come when Percy X, lying sleepless on his cot in his cell, heard the voice of Paul Rivers speak within his mind.
“Tomorrow, Percy.”
But how? Percy thought.
Quickly and without wasting words, Paul outlined his plan. It impressed Percy X, impressed him very much.
“Now I’m going to bed and try to get a few hours’ sleep,” Paul Rivers telepathed. “And I advise you to do the same. I’ll see you tomorrow, if nothing goes wrong.”
Percy felt the amplified mind of Doctor Rivers switch off, leaving only a last fleeting impression of great weariness.
Sleep. That was eas
y enough to say, Percy thought, but not so easy to achieve. Something lay in the back of his mind, something which ate away at him without letup, draining away his strength and resolution slowly and steadily. He wondered what it was.
A picture of Balkani’s face rose in Percy X’s mind. The beard. The pipe. The fire-ignited glittering eyes with the dilated pupils. No matter who rules this planet, Percy realized, Balkani will still find a place in the ruling class… And what about me? he asked himself. What in God’s name is happening back in Tennessee? What are my last Neeg-parts doing? Assuming any are left…
I’ve got to get out of here, he said to himself. If I stay, Balkani will have me the way he had Joan… Only a matter of time, he realized. And, when that happens, it’ll be foreordained as far as the bale is concerned.
He would not be getting any sleep, not with such thoughts lodged starkly in his mind.
At dawn the garbage truck came crashing and banging down the old highway beside the fjord and halted at the guard station just before the bridge, as it had done so many times over the years. The guards gave it a routine inspection and let it by. The truck crossed the single-span suspension bridge and made its way, roaring, snorting and wheezing, up the road to the gates of the prison. There it was again inspected and again passed, to park at last behind the prisoners’ mess hall. Two men in white coveralls stepped out, marched over to the garbage shed and disappeared inside. A moment later two guards stepped out into the sunlight and made their way briskly down the hallways that led from the kitchen.
A clank of keys sounded at the lock of Percy X’s door and a voice said, “Routine check. Step outside a minute, will you?” Percy scanned the area telepathically. Nobody was anywhere near.
He looked in the direction of the voice. There stood a man in a guard’s uniform. It was Percy X.
For a moment the human Percy X and the robot Percy X gazed at each other; then the human stepped out into the hall, where no TV spy-monitors watched. A moment later the robot Percy X reentered the room and lay down on the cot, while the human Percy X, now dressed in the guard’s uniform, locked the door.
Quickly he made his way to Joan Hiashi’s cell, making use of the knowledge of the combination on the intervening doors that he had gained in his protracted period of mind-picking.
Two Joan Hiashis stood inside Joan’s door, one in prison uniform, the other in guard’s uniform. He could not tell which was the robot and which the human until the one in the guard’s uniform said, barely audibly, “She says she won’t go, sir.”
“If you don’t go,” Percy whispered hoarsely to her, “I won’t go.”
For a moment Joan remained silent. But he read in her mind, I can’t have you giving your life for me. She shrugged, then, and began listlessly, with agonizing slowness, to change clothes with the robot.
A moment later two “guards,” one tall and one short, made their way to the garbage shed. After a pause two garbage men, one tall and one short, emerged from the shed and carried two garbage cans to the truck. The shorter one seemed hardly strong enough for the task, but somehow she made it. Two more trips and all the garbage had been taken out.
The white-coveralled figures climbed into the truck and drove back out the gate.
“Took a long time, today,” the uniformed inspector at the gate said sourly.
“Had to stop by the men’s room,” Percy X said.
The inspector shrugged and waved them past.
“Why didn’t they recognize us?” Joan whispered.
“Look at me,” Percy said briefly. She looked—and her eyes widened. The man beside her wasn’t Percy X at all. “It’s these gadgets on our belts,” Percy explained. “They project a false image into people’s minds; they make us look like what the person expects. Balkani perfected it a number of years ago, according to Doctor Rivers.”
“Oh yes,” Joan said faintly. “Doctor Rivers. I wondered when he’d show up again.”
They passed inspection at the other end of the bridge, too, and from there they found themselves in the clear.
In a garage just off the fjord-side highway, Doctor Paul Rivers and Ed Newkom sat on the fender of a sleek ionocraft, tensely waiting. Next to the wall two authentic garbage men, stiff and silent, looked sightlessly on.
“Yes,” Paul said, glancing with approval at the hypnotized men. “I haven’t lost it, the ability.” In the old days, at the beginning of his professional practice, he had gone in a great deal for hypnotherapy…as had Freud. Much better, he reflected, to save something of the potency of hypnotism for special occasions. Such as this.
“Got a light?” Ed asked tautly.
“I don’t smoke,” Paul answered. He brought out a tin of Inchkenneth Dean Swift snuff. “Oral gratification is oral gratification, and snuff doesn’t get soot down into you windpipe.”
“I’ll use the car lighter,” Ed muttered, with a psychosomatic cough. “Snuff—keerist; I prefer a bag of peanuts.” He climbed into the ionocraft and nervously lit a cigarette.
For a time the two men sat in silence, one smoking and the other taking pinch after pinch of snuff, and then they heard the distant roar of the elderly garbage truck, slamming and banging down the highway.
Instantly Paul hopped down from the fender and swung open the garage door. With a snort and noisy backfire the truck came rumbling in and stopped with a squeal of brakes. Percy X killed the turbine and jumped out, followed, more slowly, by Joan Hiashi. Paul at once closed the garage doors and strode over to greet them.
“I’m Paul Rivers, Percy,” he said as he shook hands with the hard-eyed Neeg-part leader, “and this is my coworker and friend, Ed Newkom. Perhaps you recall, Miss Hiashi, that we met. Briefly.”
Joan gazed at him with unfocused eyes and expressionless face, saying nothing. Within him, Paul shuddered. What has Balkani done to her? he asked himself. Such a lovely little creature and he’s managed to turn her into—God knows what. But, he thought, perhaps I can help her.
He gave a few instructions to the hypnotized garbage men, then stood back with a humorless smile on his lips as they obediently climbed into their truck. “Open the garage door for them,” he said to Percy X. “Before they break it down.” Percy opened the door; the truck motor exploded into life and, a moment later, lurched down the short driveway, swerved out onto the highway and headed off in the direction of Oslo.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ed said impatiently, stubbing out his cigarette. The four of them got into the ionocraft, Paul seating himself behind the wheel; with a whoosh the vehicle shot out of the garage and over the smooth waters of the fjord.
“There’s one thing I’d like to know, Doctor Rivers,” Percy X said, not using his telepathic powers out of politeness to the non-telepaths present. “Why did you go to such risk and trouble to get us out?” He felt suspicion, deep and abiding.
“We have a favor,” Paul Rivers said, “to ask of you.” His voice held softness—and yet it sounded peculiarly firm.
“What favor?”
Paul Rivers said, “We want you to go back to Tennessee and die. Preferably like a hero.”
IX
MAJOR RINGDAHL met Doctor Rudolph Balkani in the dim hallway outside the psychiatrist’s office. Balkani tried to get by him with only a mumbled greeting, but the major touched his arm and said, “Wait a moment, there.”
Fidgeting impatiently, Balkani waited.
“I understand you’re now working with both Joan Hiashi and Percy X, Doctor.” Ringdahl regarded him acutely. “How’s it going?”
“Not too well.” Balkani frowned as he stroked his irregular beard. “I think I may be pressing them too hard. Their reactions have become almost—mechanical.”
The major slapped Balkani on the back, an apparently friendly gesture…but Balkani felt the pressure of force beneath it. “Keep at them; they’ll crack sooner or later. After all, they’re only human.”
When he finally managed to break free of his superior, Balkani found himself thoroughly dep
ressed. The thing that annoyed him most seemed to be Ringdahl’s insistence that he “crack them.” I want to cure them, not crack them, he thought to himself as he entered his office.
He thought, then, about Joan Hiashi. An interesting case, but not in accord with any of his previous findings; her reaction to oblivion therapy was unique. He would have to write an entire new chapter in his thesis on the New Psychoanalysis, all because of her. Perhaps, he reflected, I’ll have to revise my entire theory. What a painful thought…a life’s work down the drain, just because of one exception. And yet, as he well knew, a single inordinate exception such as this did not prove the rule; it broke the rule.
At this point he had completed half of the crucial last chapter. He could not finish it until he had closed the Joan Hiashi case, one way or the other. Perhaps, he mused, I’ll honor her by naming a mental illness after her. “The Hiashi Complex.” No, that was perhaps too ambitious. “The Hiashi Syndrome.” That would be better.
Closing the door of his office after him he seated himself at the foot of his analyst’s couch and glared sightlessly at the rather tarnished bust of Sigmund Freud looming on top of his bookcase. Quite a frowning father figure, aren’t you? he thought.
Joan Hiashi was late. What kind of idiots did they have for guards, anyway? They were probably making time with her this very moment, the animals, pawing her with their sweaty soldier hands. He got irritably to his feet, paced back and forth a few times, then sat down again and reached for his pipe.
Footsteps in the hall. He leaped back up to his feet, spilling tobacco from his pouch; this he did not notice, because the door had begun to open. And there she stood.
“Hello, Doctor.” She entered the office; behind her the guard shut the door. As on every other occasion of late she seemed cool and remote, even indifferent. “What do we do today?” she asked as she slipped noiselessly into a chair facing him.
“The tank,” Balkani said. “Or some multiphasic profile tests. Or perhaps just a little chat, eh? We ought to get to know each other better.”