“Folie à deux,” Sheila said mildly. To Rachmael she said, “No, not injurious to us, of course. To them.” She once more indicated the empty living room—empty except for the din of Omar Jones’ recorded unending monolog. “But you see,” she explained to Rachmael, raising her head and confronting him tranquilly, “it wouldn’t just be real; that is, real in the experiential sense, the way all LSD and similar psycheletic drug-experiences are . . . they’re real, but if one of the experiences is common to more than a single individual the implications are quite great; being able to talk about it and be completely understood is—” She gestured faintly, as if her meaning at this point was obvious, scarcely worth articulating.
“It would be coming true,” Miss de Rungs said in a stifled, unsteady voice. “Replacing this.” She ejected the end word violently, then swiftly once again sank into her withdrawn brooding.
The room, now, was tomb-like still.
“I wonder which one,” Hank Szantho said, half-idly, to himself but audibly. “The Blue, ben Applebaum? Yours? Or Paraworld Green, or White, or god knows which. Blue,” he added, “is about the worst. Yeah, no doubt of that; it’s been established for some time. Blue is the pit.”
No one spoke. They all, wordlessly, looked toward Rachmael. Waiting.
Rachmael said, “Has any of the rest of you—”
“None of us, obviously,” Miss de Rungs said, with rigid, clipped firmness, “has undergone Paraworld Blue. But before us—several, I believe, and fairly recently. Or so the ’wash psychiatrists say, anyhow, if you can believe them.”
“But not all of us,” Gretchen Borbman said, “have been before the computer, yet. I haven’t, for instance. It takes time; the entire memory area of the cerebral cortex has to be tapped cell by cell, and most of the retention in stored form of the experience is subliminal. Repressed from consciousness, especially in the case of—less favorable paraworlds. In fact the episode in its entirety can be split off from the self-system within minutes after the person regains contact with reality, in which case he has absolutely no knowledge—available, conscious knowledge, that is—of what happened to him.”
“And a pseudo-memory,” Hank Szantho added, rubbing his massive jaw and scowling. “Substituted automatically. Also a function beyond conscious control. Paraworld Blue . . . who in his right mind, who wants to keep his frugging right mind, would recall it?”
Gretchen Borbman, impassive, drained and pale, went to pour herself a fresh cup of the still-warm syn-cof; the cup clattered as she maneuvered it clumsily. With iron-rigid fixity all of them maintained a state of contrived obliviousness toward her, pretended not to hear the tremor of her nervous hands as she carried her cup step by step back to the table, and, with painstaking caution, seated herself beside Rachmael. None of the other weevils showed any sign whatever of perceiving her existence in their midst, now; they fixedly kept their eyes averted from her halting movement across the small, densely occupied kitchen, as if she—and Rachmael—did not exist. And the emotion, he realized, was stricken terror. And not the same amorphous uneasiness of before; this was new, far more acute, and beyond dispute directed absolutely at her.
Because of what she had said? Obviously that; the ice-hard suspension of the normal sense of well-being had set in the moment Gretchen Borbman had said what seemed to him, on the surface, to be routine: that she, among others in this group, had not presented the contents of their minds, their delusional—or expanded-consciousness-derived—paraworld involvement. The fear had been there, but it had not focussed on Gretchen until she had admitted openly, called attention to the fact, that she in particular viewed a paraworld which might conform thoroughly to that of someone else in the group. And therefore would, as Miss de Rungs had said, would then be coming true; coming true and replacing the environment in which they now lived . . . an environment which enormously powerful agencies intended for extremely vital reasons to maintain.
—Agencies, Rachmael thought caustically, which I’ve already come up against head-on. Trails of Hoffman Limited, with Sepp von Einem and his Telpor device, and his Schweinfort labs. I wonder, he thought, what has come out of those labs lately. What has Gregory Gloch, the renegade UN wep-x sensation, thrashed together for his employers’ use? And is it already available to them? If it was, they had no need for it as yet; their mainstays, their conventional constructs, seemed to serve adequately; the necessity for some bizarre, quasi-genius, quasi-psychotic, if that fairly delineated Gloch, did not appear to be yet at hand . . . but, he realized somberly, it had to be presumed that Gloch’s contribution had long ago evolved to the stage of tactical utility: when needed, it would be available.
“It would seem to me,” Gretchen Borbman said to him, evidently more calm, now, more composed, “that this rather dubious ‘reality’ which we as a body share—I’m speaking in particular, of course, of that obnoxious Omar Jones creature, that caricature of a political leader—has damn little to recommend it. Do you feel loyalty to it, Mr. ben Applebaum?” She surveyed him critically, her eyes wise and searching. “If it did yield to a different framework—” Now she was speaking to all of them, the entire class crowded into the kitchen. “Would that be so bad? The paraworld you saw, Paraworld Blue. Was that so much worse, really?”
“Yes,” Rachmael said. It was unnecessary to comment further, certainly no one else in the tense, overpacked room needed to be convinced—the expressions on their strained faces ratified his recognition. And he saw, now, why their unified apprehension and animosity toward Gretchen Borbman signified an overwhelming, ominous approaching entity: her exposure before the all-absorbing scanner of the computer in no sense represented one more repetition of the mind-analysis which had taken place routinely with the others in the past. Gretchen already knew the contents of her paraworld. Her reaction had come long ago, and in her manner now consisted, for the others in the group, a clear index of what that paraworld represented, which of the designated categories it fell into. Obviously, it was a decidedly familiar one—to her and to the group as a whole.
“Perhaps,” the curly-haired youth said acidly, “Gretch might be less entranced with Paraworld Blue if she had undergone a period stuck in it, like you did, Mr. ben Applebaum; what do you say to that?” He watched Rachmael closely, scrutinizing him in anticipation of his response; he obviously expected to see it, rather than hear it uttered. “Or could she have already done that, Mr. ben Applebaum? Do you think you could tell if she had? By that I mean, would there be any indication, a permanent—” He searched for the words he wanted, his face working.
“Alteration,” Hank Szantho said.
Gretchen Borbman said, “I’m quite satisfactorily anchored in reality, Szantho; take my word for it. Are you? Every person in this room is just as involved in an involuntary subjective psychotic fantasy-superimposition over the normal frame of reference as I am; some of you possibly even more so. I don’t know. Who knows what takes place in other people’s minds? I frankly don’t care to judge; I don’t think I can.” She deliberately and with superbly controlled unflinching dispassion returned the remorseless animosity of the ring of persons around her. “Maybe,” she said, “you ought to re-examine the structure of the ‘reality’ you think’s in jeopardy. Yes, the TV set.” Her voice, now, was harsh, overwhelming in its caustic vigor. “Go in there, look at it; look at that dreadful parody of a president— is that what you prefer to—”
“At least,” Hank Szantho said, “it’s real.”
Eyeing him, Gretchen said, “Is it?” Sardonically, she smiled; it was a totally inhumane smile, and it was directed to all of them; he saw it sweep the room, withering into dryness the accusing circle of her group-members—he saw them palpably retreat. It did not include him, however; conspicuously, Gretchen exempted him, and he felt the potency, the meaning of her decision to leave him out: he was not like the others and she knew it and so did he, and it meant something, a great deal. And he thought, I know what it means. She does, too.
Just
the two of us, he thought; Gretchen Borbman and I—and for a good reason. Alteration, he thought. Hank Szantho is right.
Tilting Gretchen Borbman’s fat face he contemplated her eyes, the expression in them; he studied her for an unmeasured time, during which she did not stir: she returned, silently, without blinking, his steady, probing, analytical penetration of her interior universe . . . neither of them stirred, and it began to appear to him, gradually, as if a melting, opening entrance had replaced the unyielding and opaque coloration of her pupils; all at once the variegated luminous matrices within which her substance seemed to lodge expanded to receive him—dizzy, he half-fell, caught himself, then blinked and righted himself; no words had passed between them, and yet he understood, now; he had been right. It was true.
He rose, walked unsteadily away; he found himself entering the living room with its untended blaring TV set—the thing dominated the room with its howls and shrieks, warping the window drapes, walls and carpets, the once-attractive ceramic lamps . . . he sensed and witnessed the deformity imposed by the crushing din of the TV set with its compulsively hypomanic dwarfed and stunted figure, now gesticulating in a speeded-up frenzy, as if the video technicians had allowed—or induced—the tape to seek its maximum velocity.
At sight of him the image, the Omar Jones thing, stopped. Warily, as if surprised, it regarded him—at least seemed to; impossibly, the TV replica of the colony president fixed its attention as rigidly on him as he in return found himself doing. Both of them, caught in an instinctive, fully alert vigil, neither able to look away even for a fraction of an instant . . . as if, Rachmael thought, our lives, the physical preservation of both of us, has cataclysmically and without warning become jeopardized.
And neither of us, he realized as he stared unwinkingly at the TV image of Omar Jones, can escape; we’re both snared. Until or unless one of us can—can do what?
Blurred, now, as he felt himself sink into numbed fatigue, the two remorseless eyes of the TV figure began to blend. The eyes shifted, came together, superimposed until all at once, locked, they became a clearly defined single eye the intensity of which appalled him; a wet, smoldering greatness that attracted light from every source, drew illumination and authority from every direction and dimension, confronted him, and any possibility of looking away now was gone.
From behind him, Gretchen Borbman’s voice sounded. “You see, don’t you? Some of the paraworlds are—” She hesitated, perhaps wanting to tell him in such a manner as to spare him; she wanted him to know, but with the least pain possible. “—hard to detect at first,” she finished, gently. Her hand, soothing, comforting, rested on his shoulder; she was drawing him away from the image on the TV screen, the oozing cyclopean entity that had ceased its speeded-up harangue and, in silence, emanated in his direction its diseased malevolence.
“This one,” Rachmael managed to say hoarsely, “has a description, too? A code-identification?”
“This,” Gretchen said, “is reality.”
“Paraworld Blue—”
Turning him around by physical force to face her, Gretchen said, stricken, “ ‘Paraworld Blue’ ”? Is that what you see? On the TV screen? I don’t believe it—the aquatic cephalopod with one working eye? No; I just don’t believe it.”
Incredulous, Rachmael said, “I . . . thought you saw it. Too.”
“No!” She shook her head violently; her face now hardened, masklike; the change in her features came to him initially, in the first particle of a second, as a mere idea—and then the actual jagged carving of old, shredding wood replaced the traditional, expected flesh, wood burned, carbonized as if seared both to injure it and to create fright in him, the beholder; an exaggerated travesty of organic physiognomy that grimaced in a fluidity, a mercury-like flux so that the irreal emotions revealed within the mask altered without cease, sometimes, as he watched, several manifesting themselves at once and merging into a configuration of affect which could not exist in any human—nor could it be read.
Her actual—or rather her normally perceived—features, by a slow process, gradually re-emerged. The mask sank down, hidden, behind. It remained, of course, still there, but at least no longer directly confronting him. He was glad of that; relief passed through him, but then it, too, like the sight of the scorched-wood mask, sank out of range and he could no longer recall it.
“Whatever gave you the idea,” Gretchen was saying, “that I saw anything like that? No, not in the slightest.” Her hand, withdrawn from his shoulder, convulsed; she moved away from him, as if retreating down a narrowing tube, farther and fatally, syphoned off from his presence like a drained insect, back toward the kitchen and the dense pack of others.
“Type-basics,” he said to her, appealing to her, trying to catch onto her and hold her. But she continued to shrink away anyhow. “Isn’t it still possible that only a projection from the unconscious—”
“But your projection,” Gretchen said, in a voice raptor-like, sawing, “is unacceptable. To me and to everybody else.”
“What do you see?” he asked, finally. There was almost no sight of her now.
Gretchen said, “I’m scarcely likely to tell you, Mr. ben Applebaum; you can’t actually expect that, now, after what you’ve said.”
There was silence. And then, by labored, unnaturally retarded degrees, a groaning noise came from the speaker of the television set; the noise at last became intelligible speech, at the proper pitch and rate: his categories of perception had again achieved a functioning parallel with the space-time axis of the image of Omar Jones. Or had the progression of the image resumed as before? Time had stopped or the image had stopped, or perhaps both . . . or was there such a thing as time at all? He tried to remember, but found himself unable to; the falling off of his capacity for abstract thought—was—what—was—
He did not know.
Something looked at him. With its mouth.
It had eaten most of its own eyes.
ELEVEN
People who are out of phase in time, Sepp von Einem thought caustically to himself, ought to be dead. Not preserved like bugs in amber. He glanced up from the encoded intel-repo and watched with distaste his mysteriously—and rather repellently—gifted proleptic co-worker, Gregory Gloch, in his clanking, whirring anti-prolepsis chamber; at the moment, the thin, tall, improperly hunched youth talked silently into the audio receptor of his sealed chamber, his mouth twisting as if composed of some obsolete plastic, not convincingly flesh-like. The mouth-motions, too, lacked authenticity; far too slow, von Einem observed, even for Gloch. The fool was slowing down. However, the memory spools of the chamber would still collect everything said by Gloch, at whatever rate. And the transmission subsequently would of course be at proper time . . . although, of course, the frequency would be abysmal, probably doubled. At the thought of the screeching which lay ahead, von Einem groaned.
His groan, received by the sensitive input audio system of the anti-prolepsis chamber, became processed: recorded at twenty inches of iron oxide audio tape a second it whipped in retrograde to rewind, then released itself at six inches a second to be carried to the earphones well fixed to Gloch’s bony head. Presently Gloch responded to his reception of his superior’s groan with characteristic eccentricity. His cheeks puffed out; his face turned red as he held his breath. And at the same time he grinned vacuously, his head lolling, turning himself into a parody of a brain-damaged defective—a double parody, because it was of course his own fantastic mentational processes which constituted the actual target of his lampoon. Disgusted, von Einem looked away, gritted his near-priceless custom-fashioned teeth, returned to his scrutiny of the intel-repo material which had newly been made available to him.
“I’m Bill Behren,” the tinny mechanical voice of the intel-repo transport announced cheerfully. “Operator of fly 33408. Now, as you may or may not remember fly 33408 is a real winner. I mean it really gets in there and tackles its job and really gathers up the stuff, the real hot stuff. I’ve person
ally been operator for, say, fifty flies . . . but in all this time, none has really performed true-blue like this little fella. I think he—or it, whatever they are these days—deserves a vote of thanks from us all involved in this highly delicate work we do. Right, Herr von Einem?” Operator of housefly 33408 Bill Behren paused hopefully.
“The vote of thanks,” von Einem said, “goes to you, Mr. Behren, for your compound eyes.”
“How about that,” operator Behren rambled on oozingly. “Well, I think we’re all inspired by—”
“The data,” von Einem said. “As to the activity at the UN Advance-weapons Archives. What specifically is meant by their code number variation three of that time-warping construct they’re so devoted to?” Queer for, he thought to himself; the UN wep-x personnel probably take turns going to bed with it.
“Well, sir,” operator Bill Behren of fly 33408 answered vigorously, “variation three appears to be a handy-dandy little portable pack unit in the ingenious shape of a tin of chocolate-flavored psychic energizers.”
On the video portion of the intel-repo playback system a wide-angle shot of the portable pack appeared; von Einem glanced toward Gloch in his whirring anti-prolepsis chamber to see if the hunched, grimacing youth was receiving this transmission. Gloch, however, obviously lagged at least fifteen minutes behind, now; it would be some time before his synchronizing gear brought this video image to him. And no way to speed it up; that would defeat the chamber’s purpose.
“Did I say ‘chocolate-flavored’?” Behren droned on, in agitation. “I intended to say ‘chocolate-covered.’ ”
And with such weapons artifacts as this, von Einem reflected, the UN expects to survive. Of course, this assumed that the intel-repo were accurate.
His inquiry into the certainty of fly 33408’s information brought an immediate reaction from operator Behren.
“There are just plain virtually no houseflies as intelligent as this; I give you no niddy, Herr von Einem, no niddy at all. And here’s the real substance of what 33408 has captured via his multipartis receptors: I suggest you prepare for this, as it’s overwhelming.” Behren cleared his throat importantly. “Ever hear of ol’ Charley Falks?”