"Yes," he said.
"You can sit with the kids and eat there with them."
"Oh," he said.
"You can feed them later on like in a month or two." She hesitated. "When we're positive you won't hit them. We have a rule: the children can't never be hit for anything they do."
"Okay," he said. He felt warmed into life, watching the children eat; he seated himself, and one of the smaller children crept up on his lap. He began spooning food to the child. Both he and the child felt, he thought, equally warm. The Chinese girl smiled at him and then passed on with the plates to the dining room.
For a long time he sat among the children, holding first one and then another. The two older men quarreled with the children and criticized each other's way of feeding. Bits and hunks and smudges of food covered the table and floor; startled, he realized that the children had been fed and were going off into their big playroom to watch cartoons on TV. Awkwardly, he bent down to clean up spilled food.
"No, that's not your job!" one of the elderly men said sharply. "I'm supposed to do that."
"Okay," he agreed, rising, bumping his head on the edge of the table. He held spilled food in his hand and he gazed at it, wonderingly.
"Go help clear the dining room!" the other older man said to him. He had a slight speech impediment.
One of the kitchen help, someone from the dishpan, said to him in passing, "You need permission to sit with the kids."
He nodded, standing there, puzzled.
"That's for the old folk," the dishpan person said. "Babysitting." He laughed. "That can't do nothing else." He continued by.
One child remained. She studied him, large-eyed, and said to him, "What's your name?"
He answered nothing.
"I said, what's your name?"
Reaching cautiously, he touched a bit of beef on the table. It had cooled now. But, aware of the child beside him, he still felt warm; he touched her on the head, briefly.
"My name is Thelma," the child said. "Did you forget your name?" She patted him. "If you forget your name, you can write it on your hand. Want me to show you how?" She patted him again.
"Won't it wash off?" he asked her. "If you write it on your hand, the first time you do anything or take a bath it'll wash off."
"Oh, I see." She nodded. "Well, you could write it on the wall, over your head. In your room where you sleep. Up high where it won't wash off. And then when you want to know your name better you can—"
"Thelma," he murmured.
"No, that's my name. You have to have a different name. And that's a girl's name."
"Let's see," he said, meditating.
"If I see you again I'll give you a name," Thelma said. "I'll make one up for you. ‘Kay?"
"Don't you live here?" he said.
"Yes, but my mommy might leave. She's thinking about taking us, me and my brother, and leaving."
He nodded. Some of the warmth left him.
All of a sudden, for no reason he could see, the child ran off.
I should work out my own name, anyhow, he decided; it's my responsibility. He examined his hand and wondered why he was doing that; there was nothing to see. Bruce, he thought; that's my name. But there ought to be better names than that, he thought. The warmth that remained gradually departed, as had the child.
He felt alone and strange and lost again. And not very happy.
They sat together outside, with Cokes and hamburgers between them on the wooden table.
"Have we really been able to duke him?" Donna asked.
"Yes," Westaway said. But he thought, The guy's so burned out. I wonder if it matters. I wonder if we accomplished anything. And yet it had to be like this.
"They're not paranoid about him."
"No," Mike Westaway said.
Donna said, "Are you personally convinced they're growing the stuff?"
"Not me. It's not what I believe. It's them." Those who pay us, he thought.
"What's the name mean?"
"Mors ontologica. Death of the spirit. The identity. The essential nature."
"Will he be able to act?"
Westaway watched the cars and people passing; he watched moodily as he fooled with his food.
"You really don't know."
"Never can know until it happens. A memory. A few charred brain cells flicker on. Like a reflex. React, not act. We can just hope. Remembering what Paul says in the Bible: faith, hope, and giving away your money." He studied the pretty, dark-haired young girl across from him and could perceive, in her intelligent face, why Bob Arctor—No, he thought; I always have to think of him as Bruce. Otherwise I cop out to knowing too much: things I shouldn't, couldn't, know. Why Bruce thought so much of her. Thought when he was capable of thought.
"He was very well drilled," Donna said, in what seemed to him an extraordinary forlorn voice. And at the same time an expression of sorrow crossed her face, straining and warping its lines. "Such a cost to pay," she said then, half to herself, and drank from her Coke.
He thought, But there is no other way. To get in there. I can't get in. That's established by now; think how long I've been trying. They'd only let a burned-out husk like Bruce in. Harmless. He would have to be … the way he is. Or they wouldn't take the risk. It's their policy.
"The government asks an awful lot," Donna said.
"Life asks an awful lot."
Raising her eyes, she confronted him, darkly angry. "In this case the federal government. Specifically. From you, me. From—" She broke off. "From what was my friend."
"He's still your friend."
Fiercely Donna said, "What's left of him."
What's left of him, Mike Westaway thought, is still searching for you. After its fashion. He too felt sad. But the day was nice, the people and cars cheered him, the air smelled good. And there was the prospect of success; that cheered him the most. They had come this far. They could go the rest of the way.
Donna said, "I think, really, there is nothing more terrible than the sacrifice of someone or something, a living thing, without its ever knowing. If it knew. If it understood and volunteered. But—" She gestured. "He doesn't know; he never did know. He didn't volunteer—"
"Sure he did. It was his job."
"He had no idea, and he hasn't any idea now, because now he hasn't any ideas. You know that as well as I do. And he will never again in his life, as long as he lives, have any ideas. Only reflexes. And this didn't happen accidentally; it was supposed to happen. So we have this … bad karma on us. I feel it on my back. Like a corpse. I'm carrying a corpse—Bob Arctor's corpse. Even while he's technically alive." Her voice had risen; Mike Westaway gestured, and, with visible effort, she calmed herself. People at other wooden tables, enjoying their burgers and shakes, had glanced inquiringly.
After a pause Westaway said, "Well, look at it this way. They can't interrogate something, someone, who doesn't have a mind."
"I've got to get back to work," Donna said. She examined her wristwatch. "I'll tell them everything seems okay, according to what you told me. In your opinion."
"Wait for winter," Westaway said.
"Winter?"
"It'll take until then. Never mind why, but that's how it is; it will work in winter or it won't work at all. We'll get it then or not at all." Directly at the solstice, he thought.
"An appropriate time. When everything's dead and under the snow."
He laughed. "In California?"
"The winter of the spirit. Mors ontologica. When the spirit is dead."
"Only asleep," Westaway said. He rose. "I have to split, too, I have to pick up a load of vegetables."
Donna gazed at him with sad, mute, afflicted dismay.
"For the kitchen," Westaway said gently. "Carrots and lettuce. That kind. Donated by McCoy's Market, for us poor at New-Path. I'm sorry I said that. It wasn't meant to be a joke. It wasn't meant to be anything." He patted her on the shoulder of her leather jacket. And as he did so it came to him that probably Bob Arctor, in better, happier days, had gotten this jacket for her as a gift.
"We have worked together on this a long time," Donna said in a moderate, steady voice. "I don't want to be on this much longer. I want it to end. Sometimes at night, when I can't sleep, I think, shit, we are colder than they are. The adversary."
"I don't see a cold person when I look at you," Westaway said. "Although I guess I really don't know you all that well. What I do see, and see clearly, is one of the warmest persons I ever knew."
"I am warm on the outside, what people see. Warm eyes, warm face, warm fucking fake smile, but inside I am cold all the time, and full of lies. I am not what I seem to be; I am awful." The girl's voice remained steady, and as she spoke she smiled. Her pupils were large and mellow and without guile. "But, then, there's no other way. Is there? I figured that out a long time ago and made myself like this. But it really isn't so bad. You get what you want this way. And everybody is this way to a degree. What I am that's actually so bad—I am a liar. I lied to my friend, I lied to Bob Arctor all the time. I even told him one time not to believe anything I said, and of course he just believed I was kidding; he didn't listen. But if I told him, then it's his responsibility not to listen, not to believe me any more, after I said that. I warned him. But he forgot as soon as I said it and went right on. Kept right on truckin'."
"You did what you had to. You did more than you had to."
The girl started away from the table. "Okay, then there really isn't anything for me to report, so far. Except your confidence. Just that he's duked in and they accept him. They didn't get anything out of him in those—" She shuddered. "Those gross games."
"Right."
"I'll see you later." She paused. "The federal people aren't going to want to wait until winter."
"But winter it is," Westaway said. "The winter solstice."
"The what?"
"Just wait," he said. "And pray."
"That's bullshit," Donna said. "Prayer, I mean. I prayed a long time ago, a lot, but not any more. We wouldn't have to do this, what we're doing, if prayer worked. It's another shuck."
"Most things are." He followed after the girl a few steps as she departed, drawn to her, liking her. "I don't feel you destroyed your friend. It seems to me you've been as much destroyed, as much the victim. Only on you it doesn't show. Anyhow, there was no choice."
"I'm going to hell," Donna said. She smiled suddenly, a broad, boyish grin. "My Catholic upbringing."
"In hell they sell you nickel bags and when you get home there's M-and-M's in them."
"M-and-M's made out of turkey turds," Donna said, and then all at once she was gone. Vanished away into the hitherand-thither-going people; he blinked. Is this how Bob Arctor felt? he asked himself. Must have. There she was, stable and as if forever; then—nothing. Vanished like fire or air, an element of the earth back into the earth. To mix with the everyone-else people that never ceased to be. Poured out among them. The evaporated girl, he thought. Of transformation. That comes and goes as she will. And no one, nothing, can hold on to her.
I seek to net the wind, he thought. And so had Arctor. Vain, he thought, to try to place your hands firmly on one of the federal drug-abuse agents. They are furtive. Shadows which melt away when their job dictates. As if they were never really there in the first place. Arctor, he thought, was in love with a phantom of authority, a kind of hologram, through which a normal man could walk, and emerge on the far side, alone. Without ever having gotten a good grip on it—on the girl itself.
God's M.O., he reflected, is to transmute evil into good. If He is active here, He is doing that now, although our eyes can't perceive it; the process lies hidden beneath the surface of reality, and emerges only later. To, perhaps, our waiting heirs. Paltry people who will not know the dreadful war we've gone through, and the losses we took, unless in some footnote in a minor history book they catch a notion. Some brief mention. With no list of the fallen.
There should be a monument somewhere, he thought, listing those who died in this. And, worse, those who didn't die. Who have to live on, past death. Like Bob Arctor. The saddest of all.
I get the idea Donna is a mercenary, he thought. Not on salary. And they are the most wraithlike. They disappear forever. New names, new locations. You ask yourself, where is she now? And the answer is—
Nowhere. Because she was not there in the first place.
Reseating himself at the wooden table, Mike Westaway finished eating his burger and drinking his Coke. Since it was better than what they were served at New-Path. Even if the burger had been made from groundup cows' anuses.
To call Donna back, to seek to find her or possess her … I seek what Bob Arctor sought, so maybe he is better off now, this way. The tragedy in his life already existed. To love an atmospheric spirit. That was the real sorrow. Hopelessness itself. Nowhere on the printed page, nowhere in the annals of man, would her name appear: no local habitation, no name. There are girls like that, he thought, and those you love the most, the ones where there is no hope because it has eluded you at the very moment you close your hands around it.
So maybe we saved him from something worse, Westaway concluded. And, while accomplishing that, put what remained of him to use. To good and valuable use.
If we turn out lucky.
"Do you know any stories?" Thelma asked one day.
"I know the story about the wolf," Bruce said.
"The wolf and the grandmother?"
"No," he said. "The black-and-white wolf. It was up in a tree, and again and again it dropped down on the farmer's animals. Finally one time the farmer got all his sons and all his sons' friends and they stood around waiting for the black-and-white wolf in the tree to drop down. At last the wolf dropped down on a mangy-looking brown animal, and there in his black-and-white coat he was shot by all of them."
"Oh," Thelma said. "That's too bad."
"But they saved the hide," he continued. "They skinned the great black-and-white wolf that dropped from the tree and preserved his beautiful hide, so that those to follow, those who came later on, could see what he had been like and could marvel at him, at his strength and size. And future generations talked about him and related many stories of his prowess and majesty, and wept for his passing."
"Why did they shoot him?"
"They had to," he said. "You must do that with wolves like that."
"Do you know any other stories? Better ones?"
"No," he said, "that's the only story I know." He sat remembering how the wolf had enjoyed his great springing ability, his leaping down again and again in his fine body, but now that body was gone, shot down. And for meager animals to be slaughtered and eaten anyhow. Animals with no strength that never sprang, that took no pride in their bodies. But anyhow, on the good side, those animals trudged on. And the black-and-white wolf had never complained; he had said nothing even when they shot him. His claws had still been deep in his prey. For nothing. Except that that was his fashion and he liked to do it. It was his only way. His only style by which to live. All he knew. And they got him.
"Here's the wolf!" Thelma exclaimed, leaping about clumsily. "Voob, voob!" She grabbed at things and missed, and he saw with dismay that something was wrong with her. He saw for the first time, distressed and wondering how it could happen, that she was impaired.
He said, "You are not the wolf."
But even so, as she groped and hobbled, she stumbled; even so, he realized, the impairment continued. He wondered how it could be that …
… such sadness could exist. He walked away. Behind him she still played. She tripped and fell. How must that feel? he wondered.
"Down the hall to the right." A person pointed. Earl.
"Thanks, Earl," he said.
When he arrived at a closed door he started to knock, and then instead he opened it.
Inside the room an old woman stood holding three rubber balls, which she juggled. She turned toward him, her gray stringy hair falling on her shoulders, grinning at him with virtually no teeth. She wore white bobby socks and tennis shoes. Sunken eyes, he saw; sunken eyes, grinning, empty mouth.
"Can you do this?" she wheezed, and threw all three balls up into the air. They fell back, hitting her, bouncing down to the floor. She stooped over, spitting and laughing.
"I can't do that," he said, standing there dismayed.
"I can." The thin old creature, her arms cracking as she moved, raised the balls, squinted, tried to get it right.
Another person appeared at the door beside Bruce and stood with him, also watching.
"How long has she been practicing?" Bruce said.
"Quite a while." The person called, "Try again. You're getting close!"
The old woman cackled as she bent to fumble to pick the balls up once again.
"One's over there," the person beside Bruce said. "Under your night table."
"Ohhhh!" she wheezed.
They watched the old woman try again and again, dropping the balls, picking them back up, aiming carefully, balancing herself, throwing them high into the air, and then hunching as they rained down on her, sometimes hitting her head.
The person beside Bruce sniffed and said, "Donna, you better go clean yourself. You're not clean."
Bruce, stricken, said, "That isn't Donna. Is that Donna?" He raised his head to peer at the old woman and he felt great terror; tears of a sort stood in the old woman's eyes as she gazed back at him, but she was laughing, laughing as she threw the three balls at him, hoping to hit him. He ducked.
"No, Donna, don't do that," the person beside Bruce said to her. "Don't hit people. Just keep trying to do what you saw on TV, you know, catch them again yourself and throw them right back up. But go clean yourself now; you stink."
"Okay," the old woman agreed, and hurried off, hunched and little. She left the three rubber balls still rolling on the floor.
The person beside Bruce shut the door, and they walked along the hall. "How long has Donna been here?" Bruce said.
"A long time. Since before I came, which was six months ago. She started trying to juggle about a week ago."
"Then it isn't Donna," he said. "If she's been here that long. Because I just got here a week ago." And, he thought, Donna drove me here in her MG. I remember that, because we had to stop while she got the radiator filled back up. And she looked fine then. Sad-eyed, dark, quiet and composed in her little leather jacket, her boots, with her purse that has the rabbit's foot dangling. Like she always is.
He continued on then, searching for the vacuum cleaner. He felt a great deal better. But he didn't understand why.
15
16
17
Author's Note
"You can sit with the kids and eat there with them."
"Oh," he said.
"You can feed them later on like in a month or two." She hesitated. "When we're positive you won't hit them. We have a rule: the children can't never be hit for anything they do."
"Okay," he said. He felt warmed into life, watching the children eat; he seated himself, and one of the smaller children crept up on his lap. He began spooning food to the child. Both he and the child felt, he thought, equally warm. The Chinese girl smiled at him and then passed on with the plates to the dining room.
For a long time he sat among the children, holding first one and then another. The two older men quarreled with the children and criticized each other's way of feeding. Bits and hunks and smudges of food covered the table and floor; startled, he realized that the children had been fed and were going off into their big playroom to watch cartoons on TV. Awkwardly, he bent down to clean up spilled food.
"No, that's not your job!" one of the elderly men said sharply. "I'm supposed to do that."
"Okay," he agreed, rising, bumping his head on the edge of the table. He held spilled food in his hand and he gazed at it, wonderingly.
"Go help clear the dining room!" the other older man said to him. He had a slight speech impediment.
One of the kitchen help, someone from the dishpan, said to him in passing, "You need permission to sit with the kids."
He nodded, standing there, puzzled.
"That's for the old folk," the dishpan person said. "Babysitting." He laughed. "That can't do nothing else." He continued by.
One child remained. She studied him, large-eyed, and said to him, "What's your name?"
He answered nothing.
"I said, what's your name?"
Reaching cautiously, he touched a bit of beef on the table. It had cooled now. But, aware of the child beside him, he still felt warm; he touched her on the head, briefly.
"My name is Thelma," the child said. "Did you forget your name?" She patted him. "If you forget your name, you can write it on your hand. Want me to show you how?" She patted him again.
"Won't it wash off?" he asked her. "If you write it on your hand, the first time you do anything or take a bath it'll wash off."
"Oh, I see." She nodded. "Well, you could write it on the wall, over your head. In your room where you sleep. Up high where it won't wash off. And then when you want to know your name better you can—"
"Thelma," he murmured.
"No, that's my name. You have to have a different name. And that's a girl's name."
"Let's see," he said, meditating.
"If I see you again I'll give you a name," Thelma said. "I'll make one up for you. ‘Kay?"
"Don't you live here?" he said.
"Yes, but my mommy might leave. She's thinking about taking us, me and my brother, and leaving."
He nodded. Some of the warmth left him.
All of a sudden, for no reason he could see, the child ran off.
I should work out my own name, anyhow, he decided; it's my responsibility. He examined his hand and wondered why he was doing that; there was nothing to see. Bruce, he thought; that's my name. But there ought to be better names than that, he thought. The warmth that remained gradually departed, as had the child.
He felt alone and strange and lost again. And not very happy.
***
One day Mike Westaway managed to get sent out to pick up a load of semirotten produce donated by a local supermarket to New-Path. However, after making sure no staff member had tailed him, he made a phone call and then met Donna Hawthorne at a McDonald's fast-food stand.They sat together outside, with Cokes and hamburgers between them on the wooden table.
"Have we really been able to duke him?" Donna asked.
"Yes," Westaway said. But he thought, The guy's so burned out. I wonder if it matters. I wonder if we accomplished anything. And yet it had to be like this.
"They're not paranoid about him."
"No," Mike Westaway said.
Donna said, "Are you personally convinced they're growing the stuff?"
"Not me. It's not what I believe. It's them." Those who pay us, he thought.
"What's the name mean?"
"Mors ontologica. Death of the spirit. The identity. The essential nature."
"Will he be able to act?"
Westaway watched the cars and people passing; he watched moodily as he fooled with his food.
"You really don't know."
"Never can know until it happens. A memory. A few charred brain cells flicker on. Like a reflex. React, not act. We can just hope. Remembering what Paul says in the Bible: faith, hope, and giving away your money." He studied the pretty, dark-haired young girl across from him and could perceive, in her intelligent face, why Bob Arctor—No, he thought; I always have to think of him as Bruce. Otherwise I cop out to knowing too much: things I shouldn't, couldn't, know. Why Bruce thought so much of her. Thought when he was capable of thought.
"He was very well drilled," Donna said, in what seemed to him an extraordinary forlorn voice. And at the same time an expression of sorrow crossed her face, straining and warping its lines. "Such a cost to pay," she said then, half to herself, and drank from her Coke.
He thought, But there is no other way. To get in there. I can't get in. That's established by now; think how long I've been trying. They'd only let a burned-out husk like Bruce in. Harmless. He would have to be … the way he is. Or they wouldn't take the risk. It's their policy.
"The government asks an awful lot," Donna said.
"Life asks an awful lot."
Raising her eyes, she confronted him, darkly angry. "In this case the federal government. Specifically. From you, me. From—" She broke off. "From what was my friend."
"He's still your friend."
Fiercely Donna said, "What's left of him."
What's left of him, Mike Westaway thought, is still searching for you. After its fashion. He too felt sad. But the day was nice, the people and cars cheered him, the air smelled good. And there was the prospect of success; that cheered him the most. They had come this far. They could go the rest of the way.
Donna said, "I think, really, there is nothing more terrible than the sacrifice of someone or something, a living thing, without its ever knowing. If it knew. If it understood and volunteered. But—" She gestured. "He doesn't know; he never did know. He didn't volunteer—"
"Sure he did. It was his job."
"He had no idea, and he hasn't any idea now, because now he hasn't any ideas. You know that as well as I do. And he will never again in his life, as long as he lives, have any ideas. Only reflexes. And this didn't happen accidentally; it was supposed to happen. So we have this … bad karma on us. I feel it on my back. Like a corpse. I'm carrying a corpse—Bob Arctor's corpse. Even while he's technically alive." Her voice had risen; Mike Westaway gestured, and, with visible effort, she calmed herself. People at other wooden tables, enjoying their burgers and shakes, had glanced inquiringly.
After a pause Westaway said, "Well, look at it this way. They can't interrogate something, someone, who doesn't have a mind."
"I've got to get back to work," Donna said. She examined her wristwatch. "I'll tell them everything seems okay, according to what you told me. In your opinion."
"Wait for winter," Westaway said.
"Winter?"
"It'll take until then. Never mind why, but that's how it is; it will work in winter or it won't work at all. We'll get it then or not at all." Directly at the solstice, he thought.
"An appropriate time. When everything's dead and under the snow."
He laughed. "In California?"
"The winter of the spirit. Mors ontologica. When the spirit is dead."
"Only asleep," Westaway said. He rose. "I have to split, too, I have to pick up a load of vegetables."
Donna gazed at him with sad, mute, afflicted dismay.
"For the kitchen," Westaway said gently. "Carrots and lettuce. That kind. Donated by McCoy's Market, for us poor at New-Path. I'm sorry I said that. It wasn't meant to be a joke. It wasn't meant to be anything." He patted her on the shoulder of her leather jacket. And as he did so it came to him that probably Bob Arctor, in better, happier days, had gotten this jacket for her as a gift.
"We have worked together on this a long time," Donna said in a moderate, steady voice. "I don't want to be on this much longer. I want it to end. Sometimes at night, when I can't sleep, I think, shit, we are colder than they are. The adversary."
"I don't see a cold person when I look at you," Westaway said. "Although I guess I really don't know you all that well. What I do see, and see clearly, is one of the warmest persons I ever knew."
"I am warm on the outside, what people see. Warm eyes, warm face, warm fucking fake smile, but inside I am cold all the time, and full of lies. I am not what I seem to be; I am awful." The girl's voice remained steady, and as she spoke she smiled. Her pupils were large and mellow and without guile. "But, then, there's no other way. Is there? I figured that out a long time ago and made myself like this. But it really isn't so bad. You get what you want this way. And everybody is this way to a degree. What I am that's actually so bad—I am a liar. I lied to my friend, I lied to Bob Arctor all the time. I even told him one time not to believe anything I said, and of course he just believed I was kidding; he didn't listen. But if I told him, then it's his responsibility not to listen, not to believe me any more, after I said that. I warned him. But he forgot as soon as I said it and went right on. Kept right on truckin'."
"You did what you had to. You did more than you had to."
The girl started away from the table. "Okay, then there really isn't anything for me to report, so far. Except your confidence. Just that he's duked in and they accept him. They didn't get anything out of him in those—" She shuddered. "Those gross games."
"Right."
"I'll see you later." She paused. "The federal people aren't going to want to wait until winter."
"But winter it is," Westaway said. "The winter solstice."
"The what?"
"Just wait," he said. "And pray."
"That's bullshit," Donna said. "Prayer, I mean. I prayed a long time ago, a lot, but not any more. We wouldn't have to do this, what we're doing, if prayer worked. It's another shuck."
"Most things are." He followed after the girl a few steps as she departed, drawn to her, liking her. "I don't feel you destroyed your friend. It seems to me you've been as much destroyed, as much the victim. Only on you it doesn't show. Anyhow, there was no choice."
"I'm going to hell," Donna said. She smiled suddenly, a broad, boyish grin. "My Catholic upbringing."
"In hell they sell you nickel bags and when you get home there's M-and-M's in them."
"M-and-M's made out of turkey turds," Donna said, and then all at once she was gone. Vanished away into the hitherand-thither-going people; he blinked. Is this how Bob Arctor felt? he asked himself. Must have. There she was, stable and as if forever; then—nothing. Vanished like fire or air, an element of the earth back into the earth. To mix with the everyone-else people that never ceased to be. Poured out among them. The evaporated girl, he thought. Of transformation. That comes and goes as she will. And no one, nothing, can hold on to her.
I seek to net the wind, he thought. And so had Arctor. Vain, he thought, to try to place your hands firmly on one of the federal drug-abuse agents. They are furtive. Shadows which melt away when their job dictates. As if they were never really there in the first place. Arctor, he thought, was in love with a phantom of authority, a kind of hologram, through which a normal man could walk, and emerge on the far side, alone. Without ever having gotten a good grip on it—on the girl itself.
God's M.O., he reflected, is to transmute evil into good. If He is active here, He is doing that now, although our eyes can't perceive it; the process lies hidden beneath the surface of reality, and emerges only later. To, perhaps, our waiting heirs. Paltry people who will not know the dreadful war we've gone through, and the losses we took, unless in some footnote in a minor history book they catch a notion. Some brief mention. With no list of the fallen.
There should be a monument somewhere, he thought, listing those who died in this. And, worse, those who didn't die. Who have to live on, past death. Like Bob Arctor. The saddest of all.
I get the idea Donna is a mercenary, he thought. Not on salary. And they are the most wraithlike. They disappear forever. New names, new locations. You ask yourself, where is she now? And the answer is—
Nowhere. Because she was not there in the first place.
Reseating himself at the wooden table, Mike Westaway finished eating his burger and drinking his Coke. Since it was better than what they were served at New-Path. Even if the burger had been made from groundup cows' anuses.
To call Donna back, to seek to find her or possess her … I seek what Bob Arctor sought, so maybe he is better off now, this way. The tragedy in his life already existed. To love an atmospheric spirit. That was the real sorrow. Hopelessness itself. Nowhere on the printed page, nowhere in the annals of man, would her name appear: no local habitation, no name. There are girls like that, he thought, and those you love the most, the ones where there is no hope because it has eluded you at the very moment you close your hands around it.
So maybe we saved him from something worse, Westaway concluded. And, while accomplishing that, put what remained of him to use. To good and valuable use.
If we turn out lucky.
"Do you know any stories?" Thelma asked one day.
"I know the story about the wolf," Bruce said.
"The wolf and the grandmother?"
"No," he said. "The black-and-white wolf. It was up in a tree, and again and again it dropped down on the farmer's animals. Finally one time the farmer got all his sons and all his sons' friends and they stood around waiting for the black-and-white wolf in the tree to drop down. At last the wolf dropped down on a mangy-looking brown animal, and there in his black-and-white coat he was shot by all of them."
"Oh," Thelma said. "That's too bad."
"But they saved the hide," he continued. "They skinned the great black-and-white wolf that dropped from the tree and preserved his beautiful hide, so that those to follow, those who came later on, could see what he had been like and could marvel at him, at his strength and size. And future generations talked about him and related many stories of his prowess and majesty, and wept for his passing."
"Why did they shoot him?"
"They had to," he said. "You must do that with wolves like that."
"Do you know any other stories? Better ones?"
"No," he said, "that's the only story I know." He sat remembering how the wolf had enjoyed his great springing ability, his leaping down again and again in his fine body, but now that body was gone, shot down. And for meager animals to be slaughtered and eaten anyhow. Animals with no strength that never sprang, that took no pride in their bodies. But anyhow, on the good side, those animals trudged on. And the black-and-white wolf had never complained; he had said nothing even when they shot him. His claws had still been deep in his prey. For nothing. Except that that was his fashion and he liked to do it. It was his only way. His only style by which to live. All he knew. And they got him.
"Here's the wolf!" Thelma exclaimed, leaping about clumsily. "Voob, voob!" She grabbed at things and missed, and he saw with dismay that something was wrong with her. He saw for the first time, distressed and wondering how it could happen, that she was impaired.
He said, "You are not the wolf."
But even so, as she groped and hobbled, she stumbled; even so, he realized, the impairment continued. He wondered how it could be that …
Ich unglücksel' get Atlas! Eine Welt,
Die ganze Welt der Schmerzen muss ich tragen,
Ich trage Unerträgliches, und brechen
Will mir das Herz im Leibe.
… such sadness could exist. He walked away. Behind him she still played. She tripped and fell. How must that feel? he wondered.
***
He roamed along the corridor, searching for the vacuum cleaner. They had informed him that he must carefully vacuum the big playroom where the children spent most of the day."Down the hall to the right." A person pointed. Earl.
"Thanks, Earl," he said.
When he arrived at a closed door he started to knock, and then instead he opened it.
Inside the room an old woman stood holding three rubber balls, which she juggled. She turned toward him, her gray stringy hair falling on her shoulders, grinning at him with virtually no teeth. She wore white bobby socks and tennis shoes. Sunken eyes, he saw; sunken eyes, grinning, empty mouth.
"Can you do this?" she wheezed, and threw all three balls up into the air. They fell back, hitting her, bouncing down to the floor. She stooped over, spitting and laughing.
"I can't do that," he said, standing there dismayed.
"I can." The thin old creature, her arms cracking as she moved, raised the balls, squinted, tried to get it right.
Another person appeared at the door beside Bruce and stood with him, also watching.
"How long has she been practicing?" Bruce said.
"Quite a while." The person called, "Try again. You're getting close!"
The old woman cackled as she bent to fumble to pick the balls up once again.
"One's over there," the person beside Bruce said. "Under your night table."
"Ohhhh!" she wheezed.
They watched the old woman try again and again, dropping the balls, picking them back up, aiming carefully, balancing herself, throwing them high into the air, and then hunching as they rained down on her, sometimes hitting her head.
The person beside Bruce sniffed and said, "Donna, you better go clean yourself. You're not clean."
Bruce, stricken, said, "That isn't Donna. Is that Donna?" He raised his head to peer at the old woman and he felt great terror; tears of a sort stood in the old woman's eyes as she gazed back at him, but she was laughing, laughing as she threw the three balls at him, hoping to hit him. He ducked.
"No, Donna, don't do that," the person beside Bruce said to her. "Don't hit people. Just keep trying to do what you saw on TV, you know, catch them again yourself and throw them right back up. But go clean yourself now; you stink."
"Okay," the old woman agreed, and hurried off, hunched and little. She left the three rubber balls still rolling on the floor.
The person beside Bruce shut the door, and they walked along the hall. "How long has Donna been here?" Bruce said.
"A long time. Since before I came, which was six months ago. She started trying to juggle about a week ago."
"Then it isn't Donna," he said. "If she's been here that long. Because I just got here a week ago." And, he thought, Donna drove me here in her MG. I remember that, because we had to stop while she got the radiator filled back up. And she looked fine then. Sad-eyed, dark, quiet and composed in her little leather jacket, her boots, with her purse that has the rabbit's foot dangling. Like she always is.
He continued on then, searching for the vacuum cleaner. He felt a great deal better. But he didn't understand why.
15
Bruce said, "Could I work with animals?"
"No," Mike said, "I think I'm going to put you on one of our farms. I want to try you with plants for a while, a few months. Out in the open, where you can touch the ground. With all these rocket-ship space probes there's been too much trying to reach the sky. I want you to make the attempt to reach—"
"I want to be with something living."
Mike explained, "The ground is living. The Earth is still alive. You can get the most help there. Do you have any agricultural background? Seeds and cultivation and harvesting?"
"I worked in an office."
"You'll be outside from now on. If your mind comes back it'll have to come back naturally. You can't make yourself think again. You can only keep working, such as sowing crops or tilling on our vegetable plantations—as we call them—or killing insects. We do a lot of that, driving insects out of existence with the right kind of sprays. We're very careful, though, with sprays. They can do more harm than good. They can poison not only the crops and the ground but the person using them. Eat his head." He added, "Like yours has been eaten."
"Okay," Bruce said.
You have been sprayed, Mike thought as he glanced at the man, so that now you've become a bug. Spray a bug with a toxin and it dies; spray a man, spray his brain, and he becomes an insect that clacks and vibrates about in a closed circle forever. A reflex machine, like an ant. Repeating his last instruction.
Nothing new will ever enter his brain, Mike thought, because that brain is gone.
And with it, that person who once gazed out. That I never knew.
But maybe, if he is placed in the right spot, in the right stance, he can still see down, and see the ground. And recognize that it is there. And place something which is alive, something different from himself, in it. To grow.
Since that is what he or it can't do any longer: this creature beside me has died, and so can never again grow. It can only decay gradually until what remains, too, is dead. And then we cart that off.
There is little future, Mike thought, for someone who is dead. There is, usually, only the past. And for Arctor-Fred-Bruce there is not even the past; there is only this.
Beside him, as he drove the staff car, the slumped figure jiggled. Animated by the car.
I wonder, he thought, if it was New-Path that did this to him. Sent a substance out to get him like this, to make him this way so they would ultimately receive him back?
To build, he thought, their civilization within the chaos. If "civilization" it really is.
He did not know. He had not been at New-Path long enough; their goals, the Executive Director had informed him once, would be revealed to him only after he had been a staff member another two years.
Those goals, the Executive Director had said, had nothing to do with drug rehabilitation.
No one but Donald, the Executive Director, knew where the funding for New-Path originated. Money was always there. Well, Mike thought, there is a lot of money in manufacturing Substance D. Out in various remote rural farms, in small shops, in several facilities labeled "schools." Money in manufacturing it, distributing it, and finally selling it. At least enough to keep New-Path solvent and growing—and more. Sufficient for a variety of ultimate goals.
Depending on what New-Path intended to do.
He knew something—U.S. Drug Restriction knew something—that most of the public, even the police, did not know.
Substance D, like heroin, was organic. Not the product of a lab.
So he meant quite a bit when he thought, as he frequently did, that all those profits could well keep New-Path solvent—and growing.
The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead—he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him—should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living.
That, he reasoned, is the law of life.
And the dead, if they could feel, might feel better doing so.
The dead, Mike thought, who can still see, even if they can't understand: they are our camera.
"No," Mike said, "I think I'm going to put you on one of our farms. I want to try you with plants for a while, a few months. Out in the open, where you can touch the ground. With all these rocket-ship space probes there's been too much trying to reach the sky. I want you to make the attempt to reach—"
"I want to be with something living."
Mike explained, "The ground is living. The Earth is still alive. You can get the most help there. Do you have any agricultural background? Seeds and cultivation and harvesting?"
"I worked in an office."
"You'll be outside from now on. If your mind comes back it'll have to come back naturally. You can't make yourself think again. You can only keep working, such as sowing crops or tilling on our vegetable plantations—as we call them—or killing insects. We do a lot of that, driving insects out of existence with the right kind of sprays. We're very careful, though, with sprays. They can do more harm than good. They can poison not only the crops and the ground but the person using them. Eat his head." He added, "Like yours has been eaten."
"Okay," Bruce said.
You have been sprayed, Mike thought as he glanced at the man, so that now you've become a bug. Spray a bug with a toxin and it dies; spray a man, spray his brain, and he becomes an insect that clacks and vibrates about in a closed circle forever. A reflex machine, like an ant. Repeating his last instruction.
Nothing new will ever enter his brain, Mike thought, because that brain is gone.
And with it, that person who once gazed out. That I never knew.
But maybe, if he is placed in the right spot, in the right stance, he can still see down, and see the ground. And recognize that it is there. And place something which is alive, something different from himself, in it. To grow.
Since that is what he or it can't do any longer: this creature beside me has died, and so can never again grow. It can only decay gradually until what remains, too, is dead. And then we cart that off.
There is little future, Mike thought, for someone who is dead. There is, usually, only the past. And for Arctor-Fred-Bruce there is not even the past; there is only this.
Beside him, as he drove the staff car, the slumped figure jiggled. Animated by the car.
I wonder, he thought, if it was New-Path that did this to him. Sent a substance out to get him like this, to make him this way so they would ultimately receive him back?
To build, he thought, their civilization within the chaos. If "civilization" it really is.
He did not know. He had not been at New-Path long enough; their goals, the Executive Director had informed him once, would be revealed to him only after he had been a staff member another two years.
Those goals, the Executive Director had said, had nothing to do with drug rehabilitation.
No one but Donald, the Executive Director, knew where the funding for New-Path originated. Money was always there. Well, Mike thought, there is a lot of money in manufacturing Substance D. Out in various remote rural farms, in small shops, in several facilities labeled "schools." Money in manufacturing it, distributing it, and finally selling it. At least enough to keep New-Path solvent and growing—and more. Sufficient for a variety of ultimate goals.
Depending on what New-Path intended to do.
He knew something—U.S. Drug Restriction knew something—that most of the public, even the police, did not know.
Substance D, like heroin, was organic. Not the product of a lab.
So he meant quite a bit when he thought, as he frequently did, that all those profits could well keep New-Path solvent—and growing.
The living, he thought, should never be used to serve the purposes of the dead. But the dead—he glanced at Bruce, the empty shape beside him—should, if possible, serve the purposes of the living.
That, he reasoned, is the law of life.
And the dead, if they could feel, might feel better doing so.
The dead, Mike thought, who can still see, even if they can't understand: they are our camera.
16
Under the sink in the kitchen he found a small bone fragment, down with the boxes of soap and brushes and buckets. It looked human, and he wondered if it was Jerry Fabin.
This made him remember an event from a long way back in his life. Once he had lived with two other guys and sometimes they had kidded about owning a rat named Fred that lived under their sink. And when they got really broke one time, they told people, they had to eat poor old Fred.
Maybe this was one of his bone fragments, the rat who had lived under their sink, who they had made up to keep them company.
"This guy was more burned out than he showed. I felt so. He drove up to Ventura one day, cruising all over to find an old friend back inland toward Ojai. Recognized the house on sight without the number, stopped, and asked the people if he could see Leo. ‘Leo died. Sorry you didn't know.' So this guy said then, ‘Okay, I'll come back again on Thursday.' And he drove off, he drove back down the coast, and I guess he went back up on Thursday again looking for Leo. How about that?"
He listened to their talk, drinking his coffee.
"—works out, the phone book has only one number in it; you call that number for whoever you want. Listed on page after page … I'm talking about a totally burned-out society. And in your wallet you have that number, the number, scribbled down on different slips and cards, for different people. And if you forget the number, you couldn't call anybody."
"You could dial Information."
"It's the same number."
He still listened; it was interesting, this place they were describing. When you called it, the phone number was out of order, or if it wasn't they said, "Sorry, you have the wrong number." So you called it again, the same number, and got the person you wanted.
When a person went to the doctor—there was only one, and he specialized in everything—there was only one medicine. After he had diagnosed you he prescribed the medicine. You took the slip to the pharmacy to have it filled, but the pharmacist never could read what the doctor had written, so he gave you the only pill he had, which was aspirin. And it cured whatever you had.
If you broke the law, there was only the one law, which everybody broke again and again. The cop laboriously wrote it all up, which law, which infraction each time, the same one. And there was always the same penalty for any breaking of the law, from jaywalking to treason: the penalty was the death penalty, and there was agitation to have the death penalty removed, but it could not be because then, for like jaywalking, there would be no penalty at all. So it stayed on the books and finally the community burned out entirely and died. No, not burned out—they had been that already. They faded out, one by one, as they broke the law, and sort of died.
He thought, I guess when people heard that the last one of them had died they said, I wonder what those people were like. Let's see—well, we'll come back on Thursday. Although he was not sure, he laughed, and when he said that aloud, so did everyone else in the lounge.
"Very good, Bruce," they said.
That got to be a sort of tag line then; when somebody there at Samarkand House didn't understand anything or couldn't find what he was sent to get, like a roll of toilet paper, they said, "Well, I guess I'll come back on Thursday." Generally, it was credited to him. His saying. Like with comics on TV who said the same tag-line thing again and again each week. It caught on at Samarkand House and meant something to them all.
Later, at the Game one night, when they gave credit in turn to each person for what he had brought to New-Path, such as Concepts, they credited him with bringing humor there. He had brought with him an ability to see things as funny no matter how bad he felt. Everybody in the circle clapped, and, glancing up, startled, he saw the ring of smiles, everybody's eyes warm with approval, and the noise of their applause remained with him for quite a period, inside his heart.
This made him remember an event from a long way back in his life. Once he had lived with two other guys and sometimes they had kidded about owning a rat named Fred that lived under their sink. And when they got really broke one time, they told people, they had to eat poor old Fred.
Maybe this was one of his bone fragments, the rat who had lived under their sink, who they had made up to keep them company.
***
Hearing them talking in the lounge."This guy was more burned out than he showed. I felt so. He drove up to Ventura one day, cruising all over to find an old friend back inland toward Ojai. Recognized the house on sight without the number, stopped, and asked the people if he could see Leo. ‘Leo died. Sorry you didn't know.' So this guy said then, ‘Okay, I'll come back again on Thursday.' And he drove off, he drove back down the coast, and I guess he went back up on Thursday again looking for Leo. How about that?"
He listened to their talk, drinking his coffee.
"—works out, the phone book has only one number in it; you call that number for whoever you want. Listed on page after page … I'm talking about a totally burned-out society. And in your wallet you have that number, the number, scribbled down on different slips and cards, for different people. And if you forget the number, you couldn't call anybody."
"You could dial Information."
"It's the same number."
He still listened; it was interesting, this place they were describing. When you called it, the phone number was out of order, or if it wasn't they said, "Sorry, you have the wrong number." So you called it again, the same number, and got the person you wanted.
When a person went to the doctor—there was only one, and he specialized in everything—there was only one medicine. After he had diagnosed you he prescribed the medicine. You took the slip to the pharmacy to have it filled, but the pharmacist never could read what the doctor had written, so he gave you the only pill he had, which was aspirin. And it cured whatever you had.
If you broke the law, there was only the one law, which everybody broke again and again. The cop laboriously wrote it all up, which law, which infraction each time, the same one. And there was always the same penalty for any breaking of the law, from jaywalking to treason: the penalty was the death penalty, and there was agitation to have the death penalty removed, but it could not be because then, for like jaywalking, there would be no penalty at all. So it stayed on the books and finally the community burned out entirely and died. No, not burned out—they had been that already. They faded out, one by one, as they broke the law, and sort of died.
He thought, I guess when people heard that the last one of them had died they said, I wonder what those people were like. Let's see—well, we'll come back on Thursday. Although he was not sure, he laughed, and when he said that aloud, so did everyone else in the lounge.
"Very good, Bruce," they said.
That got to be a sort of tag line then; when somebody there at Samarkand House didn't understand anything or couldn't find what he was sent to get, like a roll of toilet paper, they said, "Well, I guess I'll come back on Thursday." Generally, it was credited to him. His saying. Like with comics on TV who said the same tag-line thing again and again each week. It caught on at Samarkand House and meant something to them all.
Later, at the Game one night, when they gave credit in turn to each person for what he had brought to New-Path, such as Concepts, they credited him with bringing humor there. He had brought with him an ability to see things as funny no matter how bad he felt. Everybody in the circle clapped, and, glancing up, startled, he saw the ring of smiles, everybody's eyes warm with approval, and the noise of their applause remained with him for quite a period, inside his heart.
17
In late August of that year, two months after he entered New-Path, he was transferred to a farm facility in the Napa Valley, which is located inland in Northern California. It is the wine country, where many fine California vineyards exist.
Donald Abrahams, the Executive Director of New-Path Foundation, signed the transfer order. On the suggestion of Michael Westaway, a member of the staff who had become especially interested in seeing what could be done with Bruce. Particularly since the Game had failed to help him. It had, in fact, made him more deteriorated.
"Your name is Bruce," the manager of the farm said, as Bruce stepped clumsily from the car, lugging his suitcase.
"My name is Bruce," he said.
"We're going to try you on farming for a period, Bruce."
"Okay."
"I think you'll like it better here, Bruce."
"I think I'll like it," he said. "Better here."
The farm manager scrutinized him. "They gave you a haircut recently."
"Yes, they gave me a haircut." Bruce reached up to touch his shaved head.
"What for?"
"They gave me a haircut because they found me in the women's quarters."
"That the first you've had?"
"That is the second one I've had." After a pause Bruce said, "One time I got violent." He stood, still holding the suitcase; the manager gestured for him to set it down on the ground. "I broke the violence rule."
"What'd you do?"
"I threw a pillow."
"Okay, Bruce," the manager said. "Come with me and I'll show you where you'll be sleeping. We don't have a central building residence here; each six persons have a little cabin. They sleep and fix their meals there and live there when they're not working. There's no Game sessions, here, just the work. No more Games for you, Bruce."
Bruce seemed pleased; a smile appered on his face.
"You like mountains?" The farm manager indicated to their right. "Look up. Mountains. No snow, but mountains. Santa Rosa is to the left; they grow really great grapes on those mountain slopes. We don't grow any grapes. Various other farm products, but no grapes."
"I like mountains," Bruce said.
"Look at them." The manager again pointed. Bruce did not look. "We'll round up a hat for you," the manager said. "You can't work out in the fields with your head shaved without a hat. Don't go out to work until we get you a hat. Right?"
"I won't go to work until I have a hat," Bruce said.
"The air is good here," the manager said.
"I like air," Bruce said.
"Yeah," the manager said, indicating for Bruce to pick up his suitcase and follow him. He felt awkward, glancing at Bruce: he didn't know what to say. A common experience for him, when people like this arrived. "We all like air, Bruce. We really all do. We do have that in common." He thought, We do still have that.
"Will I be seeing my friends?" Bruce asked.
"You mean from back where you were? At the Santa Ana facility?"
"Mike and Laura and George and Eddie and Donna and—"
"People from the residence facilities don't come out to the farms," the manager explained. "These are closed operations. But you'll probably be going back once or twice a year. We have gatherings at Christmas and also at—"
Bruce had halted.
"The next one," the manager said, again motioning for him to continue walking, "is at Thanksgiving. We'll be sending workers back to their residences-of-origin for that, for two days. Then back here again until Christmas. So you'll see them again. If they haven't been transferred to other facilities. That's three months. But you're not supposed to make any one-to-one relationships here at New-Path—didn't they tell you that? You're supposed to relate only to the family as a whole."
"I understand that," Bruce said. "They had us memorize that as part of the New-Path Creed." He peered around and said, "Can I have a drink of water?"
"We'll show you the water source here. You've got one in your cabin, but there's a public one for the whole family here." He led Bruce toward one of the prefab cabins. "These farm facilities are closed, because we've got experimental and hybrid crops and we want to keep insect infestation out. People come in here, even staff, track in pests on their clothes, shoes, and hair." He selected a cabin at random. "Yours is 4-G," he decided. "Can you remember it?"
"They look alike," Bruce said.
"You can nail up some object by which to recognize it, this cabin. That you can easily remember. Something with color in it." He pushed open the cabin door; hot stinking air blew out at them. "I think we'll put you in with the artichokes first," he ruminated. "You'll have to wear gloves—they've got stickers."
"Artichokes," Bruce said.
"Hell, we've got mushrooms here too. Experimental mushroom farms, sealed in, of course—and domestic mushroom growers need to seal in their yield—to keep pathogenic spores from drifting in and contaminating the beds. Fungus spores, of course, are airborne. That's a hazard to all mushroom growers."
"Mushrooms," Bruce said, entering the dark, hot cabin. The manager watched him enter.
"Yes, Bruce," he said.
"Yes, Bruce," Bruce said.
"Bruce," the manager said. "Wake up."
He nodded, standing in the stale gloom of the cabin, still holding his suitcase. "Okay," he said.
They nod off as soon as it's dark, the manager said to himself. Like chickens.
A vegetable among vegetables, he thought. Fungus among fungus. Take your pick.
He yanked on the overhead electric light of the cabin, and then began to show Bruce how to operate it. Bruce did not appear to care; he had caught a glimpse of the mountains now, and stood gazing at them fixedly, aware of them for the first time.
"Mountains, Bruce, mountains," the manager said.
"Mountains, Bruce, mountains," Bruce said, and gazed.
"Echolalia, Bruce, echolalia," the manager said.
"Echolalia, Bruce—"
"Okay, Bruce," the manager said, and shut the cabin door behind him, thinking, I believe I'll put him among the carrots. Or beets. Something simple. Something that won't puzzle him.
And another vegetable in the other cot, there. To keep him company. They can nod their lives away together, in unison. Rows of them. Whole acres.
They faced him toward the field, and he saw the corn, like ragged projections. He thought, Garbage growing. They run a garbage farm.
He bent down and saw growing near the ground a small flower, blue. Many of them in short tinkly tinkly stalks. Like stubble. Chaff.
A lot of them, he saw now that he could get his face close enough to make them out. Fields, within the taller rows of corn. Here concealed within, as many farmers planted: one crop inside another, like concentric rings. As, he remembered, the farmers in Mexico plant their marijuana plantations: circled—ringed—by tall plants, so the federales won't spot them by jeep. But then they're spotted from the air.
And the federales, when they locate such a pot plantation down there—they machine-gun the farmer, his wife, their children, even the animals. And then drive off. And their copter search continues, backed by the jeeps.
Such lovely little blue flowers.
"You're seeing the flower of the future," Donald, the Executive Director of New-Path, said. "But not for you."
"Why not for me?" Bruce said.
"You've had too much of a good thing already," the Executive Director said. He chuckled. "So get up and stop worshipping—this isn't your god any more, your idol, although it was once. A transcendent vision, is that what you see growing here? You look as if it is." He tapped Bruce firmly on the shoulder, and then, reaching down his hand, he cut the sight off from the frozen eyes.
"Gone," Bruce said. "Flowers of spring gone."
"No, you simply can't see them. That's a philosophical problem you wouldn't comprehend. Epistemology—the theory of knowledge."
Bruce saw only the flat of Donald's hand barring the light, and he stared at it a thousand years. It locked; it had locked; it will lock for him, lock forever for dead eyes outside time, eyes that could not look away and a hand that would not move away. Time ceased as the eyes gazed and the universe jelled along with him, at least for him, froze over with him and his understanding, as its inertness became complete. There was nothing he did not know; there was nothing left to happen.
"Back to work, Bruce," Donald, the Executive Director, said.
"I saw," Bruce said. He thought, I knew. That was it: I saw Substance D growing. I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field, in stubbled color.
The farm-facility manager and Donald Abrahams glanced at each other and then down at the kneeling figure, the kneeling man and the Mors ontologica planted everywhere, within the concealing corn.
"Back to work, Bruce," the kneeling man said then, and rose to his feet.
Donald and the farm-facility manager strolled off toward their parked Lincoln. Talking together; he watched—without turning, without being able to turn—them depart.
Stooping down, Bruce picked one of the stubbled blue plants, then placed it in his right shoe, slipping it down out of sight. A present for my friends, he thought, and looked forward inside his mind, where no one could see, to Thanksgiving.
Donald Abrahams, the Executive Director of New-Path Foundation, signed the transfer order. On the suggestion of Michael Westaway, a member of the staff who had become especially interested in seeing what could be done with Bruce. Particularly since the Game had failed to help him. It had, in fact, made him more deteriorated.
"Your name is Bruce," the manager of the farm said, as Bruce stepped clumsily from the car, lugging his suitcase.
"My name is Bruce," he said.
"We're going to try you on farming for a period, Bruce."
"Okay."
"I think you'll like it better here, Bruce."
"I think I'll like it," he said. "Better here."
The farm manager scrutinized him. "They gave you a haircut recently."
"Yes, they gave me a haircut." Bruce reached up to touch his shaved head.
"What for?"
"They gave me a haircut because they found me in the women's quarters."
"That the first you've had?"
"That is the second one I've had." After a pause Bruce said, "One time I got violent." He stood, still holding the suitcase; the manager gestured for him to set it down on the ground. "I broke the violence rule."
"What'd you do?"
"I threw a pillow."
"Okay, Bruce," the manager said. "Come with me and I'll show you where you'll be sleeping. We don't have a central building residence here; each six persons have a little cabin. They sleep and fix their meals there and live there when they're not working. There's no Game sessions, here, just the work. No more Games for you, Bruce."
Bruce seemed pleased; a smile appered on his face.
"You like mountains?" The farm manager indicated to their right. "Look up. Mountains. No snow, but mountains. Santa Rosa is to the left; they grow really great grapes on those mountain slopes. We don't grow any grapes. Various other farm products, but no grapes."
"I like mountains," Bruce said.
"Look at them." The manager again pointed. Bruce did not look. "We'll round up a hat for you," the manager said. "You can't work out in the fields with your head shaved without a hat. Don't go out to work until we get you a hat. Right?"
"I won't go to work until I have a hat," Bruce said.
"The air is good here," the manager said.
"I like air," Bruce said.
"Yeah," the manager said, indicating for Bruce to pick up his suitcase and follow him. He felt awkward, glancing at Bruce: he didn't know what to say. A common experience for him, when people like this arrived. "We all like air, Bruce. We really all do. We do have that in common." He thought, We do still have that.
"Will I be seeing my friends?" Bruce asked.
"You mean from back where you were? At the Santa Ana facility?"
"Mike and Laura and George and Eddie and Donna and—"
"People from the residence facilities don't come out to the farms," the manager explained. "These are closed operations. But you'll probably be going back once or twice a year. We have gatherings at Christmas and also at—"
Bruce had halted.
"The next one," the manager said, again motioning for him to continue walking, "is at Thanksgiving. We'll be sending workers back to their residences-of-origin for that, for two days. Then back here again until Christmas. So you'll see them again. If they haven't been transferred to other facilities. That's three months. But you're not supposed to make any one-to-one relationships here at New-Path—didn't they tell you that? You're supposed to relate only to the family as a whole."
"I understand that," Bruce said. "They had us memorize that as part of the New-Path Creed." He peered around and said, "Can I have a drink of water?"
"We'll show you the water source here. You've got one in your cabin, but there's a public one for the whole family here." He led Bruce toward one of the prefab cabins. "These farm facilities are closed, because we've got experimental and hybrid crops and we want to keep insect infestation out. People come in here, even staff, track in pests on their clothes, shoes, and hair." He selected a cabin at random. "Yours is 4-G," he decided. "Can you remember it?"
"They look alike," Bruce said.
"You can nail up some object by which to recognize it, this cabin. That you can easily remember. Something with color in it." He pushed open the cabin door; hot stinking air blew out at them. "I think we'll put you in with the artichokes first," he ruminated. "You'll have to wear gloves—they've got stickers."
"Artichokes," Bruce said.
"Hell, we've got mushrooms here too. Experimental mushroom farms, sealed in, of course—and domestic mushroom growers need to seal in their yield—to keep pathogenic spores from drifting in and contaminating the beds. Fungus spores, of course, are airborne. That's a hazard to all mushroom growers."
"Mushrooms," Bruce said, entering the dark, hot cabin. The manager watched him enter.
"Yes, Bruce," he said.
"Yes, Bruce," Bruce said.
"Bruce," the manager said. "Wake up."
He nodded, standing in the stale gloom of the cabin, still holding his suitcase. "Okay," he said.
They nod off as soon as it's dark, the manager said to himself. Like chickens.
A vegetable among vegetables, he thought. Fungus among fungus. Take your pick.
He yanked on the overhead electric light of the cabin, and then began to show Bruce how to operate it. Bruce did not appear to care; he had caught a glimpse of the mountains now, and stood gazing at them fixedly, aware of them for the first time.
"Mountains, Bruce, mountains," the manager said.
"Mountains, Bruce, mountains," Bruce said, and gazed.
"Echolalia, Bruce, echolalia," the manager said.
"Echolalia, Bruce—"
"Okay, Bruce," the manager said, and shut the cabin door behind him, thinking, I believe I'll put him among the carrots. Or beets. Something simple. Something that won't puzzle him.
And another vegetable in the other cot, there. To keep him company. They can nod their lives away together, in unison. Rows of them. Whole acres.
They faced him toward the field, and he saw the corn, like ragged projections. He thought, Garbage growing. They run a garbage farm.
He bent down and saw growing near the ground a small flower, blue. Many of them in short tinkly tinkly stalks. Like stubble. Chaff.
A lot of them, he saw now that he could get his face close enough to make them out. Fields, within the taller rows of corn. Here concealed within, as many farmers planted: one crop inside another, like concentric rings. As, he remembered, the farmers in Mexico plant their marijuana plantations: circled—ringed—by tall plants, so the federales won't spot them by jeep. But then they're spotted from the air.
And the federales, when they locate such a pot plantation down there—they machine-gun the farmer, his wife, their children, even the animals. And then drive off. And their copter search continues, backed by the jeeps.
Such lovely little blue flowers.
"You're seeing the flower of the future," Donald, the Executive Director of New-Path, said. "But not for you."
"Why not for me?" Bruce said.
"You've had too much of a good thing already," the Executive Director said. He chuckled. "So get up and stop worshipping—this isn't your god any more, your idol, although it was once. A transcendent vision, is that what you see growing here? You look as if it is." He tapped Bruce firmly on the shoulder, and then, reaching down his hand, he cut the sight off from the frozen eyes.
"Gone," Bruce said. "Flowers of spring gone."
"No, you simply can't see them. That's a philosophical problem you wouldn't comprehend. Epistemology—the theory of knowledge."
Bruce saw only the flat of Donald's hand barring the light, and he stared at it a thousand years. It locked; it had locked; it will lock for him, lock forever for dead eyes outside time, eyes that could not look away and a hand that would not move away. Time ceased as the eyes gazed and the universe jelled along with him, at least for him, froze over with him and his understanding, as its inertness became complete. There was nothing he did not know; there was nothing left to happen.
"Back to work, Bruce," Donald, the Executive Director, said.
"I saw," Bruce said. He thought, I knew. That was it: I saw Substance D growing. I saw death rising from the earth, from the ground itself, in one blue field, in stubbled color.
The farm-facility manager and Donald Abrahams glanced at each other and then down at the kneeling figure, the kneeling man and the Mors ontologica planted everywhere, within the concealing corn.
"Back to work, Bruce," the kneeling man said then, and rose to his feet.
Donald and the farm-facility manager strolled off toward their parked Lincoln. Talking together; he watched—without turning, without being able to turn—them depart.
Stooping down, Bruce picked one of the stubbled blue plants, then placed it in his right shoe, slipping it down out of sight. A present for my friends, he thought, and looked forward inside his mind, where no one could see, to Thanksgiving.
Author's Note
This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed—run over, maimed, destroyed—but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.
There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful.
If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love:
To Gaylene deceased
To Ray deceased
To Francy permanent psychosis
To Kathy permanent brain damage
To Jim deceased
To Val massive permanent brain damage
To Nancy permanent psychosis
To Joanne permanent brain damage
To Maren deceased
To Nick deceased
To Terry deceased
To Dennis deceased
To Phil permanent pancreatic damage
To Sue permanent vascular damage
To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage
… and so forth.
In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error, a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.
There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled; it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself, I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful.
If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love:
To Gaylene deceased
To Ray deceased
To Francy permanent psychosis
To Kathy permanent brain damage
To Jim deceased
To Val massive permanent brain damage
To Nancy permanent psychosis
To Joanne permanent brain damage
To Maren deceased
To Nick deceased
To Terry deceased
To Dennis deceased
To Phil permanent pancreatic damage
To Sue permanent vascular damage
To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage
… and so forth.
In Memoriam. These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.