Lost-Fifty Suns, page 10
‘Can you describe your exact sensory awareness?’
‘It’s like being in a pitch-black room, but I remember what the room is like. This seems to satisfy me for the time being.’
‘Aside from having no body, do you feel yourself to be normal?’
‘That’s difficult to answer. My feeling is, yes, I feel normal, but we both understand how subtly brain mechanisms can get out of order. Man receives his information from the outside world through his senses. I now have only brain impulses being triggered through a machine, and I have a storehouse of past data. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Where’s my wife?’
Marie started at the sudden change of direction of the conversation.
Dr MacKerrie answered quietly, ‘She’s on her way home from New Hampshire. Should be here in a few hours.’ ‘Dear Marie. We had such a perfect marriage.’
Marie’s breath hissed abruptly in and out as she heard again a remark that Carl had made many times in the past. She recalled an aphorism of his: ‘A perfect marriage exists when a wife is bound to her husband by emotional ties that she does not even try to understand.’
Carl had always insisted that their marriage lacked only the sexual component, and that - he had explained - ‘is due to my early ignorance of the nature of woman. Under correct circumstances, a wife will accept other feminine companionship in her husband’s life.’ His belief was that he had been slow in realizing what those ‘correct circumstances’ were, but he had several times challenged her: ‘If you can explain why you’ve stayed with me all these years, I’ll reform instantly and become the husband image that you think you want.’
Marie had always disdained to reply. The early disaster to her marriage had numbed her, turned her thought and feeling toward the pure realm of science. And because there had never been another man, divorce had seemed pointless.
In the seat beside her, Walter suddenly grew rigid. His fingers convulsively grabbed her arm.
As she turned her attention again to the screen, she realized Dr MacKerrie had asked a very important question: *. . . Doctor, the person who ran you down has not yet been apprehended. Can you give the police a clue?’
Marie held her breath as Carl said, ‘It was a very confused moment for me. I have some impressions, but I need time to sort them out. Until I do will you see that I am protected from further harm?’
‘The police have stationed a guard, so have no fear.’ Marie sighed and breathed again. Walter let go of her arm-as Dr MacKerrie continued: ‘What do you think should be your future activity, Dr Carl?’
‘Scientific, of course. My reasoning powers seem unaffected by what has happened.’
The interview ended with Dr MacKerrie saying, ‘Dr Carl, thank you. Do you have any parting words for the audience out there?’
‘Yes, I hope to speak to you all again soon.’
‘That shall most certainly happen,’ said MacKerrie in a hearty voice.
The screen went blank.
The lights came on.
Walter stood up with a quick, nervous movement, his lean face twisted. ‘That whole section about who ran him down has to come out,’ he said sharply.
Marie stared at him in amazement. But as she saw his face, so intent, so self-absorbed, so serious, she thought anxiously, ‘Is it possible I’m not facing up to the danger in this?’
For minutes now she had even been feeling an intense excitement at the marvelous scientific achievement they had witnessed. She hesitated, then said, ‘Be sure, also, to have them eliminate the reference to my being on the way home. That dates it, which it shouldn’t do.’
Walter hurried into the projection room. When he emerged, he said almost cheerfully, ‘Well, that’s settled. I’ll check again later to make sure. But right now - ’ An expression of concern creased his face. ‘Marie, you’re going to have to brace yourself.’
‘For what?’ Surprised.
‘Where we’re going now, Carl’s brain is visible.’
Marie shrank, remembering her reaction to the film image.
Walter continued. ‘MacKerrie figured you’d better get used to it from the start.’
He now led her to a room that had a typical TV camera standing in the center of the floor and, at one end, the computer that she had seen in the film.
Walter motioned her toward it. ‘There’s a blue button,5 he said.
As Marie walked forward, she glimpsed something beyond the machine: the glass dome, with Carl’s brain inside. She looked away hastily and, having located the button, stood with her back to the dome and stared straight ait the camera that Walter now focused on her.
Walter explained matter-of-factly, ‘I agreed to the filming of this interview because it would have looked suspicious if I had refused.’
Marie, who was convinced that the whole affair looked highly suspicious already, was unhappily silent.
Walter went on. ‘Of course, I made the agreement contingent on my operating the camera and on you and me being alone with Carl during the interview. They acceded. You’ll notice they pulled the police guard out into the corridor.’
Marie hadn’t noticed. She couldn’t recall making any observation at all in the hallway.
‘Ready?’ Walter asked.
Marie hesitated. She wanted to point out to him the danger of secrecy. People would wonder.
Walter continued. ‘Remember, the computer has analogs only for your voice and of course for Carl’s. So Carl will get the message when you speak, but what I say will not reach him. And he gets your message when your finger presses that button, not before you press it or after you let go. If you bear these simple truths in mind, we can say or do anything, and he’ll never know unless we tell him. Now, is there anything that’s not clear?’
Marie said simply, ‘What are we here for?’
His lean body hunched a little. His voice was suddenly jerky. ‘What’s on his mind about that accusation he made. Get him to your lab where you and I can have control of all his communication.’
Marie swallowed, nodded. If that were achieved, this nightmare of pressure might end as abruptly as it had begun.
She waited hopefully for the signal.
When the little red dot below the camera lens blinked on, she pressed the blue button firmly with her finger, held it down, and said, ‘Carl, it’s Marie.’
The reply came with the same speed that had already startled her in the film. ‘Marie, I’m so glad you’re here. I need most desperately to talk to you.’
‘Are you all right, my dear?’
The affectionate term cost her no effort. Carl had always insisted that she call him dear or darling ‘for the sake of the amenities, my sweet5. It meant nothing then-or now.
‘My darling,’ said Carl, ‘a terrible thing has happened to me. I have become a nothing, a mind suspended in a great night. You must never leave me. I need you more than ever.’
Marie held herself detached from the emotion m his appeal. She said in an even voice, ‘Perhaps I should take you home.’
‘As soon as possible,’ was the reply. ‘I’ve got to be there with you.’
‘I’ll speak to Dr MacKerrie,’ Marie said. ‘I’m sure it can be arranged - if you wish it.’
‘I can’t tell you how strongly I wish it.’ He must have realized she was willing, for he said, ‘I seem to have slept a lot since the operation, but in between I’m in this total blackness.’
Marie hardened her heart. ‘Is there anything I can do for you right now, darling?’ she asked.
Pause.
‘Marie, is this being broadcast?’
She was instantly tense. ‘It’s being tape recorded for later broadcast.’
‘I want to say something to you personally.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Can you turn the camera off and send the cameraman away?’
She glanced at Walter, who nodded. The little red dot in the camera went black.
‘The camera is off, Carl, and the cameraman has gone off to have a smoke,’
‘Marie, is everything all right?’
‘As well as can be.’
‘You haven’t got yourself into some impossible situation?’
Marie smiled a suddenly strained smile. She recognized that behind the question was an old attitude of Carl’s that had always irritated her: his conviction that, left to herself, she would quickly get into trouble.
‘No, I am not in some impossible situation.’ She spoke with asperity.
‘Don’t be angry, darling. But when I think of you out there without me, it bothers me.’
It struck Marie that Carl still had all his old capacity to enrage her. She was about to make another hot reply when she grew aware that Walter was waving at her frantically. Carefully, feeding flushed, she took her finger off the button and looked at him questdooingly.
Walter said, ‘Ask him what kind of impossible situation.’
It cost Marie an effort to remember what she and Walter were trying to do. She asked the question.
Carl replied, ‘Marie, this situation has a lot more energy in it than you seem to realize. I feel as if I have to save you from being forced into some fantastic involvement - the kind that a woman’s emotions get her into. You know my theories-’
She knew them well and hated them.
Walter was waving. ‘Ask him what he means by energy.’ Since it was an old term of Carl’s, Marie was able to explain.
Carl’s view of human behavior was that it was wholly mechanical. People did what they were impelled to by the physics and chemistry of their internal structure and by the electromagnetic flows in the body and brain. This, he believed, was true even in normal circumstances, though not so apparent.
It was visibly true when a threat stimulated the emotion of fear.
When the factors of threat and fear increased in intensity, the energy flows involved were so strong that they dominated the person.
Progressively, this energy overwhelmed normal restraint, morality, all human qualities. The situation thereupon found its exact solution, to which all parties connected with it conformed like so many puppets.
Marie finished impatiently. ‘Carl was always expounding on the low-levelness of human beings while behaving like a low-level human being himself,’
Walter said in a tense voice, ‘Ask him what energy he thinks is in this situation.
The request again brought Marie out of her critical, subjective feelings. In a subdued voice, she passed on the request.
Carl replied, ‘My dear, consider! Somebody ran me down. Have they captured him? I hate to tell you this, but my first feeling was that it was Walter. Naturally, I realize how such a possibility might affect you in view of what’s been going on between you two. Now, Marie, if he is guilty, suppose the police trace him. Marie, I urge you - be careful! The energy is almost boundless in human terms.’ He broke off. ‘Have you talked with Walter?’
His words were now so highly charged that Marie looked helplessly at Walter. From behind the camera Walter said quietly, ‘Tell him yes. We’ve got to know, Marie. Tell him
I told you about his firing me and why,’
Swiftly, she pressed the button and made the communication.
Carl replied, ‘Ask Walter to remain on the job. And, Marie, if you are involved with him, withdraw. You know what I believe in connection with murder. It's the greatest energy of all, exerts the greatest pressure.’
Marie had hold of herself. She said steadily, ‘Carl, remember your past jealousies - how you would see things that weren’t there. I’m sure somewhere in your mind you know very well that this is just one more piece of nonsense like that. Your feeling, as you call it, that Walter ran you down is in this category, isn’t it? So now, listen! I’m not involved with him. Moreover, I shall not get involved. You destroyed me as a woman, and if you want my good will in this situation - which you can have - you’ll stop those kinds of thoughts and settle down to the kind of scientific reasoning and scientific work that should engage your attention from now on.’
After she had spoken the words, every one true, she shook her head wonderingly at Walter.
He motioned her again to release the button. When she had done so, he said urgently, ‘Marie, he must have some scheme here.’
Marie couldn’t imagine what it might be.
Walter continued. ‘I want you to think, is there anything he’s ever done that would give us a clue to his purposes? Those jealous rages of his-what else was there to the pattern? From the way you’ve described them, he must have been mentally deranged each time.’
Marie shook her head numbly.
The pattern had always been jealousy for no reason, followed by extreme remorse.
On every occasion she had been totally innocent of involvement with a man.
She said slowly, ‘Carl always said that every human being had his own way of having a nervous breakdown. But except for the periods of crazy jealousy, I never saw him in any state except a kind of ice-cold, good-humored cynicism.’
‘Marie - ’ It was Carl - ‘I want you to promise to let me remain with you. If you do, I’M do exactly as you want. I don’t wish to be with all these strangers. You’ll bear that in mind, won’t you, sweetheart?’
‘Of course, you stay with me, my dear,’ said Marie, relieved.
As Walter and she left the building a little later, Walter said, ‘What was that business about murder being the biggest energy?’
Marie explained. Murder and murderers had always fascinated Carl. Murder had to be secret, he believed.
‘A murderer, my dear,’ Carl had said more than once, ‘is in sufficient danger if he alone knows that he did it. Even then the pressure on him is colossal. However, if the secret is in the head of one other person, he is doomed or he has to kill that person.’
Walter seemed to consider that, for he was silent. He said finally, ‘I’ve been ransacking my brains, trying to think how I can prove that there was no involvement between us. For example, I’ve been impotent ever since, in my late twenties, I discovered that my wife was sleeping with every male member of the faculty at the college where I taught.’ Marie thought at that point: ‘What a fantastic admission he’s making.’ But it explained a lot about him.
Walter was continuing earnestly. ‘But how can I ever establish such a subjective condition?’ He shook his head. ‘No, Marie, I’m afraid we’re at the beginning, not the end of this business.’
Marie’s thought had leaped to something else: Walter’s behavior. She taxed him with it. ‘Walter, I have to speak to you about how suspicious your actions must have seemed to MacKerrie and the others.’
Walter shook his head, and suddenly the dark, serious look was gone. He smiled faintly. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said confidently, ‘they’ll think you’re behind it, and everybody knows that women are like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘Unreasonable, irrational.’
‘I am not irrational,’ said Marie.
‘I know, but they don’t know,’ said Walter. ‘No harm in taking advantage of the general reputation.’
‘But you’re ruining me,’ she cried.
He patted her arm. ‘Now, look, Marie, no woman can escape the opinion of men on this subject. Notice, there’s not an argument from anyone.’
He added, ‘Do you mind if I give you some advice?’ Marie hesitated. She was remembering an aphorism of Carl’s: ‘The attempt to control the widow begins not later than the funeral: usually, it is well started while her lord and master is still gasping for a few last breaths.’
She had to admit, after a moment, that this was different. What control Walter was exercising had been made necessary by the madness of the author of the aphorism.
She was about to agree that she would hear his advice when Walter, not waiting, said, ‘No one objects to a new widow staying in seclusion for a few days. Take full advantage of that.’
The meaning of the word, spoken aloud, startled Marie. ‘But I’m not a widow,’ she protested.
Walter blinked at her, his handsome, boyish face intent again. ‘If you’re not a widow, what are you?’ he asked, astonished.
Marie had no answer for that, but she said presently, ‘I’ll stay out of sight if that’s what you want - except for my attorney.’
‘Good,’ said Walter.
Chapter IV
Her appointment was for two.
On the dot, a young man walked into the office where Marie waited. He radiated high spirits, and he introduced himself as Robert Lindley, the son of the senior partner.
Marie had never met him, but she recalled that Carl had taken a fancy to him. ‘My type! ’ Carl had said laconically. It was not a recommendation to her, but after her first quick look at this young man’s glowing face she decided to reserve judgment.
The youthful attorney held in his hand a document that Marie presumed was the will. He stood there in his immaculate, neatly pressed suit behind a gleaming desk. Beyond was a glistening, clean window overlooking the boulevard . . . Stood there and gazed at Marie with his head held slightly slantwise and his eyes half dosed, speculatively.
‘Your husband was very foolish,’ he said, ‘You’re better looking than they are.’
Marie surmised that ‘they’ were Carl’s mistresses. She was taken aback by the plural term. She had always assumed that Carl had one girl friend at a time, none for very long, and a large accumulation of discards over a decade and a half of philandering.
The young man went on. ‘In asking to have the will read to you privately, I presume you are taking the attitude that your husband is legally dead.’
Marie said, ‘I expect simply to comply with the law.’ ‘There is no law.’ His eyes were eager. ‘I’d like to establish a precedent. Dr MacKerrie tells me that only the brain thinks; it has been established that no other part of the body plays an important role in behavior and none at all in the thinking process.’
Marie realized that almost without preliminary they were into the heart of her visit.
Lindley sat down and tapped the will with one finger. This,’ he said, ‘leaves the bulk of the estate to you but provides allowances for three women in the event of his death.’
