Dasein put a hand to his cheek. It was his cheek suddenly, not a stranger’s. The skin felt smooth, new.
“There’s the damnedest musky smell about this place,” Selador said. “Mind if I open these doors?”
“No … no, go right ahead.”
Dasein found himself wrestling with the feeling that Selador was not Selador. There was a shallowness to the man’s speech and mannerisms all out of character with the Selador of Dasein’s memory. Had Selador changed in some way?
“Lovely sunny day,” Selador said. “Why don’t I wheel you out on this deck for a bit of air. Do you good.”
Panic seized Dasein’s throat. That deck—it was a place of menace. He tried to speak, to object. They couldn’t go out there. No words came.
Selador took the silence for agreement, wheeled Dasein’s chair out the door. There was a slight jolt at the sill and they were on the deck.
Sunlight warmed Dasein’s head. A breeze almost devoid of Jaspers washed his skin, cleared his head. He said: “Don’t you …”
“Doesn’t this air feel invigorating?” Selador asked. He stopped at a shallow parapet, the edge of the roof. “There. You can admire the view and I can sit on this ledge.”
Selador sat down, put a hand on the back of Dasein’s chair. “I would imagine that ward is wired for sound,” Selador said. “I do not believe they can have listening devices out here, however.”
Dasein gripped the wheels of his chair, afraid it might lurch forward, propel him off the roof. He stared down at a paved parking area, parked cars, lawn, strips of flowers, trees. The sense of Selador’s words came to him slowly.
“Wired … for …” He turned, met amused inquiry in the dark eyes.
“Obviously, you’re not quite yourself yet,” Selador said. “Understandable. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal. That’s obvious. I’ll have you out of this place, though, as soon as you’re able to travel. Set your mind at rest. You’ll be safe in a normal hospital at Berkeley before the week’s out.”
Dasein’s emotions boiled, an arena of dispute. Safe! What a reassuring word. Leave? He couldn’t leave! But he had to leave. Outside? Go to that hideous place?
“Have you been drugged, Gilbert?” Selador asked. “You appear … so … so …”
“I’ve … I’m all right.”
“Really, you’re behaving rather oddly. You haven’t asked me once what we found on the leads you provided.”
“What …”
“The source of their petrol proved to be a dud. All quite normal … provided you appreciate their economic motives. Cash deal with an independent producer. The State Department of Agriculture gives their cheese and the other products of their Cooperative a clean bill of health. The real estate board, however, is interested that no one but Santarogans can buy property in the valley. It may be they’ve violated antidis-criminatory legislation with …”
“No,” Dasein said. “They … nothing that obvious.”
“Ah, ha! You speak in the fashion of a man who has discovered the closeted skeleton. Well, Gilbert, what is it?”
Dasein felt he’d been seized by a vampire of duty. It would drain the blood from him. Selador would feed on it. He shook his head from side to side.
“Are you ill, Gilbert? Am I wearying you?”
“No. As long as I take it slowly … Doctor, you must understand, I’ve …”
“Do you have notes, Gilbert? Perhaps I could read your report and …”
“No … fire.”
“Oh, yes. The doctor, this Piaget, said something about your truck burning. Everything up in smoke, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, Gilbert, we’ll have to get it from your lips. Is there an opening we can use to break these people?”
Dasein thought of the greenhouses—child labor. He thought of the statistical few Santarogans Jaspers had destroyed. He thought of the narcotic implications in the Jaspers products. It was all there—destruction for Santaroga.
“There must be something,” Selador said. “You’ve lasted much longer than the others. Apparently, you’ve been given the freedom of the region. I’m sure you must have discovered something.”
Lasted much longer than the others, Dasein thought. There was naked revelation in the phrase. As though he had participated in them, Dasein saw the discussions which had gone into choosing him for this project. “Dasein has connections in the valley—a girl. That may be the edge we need. Certainly, it gives us reason to hope he’ll last longer than the others.”
It had been something like that, Dasein knew. There was a callousness in it that repelled him.
“Were there more than two?” he asked.
“Two? Two what, Gilbert?”
“Two other investigators … before me?”
“I don’t see where that …”
“Were there?”
“Well … that’s very discerning of you, Gilbert. Yes, there were more than two. Eight or nine, I suspect.”
“Why …”
“Why weren’t you told? We wanted to imbue you with caution, but we saw no need to terrify you.”
“But you thought they were murdered here … by Santarogans?”
“It was all exceedingly mysterious, Gilbert. We were not at all sure.” He studied Dasein, eyes open wide and probing. “That’s it, eh? Murder. Are we in peril right now? Do you have the weapon I …”
“If it were only that simple,” Dasein said.
“In heaven’s name, Gilbert, what is it? You must have found something. I had such high hopes for you.”
High hopes for me, Dasein thought. Again, it was a phrase that opened a door on secret conversations. How could Selador be that transparent? Dasein found himself shocked by the shallowness of the man. Where was the omnipotent psychoanalyst? How could he have changed so profoundly?
“You … you people were just using me,” Dasein said. As he spoke, he recalled Al Marden’s accusation. Marden had seen this … yes.
“Now, Gilbert, that’s no attitude to take. Why, just before I left to come here, Meyer Davidson was inquiring after you. You recall Davidson, the agent for the investment corporation behind the chain stores? He was very much taken with you, Gilbert. He told me he was thinking of making a place for you on his staff.”
Dasein stared at Selador. The man couldn’t be serious.
“That would be quite a step up in the world for you, Gilbert.”
Dasein suppressed an urge to laugh. He had the odd sensation of being detached from his past and able to study a pseudoperson, a might-have-been creature who was himself. The other Dasein would have leaped at this offer. The new Dasein saw through the offer to the true opinion Selador and his cronies held for “that useful, but not very bright person, Gilbert Dasein.”
“Have you had a look at Santaroga?” Dasein asked. He wondered if Selador had seen Clara Scheler’s used car lot or the advertisements in the store windows.
“This morning, while I was waiting for visiting hours with you, I drove around a bit,” Selador said.
“What did you think of the place?”
“My candid opinion? An odd sort of village. When I inquired directions of a native—their language is so brusque and … odd. Not at all like … well, it’s not English, of course, full of Americanisms, but …”
“They have a language like their cheese,” Dasein said. “Sharp and full of tang.”
“Sharp! A very good choice of word.”
“A community of individuals, wouldn’t you say?” Dasein asked.
“Perhaps … but with a certain sameness to them. Tell me, Gilbert, does this have something to do with why you were sent here?”
“This?”
“These questions. I must say, you’re talking like … well, damned if you don’t sound like a native.” A forced laugh escaped his dark lips. “Have you gone native?”
The question, coming from that darkly eastern face, couched in that Oxford accent, struck Dasein as supremely a
musing. Selador, of all people! To ask such a question.
Laughter bubbled from Dasein.
Selador misinterpreted the response. “Well,” he said, “I should hope you hadn’t.”
“Humanity ought to be the first order of interest for humans,” Dasein said.
Again, Selador misinterpreted. “Ah, and you studied the Santarogans like the excellent psychologist you are. Good. Well, then—tell it in your own way.”
“I’ll put it another way,” Dasein said. “To have freedom, you must know how to use it. There’s a distinct possibility some people hunt freedom in such a way they become the slaves of freedom.”
“That’s all very philosophical, I’m sure,” Selador said. “How does it apply to finding justice for our sponsors?”
“Justice?”
“Certainly, justice. They were lured into this valley and cheated. They spent large sums of money here and got no return on it whatsoever. They’re not people to take such treatment lightly.”
“Lured?” Dasein said. “No one would sell to them, that I’m sure. How were they lured? For that matter, how did they acquire a lease on …”
“This isn’t pertinent, Gilbert.”
“Yes, it is. How’d they get a lease on Santaroga land?”
Selador sighed. “Very well. If you insist. They forced a competetive bid on some excess State property and put in a bid …”
“One they were sure no one else would match,” Dasein said. He chuckled. “Did they have a market survey?”
“They had a good idea how many people live here.”
“But what kind of people?”
“What’re you trying to say, Gilbert?”
“Santaroga’s very like a Greek polis,” Dasein said. “This is a community of individuals, not a collectivity. Santarogans are not anthill slaves to grubs and grubbing. This is a polis, small enough to meet human needs. Their first interest is in human beings. Now, as to justice for …”
“Gilbert, you’re talking very strangely.”
“Hear me, please, doctor.”
“Very well, but I hope you’ll make some sense out of this … this …”
“Justice,” Dasein said. “These sponsors you mention, and the government they control, are less interested in justice than they are in public order. They have stunted imaginations from too-long and too-intimate association with an ingrown system of self-perpetuating precedents. Do you want to know how they and their machinations appear to a Santarogan?”
“Let me remind you, Gilbert, this is one of the reasons you were sent here.”
Dasein smiled. Selador’s accusatory tone brought not a twinge of guilt.
“Raw power,” Dasein said. “That’s how the outside appears to a Santarogan. “A place of raw power. Money and raw power have taken over there.”
“Outside,” Selador said. “What an interesting emphasis you give to that interesting word.”
“Raw power is movement without a governor,” Dasein said. “It’ll run wild and destroy itself with all about it. That’s a civilization of battlefields out there. They have special names: market area, trade area, court, election, senate, auction, strike—but they’re still battlefields. There’s no denying it because every one can invoke the full gamut of weaponry from words to guns.”
“I do believe you’re defending these Santaroga rascals,” Selador said.
“Of course I’m defending them! I’ve had my eyes opened here, I tell you. I lasted much longer, did I? You had such high hopes for me! How can you be so damn’ transparent?”
“Now you see here, Gilbert!” Selador stood up, glared down at Dasein.
“You know what gets to me, really gets to me?” Dasein asked. “Justice! You’re all so damned interested in putting a cloak of justice and legality on your frauds! You give me a …”
“Doctor Gil?”
It was Burdeaux’s voice calling from the doorway behind him. Dasein yanked back on his chair’s left wheel, pushed on the right wheel. The chair whirled. All in the same instant, Dasein saw Burdeaux standing in the French doors, felt his chair hit something. He turned his head toward Selador in time to see a pair of feet disappear over the edge of the roof. There was a long, despairing cry terminated by the most sickening, wet thud Dasein had ever heard.
Burdeaux was suddenly beside him, leaning on the parapet to peer down at the parking area.
“Oh my goodness,” Burdeaux said. “Oh, my goodness, what a terrible accident.”
Dasein lifted his hands, looked at them—his hands. I’m not strong enough to’ve done that, he thought. I’ve been ill. I’m not strong enough.
14
“A major contributing factor to the accident,” Piaget said, “ways the victim’s own foolishness in standing that close to the edge of the roof.”
The inquest had been convened in Dasein’s hospital room—“Because it is at the scene of the accident and as a convenience to Doctor Dasein, who is not fully recovered from injuries and shock.”
A special investigator had been sent from the State Attorney General’s office, arriving just before the inquest convened at ten a.m. The investigator, a William Garrity, obviously was known to Piaget. They had greeted each other “Bill” and “Larry” at the foot of Dasein’s bed. Garrity was a small man with an appearance of fragility about him, sandy hair, a narrow face immersed in a mask of diffidence.
Presiding was Santaroga’s Coroner, a Negro Dasein had not seen before this morning—Leroy Cos: kinky gray hair and a square, blocky face of remote dignity. He wore a black suit, had held himself apart from the preinquest bustle until the tick of ten o’clock when he had seated himself at a table provided for him, rapped once with a pencil and said: “We will now come to order.”
Spectators and witnesses had seated themselves in folding chairs brought in for the occasion. Garrity shared a table with an Assistant District Attorney who, it developed, was a Nis, Swarthout Nis, a man with the family’s heavy eyelids, wide mouth and sandy hair, but without the deeply cleft chin.
In the two days since the tragedy, Dasein had found his emotions embroiled with a growing anger against Selador—the fool, the damned fool, getting himself killed that way.
Piaget, seated in the witness chair, summed it up for Dasein.
“In the first place,” Piaget said, a look of stern indignation on his round face, “he had no business taking Doctor Dasein outside. I had explained Doctor Dasein’s physical condition quite clearly.”
Garrity, the State’s investigator, was permitted a question: “You saw the accident, Doctor Piaget?”
“Yes. Mr. Burdeaux, having noted Doctor Selador wheel my patient onto the sundeck and knowing I considered this a physical strain on my patient, had summoned me. I arrived just in time to see Doctor Selador stumble and fall.”
“You saw him stumble?” Swarthout Nis asked.
“Definitely. He appeared to be reaching for the back of Doctor Dasein’s wheelchair. I consider it fortunate he did not manage to grab the chair. He could have taken both of them over the edge.”
Selador stumbled? Dasein thought. A sense of opening relief pervaded him. Selador stumbled! I didn’t bump him. I knew I wasn’t strong enough. But what did I bump? A loose board on the deck, perhaps? For an instant, Dasein recalled his hands on the wheels of the chair, the firm, sure grip, the soft bump. A board could feel soft, he told himself.
Burdeaux was in the witness chair now corroborating Piaget’s testimony.
It must be true then.
Dasein felt strength flow through his body. He began to see his Santaroga experience as a series of plunges down precipitous rapids. Each plunge had left him weaker until the final plunge had, through a mystic fusion, put him in contact with a source of infinite strength. It was that strength he felt now.
His life before Santaroga took on the aspects of a delicate myth held fleetingly in the mind. It was a tree in a Chinese landscape seen dimly through pastel mists. He sensed he had fallen somehow into a sequel,
which by its existence had changed the past. But the present, here-and-now, surrounded him like the trunk of a sturdy redwood, firmly rooted, supporting strong branches of sanity and reason.
Garrity with his sleepy questions was a futile incompetent. “You ran immediately to Dr. Dasein’s side?”
“Yes, sir. He was quite ill and weak. I was afraid he might try to get out of the wheelchair and fall himself.”
“And Dr. Piaget?”
“He ran downstairs, sir, to see what he could do for the man who fell.”
Only the Santarogans in this room were fully conscious, Dasein thought. It occurred to him then that the more consciousness he acquired, the greater must be his unconscious content—a natural matter of balance. That would be the source of Santaroga’s mutual strength, of course—a shared foundation into which each part must fit.
“Doctor Dasein,” the Coroner said.
They swore Dasein in then. The eyes in the room turned toward him. Only Garrity’s eyes bothered Dasein—hooded, remote, concealing, outsider eyes.
“Did you see Dr. Selador fall?”
“I … Mr. Burdeaux called me. I turned toward him and I heard a cry. When I turned back … Doctor Selador’s feet were going over the edge.”
“His feet?”
“That’s all I saw.”
Dasein closed his eyes, remembering that moment of electric terror. He felt he was using a tunnel-vision effect in his memory, focusing just on those feet. An accident—a terrible accident. He opened his eyes, shut off the vision before memory reproduced that descending wail, the final punctuating thud.
“Had you known Dr. Selador for a long time?”
“He was … yes.” What was Garrity driving at from behind those hooded eyes?
Garrity produced a sheet of paper from a briefcase on his table, glanced at it, said: “I have here a page from Dr. Selador’s journal. It was forwarded to me by his wife. One passage interests me. I’ll read it to …”
“Is this pertinent?” Coroner Cos asked.
“Perhaps not, sir,” Garrity said. “Again, perhaps it is. I would like Dr. Dasein’s views. We are, after all, merely trying to arrive at the truth in a terrible tragedy.”
“May I see the passage?” That was Swarthout Nis, the Assistant District Attorney, his voice suavely questioning.
The Santaroga Barrier Page 25
