Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  Before Donovan’s whistle could shatter their eardrums again, Erin Bass rose gracefully, clapped her hands, and cried surprisingly loudly, “Stop! We will get nowhere this way! Evelyn has the floor!”

  Slowly the din subsided. Evelyn, who now seemed more excited than frightened by the implication of what she’d just said, launched into a long and incoherent description of her “MIT,” until Henry stopped her the only way he could think of, which was to take her hand. She squeezed it again, blushed, and said, “Yes, dear.”

  Henry managed to get out, “Please. Everyone. There must be an explanation for all this.” But before he could begin it, Erin Bass turned from aide to saboteur.

  “Yes, and I think we should go around the circle in the same order and offer those explanations. But briefly, before too many people get too tired. John?”

  Kluge said, “It could be some sort of virus affecting the brain. Contagious. Or some pollutant in the building.”

  Which causes every person to have the exact same hallucinations and a locked safe to open? Henry thought scornfully. The scorn steadied him. He needed steadying; every person in the room had mentioned feeling the Thursday-afternoon “energy” start in his or her heart, but no one except Henry knew that at that moment Jim Peltier was having an inexplicable heart attack as he battered Carrie.

  Erin said, “What we see in this world is just maya, the illusion of permanence when in fact, all reality is in constant flux and change. What’s happening here is beyond the world of intellectual concepts and distinctions. We’re getting glimpses of the mutable nature of reality, the genuine undifferentiated ‘suchness’ that usually only comes with nirvana. The glimpses are imperfect, but for some reason our collective karma has afforded them to us.”

  Bob Donovan, next in the circle, said irritably, “That’s just crap. We all got some brain virus, like Kluge here said, and some junkie cracked the office safe. The cops are investigating it. We should all see a doctor, except they can’t never do anything to cure people anyway. And the people who had pain, Henry and Evelyn, they just got the disease worse.”

  Most people around the circle echoed the brain-disease theory, some with helpless skepticism, some with evident relief at finding any sort of explanation. A woman said slowly, “It could be the start of Alzheimer’s.” A man shrugged and said, “As God wills.” Another just shook his head, his eyes averted.

  Gina Martinelli said, “It is the will of God! These are the End Times, and we’re being given signs, if only we would listen! ‘Ye shalt have tribulations ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.’ Also—”

  “It might be the will of God, Gina,” interrupted Evelyn, unable to restrain herself any longer, “but it’s mighty strange anyway! Why, I saw that necklace in my mind plain as day, and at just that moment it was being stolen from the safe! To my mind, that’s not God, and not the devil neither or the robbery would have been successful, you see what I mean? The devil knows what he’s doing. No, this was a message, all right, but from those who have gone before us. My Uncle Ned could see spirits all the time, they trusted him, I remember one time we all came down to breakfast and the cups had all been turned upside down when nobody was in the room and Uncle Ned, he said—”

  Henry stopped listening. Ghosts. God. Eastern mysticism. Viruses. Alzheimer’s. Nothing that fit the facts, that adhered even vaguely to the laws of the universe. These people had the reasoning power of termites.

  Evelyn went on for a while, but eventually even she noticed that her audience was inattentive, dispirited, or actually asleep. Irene Bromley snored softly in Henry’s leather armchair. Erin Bass said, “Henry?”

  He looked at them hopelessly. He’d been going to describe the two-slit experiments on photons, to explain that once you added detectors to measure the paths of proton beams, the path became predetermined, even if you switched on the detector after the particle had been fired. He’d planned on detailing how that astonishing series of experiments changed physics forever, putting the observer into basic measurements of reality. Consciousness was woven into the very fabric of the universe itself, and consciousness seemed to him the only way to link these incredibly disparate people and the incredible events that had happened to them.

  Even to himself, this “explanation” sounded lame. How Teller or Feynman would have sneered at it! Still, although it was better than anything he’d heard here this morning, he hated to set it out in front of these irrational people, half ignoramuses and the other half nutcases. They would all just reject it, and what would be gained?

  But he had called this meeting. And he had nothing else to offer.

  Henry stumbled through his explanation, trying to make the physics as clear as possible. Most of the faces showed perfect incomprehension. He finished with, “I’m not saying there’s some sort of affecting of reality going on, through group consciousness.” But wasn’t that exactly what he was saying? “I don’t believe in telekinesis or any of that garbage. The truth is, I don’t know what’s happening. But something is.”

  He felt a complete fool.

  Bob Donovan snapped, “None of you know nothing. I been listening to all of you, and you haven’t even got the facts right. I seen Anna Chernov’s necklace. The cops showed it to me yesterday when they was asking me some questions. It don’t got no sapphires or rubies, and just one tiny diamond. You’re full of it, Evelyn, to think your seizure had anything to do with anything—and how do we know you even felt any pain at the ‘very second’ the safe was being cracked? All we got’s your word.”

  “Are you saying I’m a liar?” Evelyn cried. “Henry, tell him!”

  Tell him what? Startled, Henry just stared at her. John Kluge said harshly, “I don’t believe Henry Erdmann is lying about his pain,” and Evelyn turned from Donovan to Kluge.

  “You mean you think I am? Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Kluge started to tell her who he was: among other things, a former notary public. Other people began to argue. Evelyn started to cry, and Gina Martinelli prayed loudly. Erin Bass rose and slipped out the front door. Others followed. Those that remained disputed fiercely, the arguments growing more intense as they were unable to convince their neighbors of their own theories. Somewhere among the anger and contempt, Carrie Vesey appeared by Henry’s side, her pretty face creased with bewildered concern, her voice high and strained.

  “Henry? What on Earth is going on in here? I could hear the noise all the way down the hall . . . What is this all about?”

  “Nothing,” he said, which was the stupidest answer possible. Usually the young regarded the old as a separate species, as distant from their own concerns as trilobites. But Carrie had been different. She had always treated Henry as inhabiting the same world as herself, with the same passions and quirks and aims and defeats. This was the first time he had ever seen Carrie look at him as both alien and unsound, and it set the final seal on this disastrous meeting.

  “But, Henry—”

  “I said it’s nothing!” he shouted at her. “Nothing at all! Now just leave me the hell alone!”

  TEN

  Carrie stood in the ladies’ room off the lobby, pulling herself together. She was not going to cry. Even if Dr. Erdmann had never spoken to her like that before, even if ever since Jim’s death she had felt as if she might shatter, even if. . . everything, she was not going to cry. It would be ridiculous. She was a professional—well, a professional aide anyway—and Henry Erdmann was an old man. Old people were irritable sometimes. This whole incident meant nothing.

  Except that she knew it did. She had stood outside Dr. Erdmann’s door for a long time as people slipped out, smiling at her vaguely, and Evelyn Krenchnoted babbled on inside. The unprecedented meeting had first piqued her curiosity—Henry Erdmann, hosting a party at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning? Then, as she realized what Evelyn was saying, disbelief took Carrie. Evelyn meant . . . Evelyn thought . . . and even Dr. Erdmann believed that “something
” had been happening, something weird and unexplainable and supernatural, at the moment that Evelyn was under the MRI . . . Henry!

  But Jake DiBella had been upset by Evelyn’s scans.

  The door of the ladies’ opened and the first of the Saturday visitors entered, a middle-aged woman and a sulky teenage girl. “Honestly, Hannah,” the woman said, “it’s only an hour out of your precious day and it won’t kill you to sit with your grandmother and concentrate on someone else besides yourself for a change. If you’d just—”

  Carrie went to DiBella’s office. He was there, working at his desk. No sign of her picture, cushion, coffee cup; she couldn’t help her inevitable, stupid pang. He didn’t want them. Or her. Another failure.

  “Dr. DiBella—”

  “ ‘Jake.’ Remember?” And then, “Carrie, what is it?”

  “I just came from Dr. Erdmann’s apartment. They were having a meeting, about twenty people, all of them who’ve felt these ‘seizures’ or whatever they are, all at the same time. Like the one you captured on Evelyn’s MRI scan.”

  He stared at her. “What do you mean, ‘at the same time’ ?”

  “Just what I said.” She marveled at her own tone—none of her shakiness showed. “They said that at the exact same time that Evelyn was showing all that weird activity under the MRI, each of them was feeling it, too, only not so strong. And it was the exact same time that Anna Chernov’s necklace was being stolen. And they all saw the necklace in their minds.” Only—hadn’t Mr. Donovan said that the necklace looked different from what Evelyn said? Confusion took Carrie.

  Jake looked down at whatever he was writing, back at Carrie, down again at his notes. He came around the desk and closed his office door. Taking her arm, he sat her gently in the visitor’s chair, unadorned by her cushion. Despite herself, she felt a tingle where his hand touched her.

  “Dr. Erdmann was involved in this? Tell me again. Slowly, Carrie. Don’t leave anything out.”

  Evelyn Krenchnoted made her way to Gina Martinelli’s apartment on Five. Really, Henry had been unbearably rude—to that poor young girl, to everybody at the meeting, and especially to Evelyn herself. He hadn’t comforted her when that awful Donovan man called her a liar, he hadn’t put his hand on hers again, he’d just yelled and yelled—and just when things between them had been going so well!

  Evelyn needed to talk to Gina. Not that Gina had been any help at the meeting, not with all that praying. Gina was really a lot smarter than she looked, she’d been a part-time tax preparer once, but hardly anybody knew it because Gina never opened her mouth except to pray. Not that there was anything wrong with praying, of course! Evelyn certainly believed in God. But you had to help Him along a little if you really wanted something. You couldn’t expect the Lord to do everything.

  Evelyn had even curled her hair for Henry.

  “Gina? Sweetie? Can I come in?”

  “You’re already in,” Gina said. She had to speak loud because she had Frank Sinatra on the record player. Gina loved Frank Sinatra. For once she wasn’t reading her Bible, which Evelyn thought was a good sign. She lowered her bulk onto Gina’s sofa.

  “So what did you think of that meeting?” Evelyn said. She was looking forward to a good two-three hours of rehashing, sympathy, and gossip. It would make her feel a lot better. Less creepy. Less afraid.

  But instead, Gina said, “There was a message on the machine when I got back here. Ray is coming next week.”

  Oh, God, Gina’s son. Who was only after her money. Ray hadn’t visited in over a year, and now that Gina had told him she was leaving everything to the daughter . . . and there was a lot of everything to leave. Gina’s late husband had made major money in construction.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Evelyn said, a little perfunctorily. Ordinarily she would have adored discussing Gina’s anguish; for one thing, it made Evelyn glad she had never had kids. But now, with so much else going on—Henry and the attempted robbery and Evelyn’s seizure and the strange comments at the meeting—

  Frank Sinatra sang about ants and rubber tree plants. Gina burst into tears.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Evelyn repeated, got up to put her arms around Gina, and resigned herself to hearing about Ray Martinelli’s selfishness.

  Bob Donovan sat beside Anna Chernov’s bed in the Infirmary. The man simply could not take a hint. She would either have to snub him outright or tell him in so many words to stop visiting her. Even the sight of him, squat and toad-faced and clumsy, made her shudder. Unfair, but there it was.

  She had danced with so many beautiful men.

  Which had been the best? Frederico, partnering her in LaValse—never had she been lifted so effortlessly. Jean, in Scotch Symphony. had been equally breathtaking, But the one she always returned to was Bennet. After she’d left the New York City Ballet for American Ballet Theater and her career had really taken off, they’d always danced together. Bennet, so dazzling as Albrecht in Giselle . . . . Guesting at a gala at the Paris Opera, they’d had seventeen curtain calls and—

  Her attention was reclaimed by something Bob Donovan said.

  “Could you repeat that, please, Bob?”

  “What? Old Henry’s crackpot theory? Science gibberish!”

  “Nonetheless, would you repeat it?” She managed a smile.

  He responded to the smile with pathetic eagerness. “Okay, yeah, if you want. Erdmann said, lemme think . . .” He screwed up his already crevassed face in an effort to remember. Although she was being unkind again. He probably wasn’t all that bad looking, among his own class. And was she any better? These days she couldn’t bear to look in a mirror. And the sight of the ugly cast on her leg filled her with despair.

  “Erdmann said there was some experiments in physics, something with two slips, where people’s consciences changed the path of some little . . . particles . . . by just thinking about them. Or maybe it was watching them. And that was the link between everybody who had so-called ‘energy’ at the same time. Group conscience. A new thing.”

  Consciousness, Anna translated. Group consciousness. Well, was that so strange? She had felt it more than once on stage, when a group of dancers had transcended what they were individually, had become a unity moving to the music in the creation of beauty. Such moments had, for her, taken the place of religion.

  Bob was going on now about what other people at the meeting had said, offering up ungrammatical accounts in a desperate bid to please her, but even as she recognized this, Anna had stopped listening. She thought instead about Bennet, with whom she’d had such fantastic chemistry on and off stage, Bennet lifting her in the grand pas de deux of Act II, rosin from the raked stage rising around her like an angelic cloud, herself soaring and almost flying. . .

  “Tell me again,” Jake said.

  “Again?” This was the third time! Not that Carrie really minded. She hadn’t had his total attention—anybody’s total attention—like this since Jim died. Not that she wanted Jim back . . . She shuddered even as she went through it all again. By the end, she was belligerent.

  “Why? Are you saying you believe all this stuff about a group consciousness?”

  “No. Of course not. Not without confirmation . . . but Erdmann is a scientist. What other data does he have that he isn’t telling you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” And she didn’t; this conversation was beyond her. Photon detectors, double-slit experiments, observational pre-determination. . . Her memory was good, but she knew she lacked the background to interpret the terms. Her own ignorance made her angry.

  “Henry had two other experiences of ‘energy’ when he was with you, you said. Were there others when he was away from you?”

  “How should I know? You better ask him!”

  “I will. I’ll ask them all.”

  “It sounds stupid to me.” Immediately she was frightened by her own tone. But Jake just looked at her thoughtfully.

  “Well, it sounds stupid to me, too. But Henry is right about one thing—som
ething is happening. There’s hard data in the form of Evelyn’s MRI, in the fact that the safe was opened without the lock being either tampered with or moved to the right combination—”

  “It did?”

  “The detective told me, when he was asking questions yesterday. Also, I got the physician here to let me look at the lab results for everybody admitted to the Infirmary Thursday afternoon. Professional courtesy. There was no food poisoning.”

  “There wasn’t?” All at once Carrie felt scared.

  “No.” DiBella sat thinking a long while. She scarcely dared breathe. Finally he said slowly, as if against his own will or better judgment—and that much she understood, anyway—”Carrie, have you ever heard of the principle of emergent complexity?”

  “I did everything for that boy,” Gina sobbed. “Just everything!”

  “Yes, you did,” said Evelyn, who thought Gina had done too much for Ray. Always lending him money after he lost each job, always letting him move back home and trash the place. What that kid had needed—and bad—was a good hiding, that’s what.

  “Angela didn’t turn out this way!”

  “No.” Gina’s daughter was a sweetie. Go figure.

  “And now I just get it settled in my mind that he’s out of my life, I come to grips with it, and he says he’s flying back here to see ‘his old ma’ and he loves me! He’ll just stir everything up again like he did when he got home from the Army, and when he divorced Judy, and when I had to find that lawyer for him in New York . . . Evelyn, nobody, but nobody, can rip you up inside like your child!”

  “I know,” said Evelyn, who didn’t. She went on making little clucking noises while Gina sobbed. A plane roared overhead, and Frank Sinatra sang about it having been a very good year when he was twenty-one.

  Bob Donovan took Anna’s hand. Gently she pulled it away. The gentleness was for her, not him—she didn’t want a scene. His touch repelled her. But oh, Bennet’s touch . . . or Frederico’s . . . Still, it was the dancing she missed. And now she would never dance again. She might, the doctors said, not even walk without a limp.