The Last Defender Of Camelot

by Roger Zelazny

  Somehow that did not seem right. Emergency rooms do not dispense hairpieces to cover their work. And a man in my condition would probably not have been allowed to walk away.

  But I could worry about these things later. I had' come to hear this talk. I had a good seat and a good view, and I should enjoy the occasion. I could take stock of myself when the event was concluded.

  Almost twenty minutes after the hour...

  I tried to listen, but I could not keep my mind on what he was saying- Something was wrong and J was hurting myself by not considering it. Very wrong, and not Just with me. I was a part of it all, though. How? What?

  I looked at the fat little telepath behind the president Go ahead and look into my mind, I willed. / would really like you to. Maybe you can see more deeply there than I can myself. Look and see what is wrong. Tell me what has happened, What is happening. I would like to know.

  But he did not even glance my way. He was only interested in incipient mayhem, and my intentions were all pacific. If he read me at all, he must have dismissed my bewilderment as the stream of consciousness of one of that small percentage of the highly neurotic which must occur in any sizable gathering—a puzzled man, but hardly a dangerous one. His attention, and that of any of the others, was reserved for whatever genuinely nasty specimens might be present. And rightly so.

  There came another roll of thunder. Nothing. Nothing for me beyond this hall, it reminded. The entire day up until my arrival was a blank. Work on it. Think. I had read about cases of amnesia. Had I ever come across one just like this?

  When had I decided to hear this speech? Why? What were the circumstances?

  Nothing. The origin of my intention was hidden.

  Could there be anything suspect? Was there anything unusual about my desire to be here?

  I—No, nothing.

  Nineteen minutes after the hour.

  I began to perspire. A natural result of my nervousness, I supposed.The second hand swept past the two, the three ...

  Something to do. ... It would come clear in a moment. What? Never mind. Wait and see.

  The six, the seven ...

  As another wave of applause crossed the hall I began to wish that I had not come.

  Nine, ten ...

  Twenty minutes after.

  My lips began to move. I spoke softly. I doubt that the others about me even heard what I said.

  "Step right this way, ladies and gentlemen. Try your luck."

  "... Try your luck."

  Suddenly 1 was awake, in the gallery, my hand in my pocket. High up, before me, was the row of faces, the cutout cardboard bodies below them, lights shining upon them. I felt the pistol and checked it without looking down. The one in front was the target that had been chosen for me, moving slightly, with random jerkings.

  I withdrew the weapon carefully and began to raise it slowly.

  My hand! Who ...

  I watched with a sudden and growing fear as my left hand emerged from my pocket holding a gun. I had no control over the action. It was as if the hand belonged to another person. I willed it back down, but it continued to rise. So I did the only thing I could do.

  I reached across with my right hand and seized my own wrist.

  The left hand had a definite will of its own. It struggled against me. I tightened my grip and pushed it downward with all of my strength.

  As this occurred, I found myself trying to get to my feet. Snarls and curses rose unbidden to my lips. The hand was strong. I was not certain how much longer I could bold it.

  The finger tightened on the trigger and my hands bucked with the weapon's recoil. Fortunately, the muzzle was pointed downward when it went off. I hope that the ricochet had not caught anyone.

  People were screaming and rushing to get away from me by then. Several others, however, were hurrying toward me. If I could only hold the hand until they got to me....They hit me, two of them. One tackled me and the other took me around the shoulders. We went down. As my left arm was seized, I felt it relax. The pistol was taken from me. Those two hands, such strangers, were forced behind my back and handcuffed there. I remember hoping that they would not break one another. They stop-

  - ped struggling, however, hanging limply as I was raised to my feet.

  When I looked back toward the stage, the president was gone. But the small chubby man was staring at me, dark eyes no longer drifting behind those heavy lenses as he began to move my way, gesturing to the men who held me.

  Suddenly I felt very sick and weak, and my head was aching again. I began to hurt in the places where I had been struck.

  When the small man stood before me he reached out and clasped my shoulders.

  "It is going to be all right now," he said.

  The gallery wavered before me. There were no more cardboard silhouettes. Only people. I did not understand where everything had gone, or why he had told me the words, then restrained me. I only knew that I had missed my target and there would be no award. I felt my eye grow moist.

  They took me to a clinic. There were guards posted outside my door. The small telepath, whose name I had learned was Arthur Cook, was with me much of the time. A doctor poked at the left side of my neck, inserted a needle and dripped in a clear liquid. The rest was silence.

  When I came around—how much later, I am uncertain

  —the right side of my neck was also sore. Arthur and one of the doctors were standing at my bedside watching me closely.

  "Glad to have you back, Mister Mathews," Arthur said. "We want to thank you."

  "For what?" I asked. "I don't even know what happened."

  "You foiled an assassination plan. I am tempted to say single-handed, but I am not much given to puns. You were an unwilling party to one of the most ingenious attempts to evade telepathic security measures to date. You were the victim of some ruthless people, using highly sophisticated medical methods in their conspiracy.Had they taken one additional measure, I believe they would have succeeded. However, they permitted both of you to be present at the key moment and that was their undoing."

  "Both of me?"

  "Yes, Mister Mathews. Do you know what the corpus callosum is?"

  "A part of the brain, I think."

  "Correct. It is an inch-long, a quarter-inch-thick bundle of fibers which serves to join the right and left cerebral hemispheres. If it is severed, it results in the creation of two separate individuals in one body. It is sometimes done in cases of severe epilepsy to diminish the effects of seizures."

  "Are you saying that I have undergone such surgery?"

  *'Yes, you have."

  *'... And there is another 'me' inside my head?"

  "That is correct. The other hemisphere is still sedated at the moment, however."

  "Which one am I?"

  "You are the left cerebral hemisphere. You possess the linguistic abilities and the powers of more complicated reasoning. The other side is move intuitive and emotional and possesses greater visual and. spatial capabilities."

  "Can this surgery be undone?"

  *•No."

  "I see. And you say that other people have had such operations—epileptics... . How did they—do—afterward?"

  The doctor spoke then, a tall man, hawk-featured, hair of a smoky gray.

  "For a long while the connection—the corpus callosum —had been thought to have no important functions. It was years before anyone was even aware of this side effect to a commisurotomy. I do not foresee any great difficulties for you. We will go into more detail on this later."

  "All right. I feel like—myself—at any rate. Why did they do this to me?"

  "To turn you into the perfect modem assassin," Arthur said. "Half of the brain can be put to sleep while the other hemisphere remains awake. This is done simply by administering a drug via the carotid artery on the appropriate side. After the surgery had been performed,you—the left hemisphere—were put to sleep while the right hemisphere was subjected to hypnosis and behavior modification techniques, w
as turned into a conditioned assassin—"

  "I had always thought a person could not be hypnotized into doing certain things."

  He nodded.

  "Normally, that seems to be the case. However, it appears that, by itself, the emotional, less rational right hemisphere is more susceptible to suggestion—and it was not a simple kill order which it received, it was a cleverly constructed and well-rehearsed illusion to which it was trained to respond."

  "Okay," I said. "Buying all that, how did they make what happened happen?"

  "The mechanics of it? Well, the conditioning, as I said, was done while you were unconscious and, hence, unaware of it. The conditioned hemisphere was then placed in a state of deep sleep, with the suggestion that it would awaken and perform its little act on receipt of the appropriate cue. Your hemisphere was then impressed with a post-hypnotic suggestion to provide that cue, in me form of the phrase you spoke, at a particular time when the speech would be going on. So they left you out in front and you walked iflto the hall consciously aware of none of this. Your mind was perfectly innocent under any telepathic scrutiny. It was only when you performed your posthypnotic suggestion and called attention to yourself moments later that I suddenly regarded two minds in one body—an extremely eerie sensation, I might add. It was fortunate then that you, the more rational individual, quickly saw what was happening and struggled to avert it. This gave us just enough time to move in on you."

  I nodded. I thought about it, about two of me, struggling for the control of our one body. Then, "You said that they had slipped up—that had they done one additional thing they might have succeeded," I said. "What was that?"

  "They should have implanted the suggestion that you go to sleep immediately after speaking the stimulus phrase," he said. "I believe that would have done it. They just did not foresee the conflict between the two of you."

  "What about the people behind this?" I finally asked."Your right hemisphere provided us with quite a few very good descriptions while you were asleep."

  "Descriptions? I thought I was the verbal one."

  "True, basically. But the other provided some excellent sketches, the substance of which I was able to verify telepathically. The Service then matched them with certain individuals on whom they have files, and these persons have already been apprehended.

  "But the other hemisphere is not completely nonverbal," he went on. "There is normally a certain small amount of transference—which may be coining into play now, as a matter of fact"

  "What do you mean?"

  "The other you has been awake awhile now. Your left hand, which it controls, has been gesturing frantically for several minutes. For my pen. I can tell."

  He withdrew a pen and a small pad from his pocket and passed them to me. I watched with fascination as they were seized and positioned. Slowly, carefully, my left band wrote on the pad, Im sorry.

  ... And as I wrote, I realized that he -would not understand, could never understand now, exactly what I meant.

  And that was what I meant, exactly.

  I stared down at the words and I looked up at the wall. I looked at Arthur and at the doctor.

  "I'd appreciate it if you would leave us alone for a while now," I said.

  They did, and even before they left I knew that no matter where I looked half of the room would have to be empty.

  IS THERE A DEMON LOVER IN THE HOUSE?

  This story was solicited by Heavy Metal. I was in the mood to do a mood piece at that time.

  Nightscape of the city in November with fog: intermittent blotches of streetlight; a chilly thing, the wind slithering across the weeping faces of buildings; the silence.

  Form is dulled and softened. Outlines are lost, silhou-ettes unsealed. Matter bleeds some vital essence upon the streets. What are the pivot points of time? Was that its arrow, baffled by coils of mist, or only a lost bird of the night?

  ... Walking now, the man, gait slowed to a normal pace now, his exhilaration transmuted to a kind of calm. Middle-aged, middle-statured, side-whiskered, dark, he looks neither to the left nor the right. He has ,lost his way, but his step is almost buoyant. A great love fills his being, general, objectless, pure as the pearl-soft glow of the comer light through the fog.

  He reaches that corner and moves to cross the street. An auto is there, then gone, tearing through the intersection, a low rumble within its muffler, lights slashing the dark. Its red tail lamps swing by, dwindle, are gone; its tires screech as it turns an unseen corner.

  The man has drawn back against the building. He stares in the direction the vehicle has taken. For a long while after it has vanished from sight, he continues to stare. Then he withdraws a case from an inside pocket, takes out a small cigar, lights it. His hands shake as he does so.

  A moment of panic...

  He looks all about, sighs, then retrieves the small, newspaper-wrapped parcel he had been carrying, from where it had fallen near the curb.

  Carefully, carefully then, he crosses the street. Soon the love has hold of him again.

  Farther along, he comes upon a parked car, pauses a moment beside it, sees a couple embracing within, continues on his way. Another car passes along the street, slowly. There is a glow ahead.

  He advances toward the illumination. There are lights within a small cafe and several storefront display windows. A theater marquee blazes in the center of the block. There are people here, moving along the walks, crossing the street. Cars discharge passengers. There is a faint odor of frying fish. The theater, he sees, is called the Regent Street.

  He pauses beneath the marquee, which advertises: EXOTIC MIDNIGHT SPECIAL THE KISS OF DEATBPuffing his cigar, he regards a series of photos within a glass case. A long-haired, acne-dotted medical student comes over to see the still shots, innocuous yet titillative on the wall. "Thought they'd never get to show it," he mutters.

  "Beg pardon?"

  "This snuff film. Just won a court decision. Didn't you hear?"

  "No. I did not know. This one?"

  "That's right. You going to see it?"

  "I don't know. What is it about?"

  The student turns and stares at the man, cocks his head to one side, smiles faintly. Seeing the reaction, the man smiles also. The student chuckles and shrugs.

  "May be your only chance to see one," he says. "I'm betting they get closed down again and it goes to a higher court"

  "Perhaps I will."

  "Rotten weather, huh? They say so ho was an old hunting cry. Probably from people trying to find each other, huh?"

  He chuckles. The man returns it and nods. The calm of controlled passion that holds him as in a gentle fist pushes him toward the experience.

  "Yes, I believe that I will," he says, and he moves toward the ticket window.

  The man behind the glass looks up as he passes him the money,

  "You sure you want to spend that? It's an oldie."

  He nods.

  The ticket seller sets the coin to one side, hands him his pasteboard and his change.

  He enters the lobby, looks about, follows the others.

  "No smoking inside. Fire law."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  Dropping his cigar into a nearby receptacle, he surrenders his ticket and passes within. He pauses at the head of an aisle to regard the screen before him, moves on when jostled, finds a seat to his left, takes it.

  He settles back and lets his warm feeling enfold him. It is a strange night. Lost, why had he come in? A place to sit? A place to hide? A place to be warm with impersonal human noises about him? Curiosity?

  All of these, he decides, while his thoughts roam overthe varied surface of life, and the post-orgasmic sadness fades to tenderness and gratefulness.

  His shoulder is touched. He turns quickly.

  "Just me," says the student. "Show'U be starting in a few minutes. You ever read the Marquis de Sade?"

  "Yes."

  "What do you think of him?**

  "A decadent dilettante."

&nb
sp; "Oh."

  The student settles back and assumes a thoughtful pose. The man returns his eyes to the front of the theater.

  After a time, the houselights grow dim and die. Then the screen is illuminated. The words The Kiss of Death flash upon it. Soon they are succeeded by human figures. The man leans forward, his brow furrowed. He turns and studies the slant of light from the projection booth, dust motes drifting within it He sees a portion of the equipment. He turns again to the screen and his breathing deepens.

  He watches all the actions leading to the movements of passion as time ticks about him. The theater is still. It seems that he has been transported to a magical realm. The people around him take on a supernatural quality, blank-faced in the light reflected from the screen. The back of his neck grows cold, and it feels as if the hairs are stirring upon it Still, he suppresses a desire to rise and depart, for there is something frightening, too, to the vision. But it seems important that he see it through. He leans back again, watching, watching the flickering spectacle before him.

  There is a tightening in nis belly as he realizes what is finally to occur, as he sees the knife, the expression on the girl's face, the sudden movements, the writhing, the blood. As it continues, he gnaws his knuckle and begins to perspire. It is real, so real...

  "Oh my!" he says and relaxes.

  The warmth comes back to him again, but he continues to watch, until the last frame fades and the lights come on once again.

  "How'd you like it?" says the voice at bis backHe does not turn.

  "It is amazing," he finally says, "that they can make pictures move on a screen like that."He hears the familiar chuckle, then, "Care to join me for a cup of coffee? Or a drink?"

  "No, thanks. I have to be going."

  He rises and hurries up the aisle, back toward the fogmasked city where he had somehow lost his way.

  "Say, you forgot your package!"

  But the man does not bear. He is gone.

  The student raises it, weighs it in his palm, wonders. When he finally unwraps the folded Times, it is not only the human heart it contains which causes his sharp intake of breath, but the fact that the paper bears a date in November of 1888.