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“Daler played the whole thing down, of course. Since the only person who could legitimately sue them for my screw up was Clancy, they gave us a tidy sum of money to make ourselves scarce. We moved out to the back of beyond and been here ever since.”
Justin put his hands to his face and looked at R.D. through his fingers, his glasses slightly squint.
“But my life was in ruins, eh Scotty?” He sighed loudly and his hands continued up his face and through his hair. “I got pretty depressed, I can tell you.”
There was a pause while Justin stared levelly at his former friend.
The obvious suddenly dawned on R.D.
“You didn’t?”
“I still had a supply of Cocktail formula in the lab.” Justin clutched at black locks. “I rescued the last batch before it could be destroyed. Because of the dodgy record keeping, nobody at Daler even noticed.”
“You started taking your own drug?” R.D. shook his head in disbelief. “Were you mental?”
“I wasn’t really thinking straight.” Justin gave a short bark of laughter. “Struck me, I was looking to cure depression without even knowing what depression felt like.”
“You could have just asked me.”
“I’d hit rock bottom Scotty.” The researcher admitted. “It seemed… appropriate I take my own drug, huh? So I upped the dosage and administered it to myself.”
Justin waved a desultory hand as if he were talking about swallowing a few Aspirin.
“I was sure it would work. I couldn’t accept it had some sort of glitch.”
“Some sort of glitch!” R.D. gasped. “The way the bloody Titanic had some sort of glitch?”
He stabbed out his cigarette and pulled another from the foil wrapping. He couldn’t believe that the smartest person he knew had done something so utterly stupid.
“You self-serving egomaniac!” he spluttered. “You find out test animals started dying after being dosed by this drug. So you take Clancy off, but then start dishing it out to yourself like you’re Boots the bloody Chemist!”
“Hey, don’t lecture me Scotty! It was dumber than hell, OK? I know that! As I recall y’all took some pretty half-assed chances in your life.”
R.D. couldn’t argue with that.
“Now… do you wanna play being my moral signpost – a position you aint exactly qualified for – or do you wanna know what it did to me?”
The psychologist very much wanted to know. It was the meat of Justin’s apparent delusion. This was what he would work on.
But his ex-partner was on the move. He motioned with his head and wandered out into the garden.
Muttering to himself, R.D. picked up his drink and followed.
-40-
The heat outside instantly slicked R.D.’s skin and generated a sweaty spill under his dark suit. He squinted across the bright scrubby lawn. Round the edge of the garden a sturdy stone wall intimidated the desiccated foliage. The solitary tree had shrivelled to a chalky finger poking through cracked soil. A few feet away, Justin scuffed a fragment of stone from the crumbling sundial. Tendrils of plaster settled on a red, boil-like bulge near the shabby base. He poked at the indignant mound of earth with his boot and furious insects seethed around the pointed polished toe.
“What do you know about ants, Scotty?”
R.D. couldn’t resist it.
“I got a couple in Glasgow. One of them drives a milk float.”
“No. No jokin’. You see those guys? Justin moved back respectfully. “Take over the world someday. You know how an ant colony works?”
“I’ve watched Wildlife Kingdom.”
“It’s like a giant brain. Each individual ant produces chemical messages in the form of hormones. Pheromones, they’re called. Well, these pheromones hang about in the air, an other ants pick em up. It works as a sort of telepathy. A communication system. That’s why a bunch of ‘em are so efficient even though each individual insect is dumb as shit.”
He dragged his boot across the teeming earth, dislodging the last tenacious insects from the heel. R.D. watched the creatures seethe round the violated mound and attack the wing-tipped intruder.
“Somehow - I don’t know how - my body began producing a pheromone that normal human beings don’t have. After I’d been taking the Cocktail long enough, huh? I produced a new type of hormone, similar to the ones ants use for communication.”
“Yeah? Like Doctor Doolittle?”
“You won’t rile me, so stop trying.” Justin chuckled unexpectedly. It seemed like a trigger to the grounded insects and they raced into the grass, looking for something more vulnerable to attack.
“My pheromones are picked up by people, R.D., not ants. They act as some sorta weird defence mechanism.”
The psychologist was fascinated. This was a pretty elaborate fantasy and he’d heard some doozies in his time. Justin stared down, godlike, at his miniature counterparts, his body taut as fish wire, as if physical gestures might enhance the insanity of his words.
“People don’t remember me, Scotty,” he said at last. “Oh, I can pass on information using words, just like anyone else. But the perceptions others normally have, of my voice, my gestures, my face… they don’t lodge properly in the short-term memory. They’re blocked by my pheromone emissions. You understand?”
“Not in the slightest.”
A grackle flicked past and landed behind the men. It began snatching at ants with angry jerks of its tufted black head.
“I call it Human Inductance. Thought of you, R.D. I figured you’d give it a snappy title.”
Justin seemed almost gay, but the casual phrase had a melancholy taint. The bird shot off, startled by the troubled proclamation.
“I’m an Inductor, Scotty. That’s what I am.”
Turning sadly, crushed by the presence of nature’s destructive power, the scientist walked slowly back indoors. Shaking his head in bewilderment R.D. followed, blinking like a faithful hound.
“It finally dawned on me why the test animals died and the records were wrong. And it had nothing to do with Daler.”
“Enlighten me.”
“After taking the Cocktail, the critters became Inductors too. You and I weren’t around enough to be affected, but it messed up the heads of the researchers who worked there. They began to forget stuff and record the wrong results. Worse than that, they forgot to feed the animals.” Justin clenched his hands together.
“They starved to death, Scotty.”
A chill went down R.D.’s spine.
“Thank God I took Clancy off the drug. But now my Inductance is wiping her memory. And that goes for everyone else I come into contact with. Including you.”
R.D. couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Paranoia. Delusions of grandeur. Self-loathing. Short of proclaiming himself Queen of Sheba, Justin had just run the gamut of every instability he could name.
“Hold on.” He caught up with his friend and drained the last dregs of beer. “My credibility is already stretched the length of Ponchatrain Bridge, but consider this. If, every minute - every second - I were forgetting you, I wouldn’t be able to see you.”
He waved his hands at the area where the scientist stood, giving a satisfied nod. A pretty good retort, he thought. Let’s see Justin refute the logic of that statement.
“You’re absolutely right.” The researcher picked mournfully at a nail. “But don’t patronise me, Scotty. I aint one of your patients. Yet…”
He patted himself in a scornful imitation of R.D.’s movements.
“You already know what I look like. Your own memory fills in the missing blanks. That’s why I don’t seem any older to you.”
The psychologist had to admit that it was uncanny how little his friend had changed. But still…
“Justin. That’s impossible.”
“I don’t know why it works, dammit!” The scientist’s face flushed redder than the termite hill he’d destroyed. “But it does!”
“And you can prove this?” R.D. m
ade another attempt at reasoning with his companion. “What with you being a scientist. And empirical evidence being the criterion you’re supposed to live by.”
“Sure I can. In a few hours you’re gonna remember the contents of this conversation but you won’t recall it actually taking place. I guarantee it.”
R.D. couldn’t stand it any longer. His head was stinging from heat and stress and he hadn’t been offered so much as a spring roll.
“No more crap Justin,” he said. “This is a text book fantasy. Yeah, it is. Don’t shake your head at me. My guess is Clancy’s relapsing and you can’t handle it, so you’re blaming yourself. But if you don’t face up to reality you’ll both go down the tubes.”
Justin gave a stubborn, condescending smile. It was a harmless gesture but it infuriated R.D.
“I think you locked yourself away in this fucking Podunk backwater because you were terrified of facing reality,” he snapped. “You couldn’t accept you’d made a mistake about your great work. Maybe you thought Clancy wouldn’t respect you anymore and run off with the mailman. Only, I bet you don’t even have a mailman out here.”
Justin looked sadly at his ex-partner but R.D. couldn’t seem to stop.
“You walked away from me as well. My wife was gone, my kid was dead and my career was over too. But you didn’t even give me the chance to prove my innocence.”
The scientist raised his hands in denial, retreating from the onslaught. R.D.’s throat was tight and his voice thick with disgust.
“Now you refuse to admit Clancy might be relapsing. Instead you’ve constructed this elaborate delusion and let her buy into it.” He took a deep shuddering breath. “You’re trying to take the blame for her condition. I’ve seen it a million times. Transfer of guilt.”
He stepped back, fighting to control the childish tremor in his voice. He stubbed out his cigarette with a furious thrust.
“Snap out of it man, for God’s sake. Get real medical help for your wife.”
Justine looked dazed. R.D. dug his nails into his own palm and mentally kicked himself for this lapse of professionalism. In front of Justin Moore of all people. In front of the one man who always admired his ability to smooth over the cracks. Great!
Then again, maybe Justin would think it was part of the therapy.
The scientist probably wasn’t fooled, but he dismissed R.D.’s outburst with delicate sympathy.
“Giving me the old short sharp shock treatment, huh, Scotty?”
“This isn’t something an analyst can fix.” The psychologist scrimped together his last dregs of wrath. “I’m going to find Clancy and persuade her to check into a hospital. I suggest you come along too, before you start foaming at the mouth.”
The ball was in his former friend’s court and there it could bloody well stay. R.D. turned and made for the door. Reached for the handle.
“If I see a rabbit with a gold watch in the hall I’ll tell him you’re in here.”
As he swung the door open R.D. felt a hand on his shoulder. He was jerked back so violently he almost fell.
He spun round, fists raised. Justin loomed over him like an enraged goblin.
“You want proof I’m telling the truth? OK. I’ll give it in spades.”
The thin figure spun away from him, waltzing his lanky body into the middle of the room. He spread his arms as if preparing a spectacular feat of magic.
“Inductance wouldn’t be much of a defence if I couldn’t actually use it,” Justin growled. “Watch what happens when I stop holding back and let my pheromones run riot.”
His shoulders tightened under the white shirt. He clenched his fists.
Then he vanished.
-41-
The ground under R.D.’s feet shifted. He staggered across the room trying to see where Justin might have gone, grabbing the safety of the couch to stop himself sprawling over the polished floor. There was nowhere the scientist could have hidden.
R.D. sank to his knees, looking in vain for some concealed trapdoor.
“Oh Jesus… Jesus!” he gasped. “This can’t be real.”
“It’s what happens when I get angry or afraid.” Justin’s twang came from right behind him. “A defence mechanism, like I said.”
R.D. shuffled round. The room was empty.
He scrabbled backwards on his hands and knees, dread making his every extremity tingle. A hand touched his shoulder again, soft as a butterfly resting.
R.D. twirled again. He could still feel the fleshy weight on his lapel but there was nobody behind him.
“Stop it.” he whimpered, shaking himself lose. “Please come back.”
Justin suddenly appeared again, leaning over him. A tear slid under the round glasses.
“I feel sick.” R.D. bent and pressed his forehead against the rough weave of the rug. “I can’t comprehend what I just saw.”
“It’s what you didn’t see that should worry you, huh Scotty?” Justin tightened his grip. Gently but firmly, he pulled R.D. back into a kneeling position.
“I didn’t mean to scare you like that,” he whispered. “But I don’t have time to mess around. Clancy’s life is at stake.”
When R.D. didn’t respond he added softly.
“She really is fading away. Mentally and physically.”
Silence.
“R.D.?”
“I’m still taking it in.” The psychologist wouldn’t look up.
“The longer I’m around a person the more of their mental faculties I wipe out, huh? And it’s not just their memories of me. It’s the whole shebang.” The researcher’s thin sweating face was level with the top of R.D.’s head.
“I’m a prisoner in my own home. I can’t go out. If I get scared or excited, my pheromone count shoots up. That’s how it works. And I’m scared all the damned time. Let me loose in a crowd of people and, next thing, some family on the sidewalk beside me will forget where they are and wander out under a truck.”
He tugged fitfully at his former friend’s suit.
“Clancy’s beginning to forget huge chunks of her life.” Tears streamed down Justin’s face now. “Her mind, it’s getting eaten away. She’s terrified but she won’t leave me. That’s why she stays in the boathouse. But she forgets to eat too and I have to go down and remind her. Which only makes things worse.”
His finger smeared the table top, swirling faster and faster.
“You gotta help me, huh?” His voice was laden with anguish.
R.D. finally looked up. What he’d seen couldn’t be faked. Either he was nuts, or Justin’s incredible tale was true. The psychologist gripped his thighs tightly, letting the pain ground him.
And, edging round that pain, crept excitement. He couldn’t help it. This was big. This was very, very big.
He cleaned the smeared table top with his sleeve and stood.
“What exactly is it you want me to do?” He straightened the creases in his suit, trying for outward composure at least. “I mean… can I help? It’s not exactly my field. It’s not anyone’s field unless they’re in a Marvel comic.”
He stretched out a shaky hand. Justin pulled him up and wiped a stripe of carpet grime from his friend’s cheek.
“Oh yeah. You can help. See, I been working on a way to beat this thing, an I made progress. I made a lot of progress.” He escorted R.D. to the study door.
“C’mon I want to show you something. You aint gonna believe your eyes.”
“What? Again?”
Justin flushed and ushered R.D. out of the room.
-42-
The men marched solemnly down dark, narrow hallways. Most of the lights seemed to have been removed and streaks of torn wallpaper hinted that much of the electrical cable behind the walls were gone too.
“A tour of the house at last,” R.D. said defiantly. “I was getting bored sitting around.”
Reaching the end of the passage Justin threw open the study door and R.D. was confronted by the metal jungle he’d seen a short time before.
“Impressive,” he concurred. “But can you pick up the Howard Stern show?”
Justin was obviously perturbed at R.D.’s lack of reverence in the face of so gargantuan a creation. The psychologist breezed into the room, revelling in his brief moment of one-upmanship. He gave a spry smack of his lips, worthy of any interior decorator. He folded his arms, leaned back on one foot and surveyed the chaos.
“Must be a fucker to polish,” he offered, deadpan. It was small potatoes as revenge but satisfying, nevertheless.
Justin scowled. R.D. finally put him out of his misery.
“Clancy already showed me it.”
“Oh. I should have guessed that.”
“OK, Marconi. What exactly does this stuff do?”
The scientist’s eyes shone.
“My Inductance can be blocked,” he announced triumphantly. “And, guess what with? A simple electromagnetic field! That’s all it takes, huh? Aint that the darndest Goddamned thing! Took me years to figure it out.”
He glanced around.
“That’s what this big old beast here does. When this thing is switched on it deadens my pheromone emissions and I can’t Induct. Shoot, I’m just like anyone else! But look at it R.D.”
The psychologist saw what he was getting at.
“It’s pretty big.”
“It’s huge,” Justin signed. “An I need somethin’ portable, somethin’ I can carry around. I gotta get out in the world again, Scotty. I want to be able to stay in the same room with my wife. Take her for red beans and rice at Popeye’s.”
“Aw, they always forget what you order anyway.”
“Don’t joke, buddy. I’m gonna crack up for real, I swear to God.”
“So, how come you haven’t whipped up a miniature version?” R.D. asked. “Something that will fit in your pocket and dampen your emissions?”
“Oh. Well, I appreciate your faith, Scotty. Sure, I’ve learned a bit about electronics but I aint in that league. Besides, I’ve run out of time an money.”