A Matter for Men watc-1

by David Gerrold

  "Reagan Memorial."

  I turned my head to look at her. She wasn't as weird-looking as I remembered. She was still holding my hand. "Hi," I said.

  "Hi," she said. "Feeling better?"

  I nodded. "Why did you wake me up?"

  "House rules. Anyone on pentothal has to be awakened when they come out of surgery, so we're sure they can handle their own breathing."

  "Oh," I said. I was covered with blankets. I couldn't feel anything. "What happened?"

  She looked unhappy. "The Chtorran killed twenty-three people. Fourteen more died in the panic. Thirty-four were injured, five of them critically. Two of those are not expected to live." She eyed me critically. "In case you're wondering, you will."

  I started to ask, "Who-" But my voice cracked and I didn't finish the sentence.

  "'Who' what?"

  "Who was killed?"

  "They haven't released any names yet."

  "Oh. So you don't know."

  I couldn't fathom her expression. She looked oddly satisfied. "Well, I can tell you this-some of the Fourth World delegations are going to have to be restaffed. We've filled up two wings and the morgue with them. They were all sitting in the first five rows. And the worm threw himself across that whole section."

  Something occurred to me then, but I didn't say it. Instead, I asked, "How did it get out?"

  "They had the wrong kind of glass in the cage. They thought they had hundred-strength. It was only ten. There's going to be an investigation, but it looks like there was some kind of foul-up in supply. Nobody knew."

  I tried to sit up and couldn't. I was strapped to the bed.

  "Uh, don't," Dinnie said, putting her hand on my chest gently. "You've got five broken ribs and a punctured lung. You're lucky you didn't hit a major blood vessel. You were under that Chtorran for fifteen minutes before we got you out. You were on CPR maintenance for at least thirteen of those minutes."

  "Who-?"

  "Me. And you're lucky, buster, because I'm damned good at it. It's a good thing you took a step back before he fell on you, else I wouldn't have been able to reach your face with the mask-or your chest with the thumper. It took seven men to roll that Chtorran off. They wanted to flame it, but I wouldn't get out of the way. You can thank me later. They weren't too happy about it. Who have you got mad at you anyway? I never saw so many angry men with torches. But I don't abandon my patients. By the way, I think one of those broken ribs is mine. Don't ask. I couldn't be gentle. Oh, and you've also got a fractured kneecap. You were on the table five hours." She hesitated and then mouthed the words, "On purpose."

  "Huh?"

  She leaned over me to fluff my pillow, and as she did her mouth came very close to my ear. "Somebody didn't want me to save you," she whispered.

  "Huh?"

  "Sorry," she said out loud. "Here, let me fluff that better."

  Again, she whispered, "And they wanted to let you die on the table. But you're under medical protection here, and nobody's going to be allowed to see you without a nurse present. Me."

  "Uh . . ." I shut my mouth.

  Sitting back again, she said, "By the way, you may be a hero. Some of the doors in that room were jammed. No telling how many people that thing might have killed if you hadn't stopped it before the rest of the cavalry arrived."

  "Oh." I remembered the Chtorran swinging around and starting toward me, and suddenly, I was nauseous

  Dinnie saw the look of alarm on my face, and was there with a basin almost immediately. My stomach lurched and my throat convulsed-and there were cold iron claws digging into my chest

  "Here!" She shoved a pillow into my arms, wrapped me around it so it splinted my abdomen and chest. "Hang onto that." -nothing came up. I retched again, and then once more. Each time the pain dug into me again.

  "Don't worry about your incision-you're well-glued. I did it myself. You won't splatter."

  But the feeling had passed. The pain had blotted out the need to vomit.

  I looked at Dinnie. She grinned back. And in that moment, I resented her all over again. For her presumption of such familiarity. And then I felt guilty for resenting her when I owed her so much. And then I resented her for making me feel guilty.

  "How are you feeling now?"

  I took inventory. "I feel like shit."

  "Right. You look like it too." She got up then and went to the door and whistled. "Hey, Fido-!"

  A ROVER unit trundled in then and wheeled up to the bed. She plucked a handful of sensors out of the basket on top-they looked like poker chips-and started sticking them to various points on my chest and forehead, neck and arms. "Three for EKG, three for EEG, two for pressure and pulse, two for the pathologist, one for accounting and an extra one for luck," she said, reciting the nurse's mnemonic.

  "Accounting?" I asked.

  "Sure. It automatically checks your credit rating while you're lying there, so we know how much to charge."

  "Uh, yeah."

  She turned to the ROVER unit and studied its screen. "Well, bad news for your enemies. You'll live. But a word of advice: next time you try to make love to a Chtorran, you be the boy. You're a lot safer on top."

  She peeled off the sensors then and dropped them back into the basket. "I'll leave you now. Can you fall asleep by yourself, or do you want a buzz-box?"

  I shook my head.

  "Terrif. I'll be back with your breakfast."

  And then I was alone again. With my thoughts. I had a lot to think about. But I fell asleep before I could sort things out.

  THIRTY-SIX

  I WAS back in Whitlaw's classroom.

  I felt panicky. I hadn't studied for the test-I didn't even know there was to be one. And this was the final exam!

  I looked around. There were people here I didn't know, but as I looked at them, their faces solidified into familiarity. Shorty, Duke, Ted, Lizard, Marcie, Colonel Wallachstein, the Japanese lady, the dark fellow, Dinnie, Dr. Fromkin, Paul Jastrow, Maggie, Tim, Mark-and Dad. And then a lot of other people I didn't recognize. A little too many.

  Whitlaw was in front of the room, making sounds. They didn't make sense. I stood up and said so. He looked at me. They all looked at me. I was in the front of the classroom and Whitlaw was in my seat.

  A little girl in a brown dress was sitting in the front row. Next to her, just sliding up, a gigantic orange and red Chtorran. He turned his blackeyed gaze to me and seemed to settle down to listen.

  "C'mon, Jim!" Whitlaw hollered. "We're waiting!"

  I was angry. I didn't know why. "All right," I said. "Listen, I know I'm a screwup and an asshole. That part is obvious. But, see, what I've been doing is assuming that the rest of you aren't. I mean, here I am listening to you people making noises like you know what you're doing, and I've been believing you! What an asshole I am! The truth is, you people don't know what you're doing either-not any more than I do-so what I'm telling you is that my experience is just as valid, or just as invalid, as yours. But whatever it is, it's my experience, and I'm the one who's going to be responsible for it."

  They applauded. Whitlaw raised his hand. I pointed at him. He stood up. "It's about time," he said. He sat down.

  "You're the worst, Whitlaw!" I said. "You're so good at pouring your bullshit into other people's heads that it keeps floating to the top for years afterward. I mean, you gave us all these great belief systems about how to live our lives and then when we tried to plug into them, they didn't work. All they did was create inappropriate behavior."

  Whitlaw said, "You know better than that. I never gave you a belief system. What I gave you was the ability to be independent of a belief system, so you could deal with the facts as they happened to you."

  "Yeah? So how come every time I try to do that, you come in and give me another lecture?"

  Whitlaw said, "If you've been inviting me into your head and letting me run my lectures on you, that's your fault. It isn't me who's doing that. It's you. You're the one running those lectures. I'm dead, Jim.
I've been dead for two years. You know that. So quit asking me for advice. You're living in a world I know nothing about. Quit asking me for advice and you'll be a helluva lot better off. Or ask me for advice, if it's advice you want-and if it isn't appropriate, then ignore it. Get this, asshole: advice isn't the same as orders; it's only another option for a person to consider. All it's supposed to do is widen your perspective on the thing you're looking at. Use it that way. But don't blame me if you don't know how to listen."

  "Must you always be right?" I asked. "Sometimes it gets awfully annoying."

  Whitlaw shrugged. "Sorry, son. But that's the way you keep creating me."

  He was right. Again. He always would be. Because that was how I would always create him.

  There were no other hands. "Then we're clear? I'm running this life from now on? Right."

  I looked at the little girl in the brown dress. She didn't have a face. And then she did. It was Marcie's face ... and Jillanna's face ... and Lizard's face....

  I turned to the Chtorran. "I have some questions for you," I said.

  It nodded its eyes, and then looked into my face again. "Who are you?" I asked.

  The Chtorran spoke in a voice like a whisper. "I don't know," it said. "Yet."

  "What are you? Are you intelligent? Or what? Are you the invaders? Or the shock troops?"

  Again the Chtorran said, "I don't know."

  "What about the dome? Why was there a fourth Chtorran inside?"

  The Chtorran waved its eyes from side to side, the Chtorran equivalent of a headshake. "I don't know," it said, and its voice was louder. Like the wind.

  "How did you get here? Where are your spaceships?" "I don't know!" it said. And it was roaring now. "How can we talk to you-?"

  "I DON'T KNOW!" And it was raising up in front of me as if to attack

  "I AM IN CHARGE HERE!" I bellowed right back at him. "AND I WANT SOME ANSWERS!"

  "I DON'T KNOW!!" the Chtorran shrieked-and exploded into a thousand flaming pieces, destroying himself, destroying me, destroying the little girl sitting next to him, the classroom, Whitlaw, Shorty, all the people, everything-dropping it all into darkness....

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  TED WAS sitting in the chair, looking at me. His head was bandaged.

  "Did it get you too?" I asked.

  "Did what get me?"

  "The Chtorran. Your head is bandaged-did the Chtorran get you too?"

  He grinned. "Jim, it's Wednesday. I just had my surgery this morning. They wouldn't let me in to see you before this."

  "What surgery?" And then I remembered-"Oh!"-and came awake. "Wednesday?" I started to sit up, found I couldn't, and fell back into the bed. "Wednesday? Really?"

  "Yup."

  "Have I been unconscious for three days?"

  "No more than usual," Ted said. "You know, with you it's hard to tell sometimes." Then, seeing my expression, he added, "You've been floating in and out. You've also been heavily drugged. So's most everybody else. They've had so many casualties to treat that they just plugged everybody into their beds and kept them on maintenance. You're one of the first to wake up. I had to pull a few strings to do that. I wanted to have a chance to see you-to say goodbye."

  "Goodbye?"

  He touched the bandage around his head. "See? I had my surgery. They did the implant. I'm in the Telepathy Corps now. My transfer became official when the implant went in."

  "Is it working? Are you receiving?"

  Ted shook his head. "Not yet. Not for a while. First I have to go through a two-week training to learn how to experience myself more intensely. But I'm already sending. They're continually recording me, calibrating my connections and storing my sense of self so I won't lose touch with who I really am, all that kind of stuff. It gets very complex. The training is designed to rehabilitate your ability to experience. Do you know we spend most of our lives being unconscious, Jim? Before you can be a telepath, you have to wake up-it's like having a bucket of ice water thrown in your face. But it's incredible!"

  "I can see," I said guardedly. His eyes were bright. His face was shining. He looked like a man possessed with a vision.

  He laughed then-at himself. "I know-it sounds weird. To be a telepath is a daring adventure, Jim-you have to surrender yourself to the network. But it opens up a whole new world!"

  "Have you done any receiving yet?"

  "Just a little. Just enough so they would know that the connections were in. Jim, I know this sounds stupid, but I've been doing the most wonderful things! I tasted vanilla ice cream! That is, somebody else tasted it, but I tasted it with her! And I kissed a redhead. And I smelled a flower. And I touched a kitten. And an ice cube! Have you ever really felt what cold is?"

  I shook my head. I was startled by the change in Ted. What had they done to him? "Uh, why? What was the purpose?"

  "To see if I could experience things," he explained. He said it quietly. "You know-like pressure, heat, cold, taste, smell, vision -all that stuff. Once it's certain that the incoming linkage is working properly, then we test the broadcasting connections. Only first I have to train my natural ability to experience living. So I don't send spurious messages-like if I'm feeling cranky one day, it would color my perceptions. So I have to give that up. God, it's terrific! I love it!" He stopped and looked at me. "So, Jim. What's new with you?"

  I couldn't help it. I started giggling. "Well, I killed a Chtorran. Another one."

  "Yeah. I heard about that. I saw the tapes. It's been on all the news channels. You can't believe what's going on! It's the greatest game of uproar I've ever seen."

  "Really?"

  "It's the best! It's the funniest political circus since the vicepresident was found in bed with the attorney general. Everybody's running around and screaming that the sky is falling, and why isn't somebody doing something about it? The Africans are the most upset. They lost some of their loudest mouthpieces."

  "Wow," I said. "Who?"

  "Well, Drs. T!Kung and T!kai-and Dr. Kwong, the one you had the argument with."

  I snorted, remembering. "It's poetic justice. Who else? I saw Lizard in the audience. Was she hurt?"

  "Who?"

  "Major Tirelli. The chopper pilot."

  "Oh, her. No, I saw her at the funeral. They had a mass service for the victims. Cremated the remains in case the Chtorran bite had bugs in it."

  "Oh. Good."

  Neither of us said anything for a moment. We just looked at each other. His face was glowing. He looked like a very shy schoolboy, eager and excited. He did not look like the same person.

  In that moment, I found myself actually liking him. "So," he said. "How do you feel?"

  "Fine, I guess. Numb." I smiled. "How about yourself?"

  "Pretty good. A little scared."

  I studied his face. He looked back at me unashamedly. I said, "You know, we haven't had much time to talk since we got here." He nodded.

  "This may be the last time I get to talk to you."

  "Yeah, it may be."

  "Yeah," I said. "I wanted to tell you how pissed I was at you. That I thought you were acting like a real asshole."

  "S'funny. I was thinking the same about you."

  "Yeah. But I guess-I just want you to know that I-uh, I appreciate you. A lot."

  He looked embarrassed. "Yeah. Me too." And then he did something uncharacteristic for him. He came over to the bed, sat down on it, leaned over me and hugged me gently. He looked into my eyes, leaned down and kissed me once, very lightly on the lips. He brushed my cheek with his hand.

  "If I never see you again-" he said, "-and there is that possibility-if I never see you again, I want you to know this. I do love you. You're an asshole most of the time, and I love you in spite of yourself." He kissed me again, and this time I didn't resist it. There were tears in my eyes and I didn't know why.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIS TIME, when I awoke, it was daylight.

  And the Very Reverend Honorable Dr. Daniel Joseph Fromkin was s
itting quietly in a chair studying me.

  I raised my head and looked at him. He nodded. I looked around the room. The blinds were drawn, and afternoon sunlight filtered through the narrow vertical slats. Dust motes danced in the beams.

  "What day is it?"

  "Thursday," he said. He was wearing a muted coppery-gold suit -almost, but not quite, a uniform. Where had I seen-oh, I got it. Mode. He was a Modie.

  "I didn't know that," I said.

  He saw that my glance was on his tunic. He nodded an acknowledgment and asked, "How are you feeling?"

  I looked. I wasn't feeling anything. "Empty," I said. I wondered if I was still under the influence of the drug. Or its after effects.

  "Anything else?" asked Fromkin.

  "Naked. As if I've been stripped and held up for display. I have memories that I'm not sure actually happened or if I just dreamed them."

  "Uh huh," he said. "Anything else?"

  "Angry. I think."

  "Good. Anything else?"

  "No, I don't think so."

  "Great." He said, "I'm here to debrief you. Are you up to it?" He looked at me expectantly.

  "No."

  "Fine." He rose to leave.

  "Wait a minute."

  "Yes?"

  "I'll talk. I have some questions of my own." He raised an eyebrow at me. "Oh?"

  "Will you answer them?"

  He said, "Yes. As a matter of fact, I am authorized to answer your questions."

  "Honestly?"

  He nodded his head slowly. "If I can."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It means I'll tell you the truth as I know it. Is that all right?"

  "It'll have to do."

  He looked impatient. "What's the question?"

  "All right. Why was I set up to be killed?"

  Fromkin sat down again. He looked at me. "Were you?"

  "You know I was! That Chtorran was supposed to get me too. That's why I was assigned there-so when the glass broke, I'd be the first. I wasn't supposed to have a working weapon, was I? Except I took the manual and went out to the range and familiarized myself with the gun. So it didn't work, did it?"