Vertigo

by Bob Shaw

  “Al,” he said finally, “why are you telling me all this?”

  Werry looked slightly nonplussed. “I thought you would want to know — after what you’ve seen at my place — but I’ve probably got it wrong.”

  “No, naturally I’d be concerned about a friend’s problems — it’s just that I’ve no idea of anything to say which might help.”

  Werry gave him a wan smile. “Who said I wanted help, Rob? I’d need to care about things being wrong before I could care about getting them put right.” He finished his half-litre of beer and signalled a waiter at the other side of the room to bring a replacement.

  Hasson gazed at him for a moment, then took refuge in a classical British non-sequitur. “Do you think there’ll be any change in the weather?”

  As soon as they got back to the house Hasson went up to his room and locked the door. The bed had been neatly made up and somebody had drawn back the curtains to admit the days snow- reflected brilliance. He set his new purchases out on a tallboy, selected a cassette and dropped it into a slot on the television set. Gratifyingly familiar music seeped into the air and under the set’s proscenium tiny figures began to act out a domestic comedy, part of a series he had watched in England only twelve months earlier. He drew the curtains together, shed his outer clothing and got into the beds stoically waiting for the spasms in his back to subside. The artificial world of the television stage occupied his entire field of vision. It was as though he had retreated through time and space, back into his previous life, and he felt safe.

  He had completed a day and a half of rest and recuperation and the thought of three further months of same kind of thing was unbearable. It was much better to be curled up in a womb-cave of eider, and to submerge his mind in the dreaming of other men’s dreams.

  six

  Contrary to Hasson’s fears and expectations, his new life in quite abruptly Tripletree became easy to bear.

  One of the things which came to his rescue was a kind of variable time effect he had noticed previously when visiting a foreign country on leave. He had a theory that personal time was not measured by the clock, but by the number of fresh sensory impressions recorded by the mind. On the first day or two of a vacation, especially if the surroundings were very different to those of his daily norm, he continually experienced new sensations and those days seemed almost endless. The vacation felt as though it would go on for ever. Suddenly, however, the new environment became familiar, the number and frequency of surprise encounters with undiluted reality decreased, the mind returned to its customary complacency — and as soon as that state of consciousness was reached the remaining days of the holiday flickered by like on a speeded-up projector.

  Hasson’s theory had always depressed him a little because it both explained and confirmed the existence of a phenomenon described to him by his father — the acceleration of subjective time during later life. He had always sworn to himself that he would never get into a sense-numbing, mind-deadening rut, that he would never let the months and seasons and years slip through his fingers, but all at once he found the process working to his advantage. Time began to go faster, and the demands of each day grew less.

  Keeping his is promise to Oliver Pan, he began taking large spoonfuls of powdered brewer’s yeast. At first he found the bitter, tongue- substance almost impossible to swallow and had to swill it down with glasses of fruit juice. An immediate effect was that he became so bloated with internal gas production was that he had difficulty in bending over, but Oliver had told him in advance that such a symptom would be proof of how much he needed the yeast’s rich supply of B-vitamins. Placing his faith in Oliver’s advice, he persevered with the yeast, rehearsing in his mind what he could remember from the impromptu lecture on its value as a source of anti-stress vitamins, biotin, cholin, folic acid, inositol, niacin, nucleic acid, pantothenic acid, iron, phosphorus and whole protein, as well as the complete B- vitamin complex. None of the biochemical terms had much meaning for Hasson, but two days after beginning the treatment he awoke to find that the mouth ulcers — which had plagued him for months — had vanished without trace. That benefit alone, he decided, was worth anything that Oliver was going to charge him.

  He also began chewing tiny fragments of the ginseng root twice a day. It was a dark reddish-brown in colour, almost as tough as high-impact plastic, and tasted vaguely of grass. Hasson failed to see what good it could do him, but after his success with the mouth ulcers he was more than willing to give all of Oliver’s recommendations a fair trial. His digestion improved, the gaseous pressure faded from his abdomen, his appetite returned, and in a short time he rediscovered a simple pleasure — that of looking forward to meals.

  The food provided in the Werry household was not always to Hasson’s taste, but in the middle of his second week there Ginny Carpenter — who had maintained her attitude of casual hostility towards him — departed on unspecified family business for a stay in Vancouver. May Carpenter did most of the cooking after that, and although she had her own set of culinary shortcomings these were more than compensated for in Hasson’s view by the absence of her mother. It turned out that May had a part-time job in the office of a plant-hire company in Tripletree. She went to it four days a week, which meant that when Theo was at school Hasson had the house to himself, an arrangement which suited him perfectly.

  He continued to spend as much time as possible watching television in his room, but in spite of his avowed wish to keep the shutters closed on the world he found himself thinking more and more about the real-life problems of his hosts. Al Werry, after his strange Saturday morning confessional in the downtown bar, reverted to his normal persona, going about his business with his suggestion of a swagger, looking fit and cheerful and competent, the picture of a well-adjusted career cop. He oversaw the activities of his minuscule force with a breezy carelessness which seemed not to have been affected by anything that had been said by Buck Morlacher.

  Hasson was surprised to note that Morlacher — after having impinged on his life three times in rapid succession, each time looking more like a volcano on the point of eruption — had quieted down and virtually effaced himself from the scene. He wondered if Morlacher’s change of attitude was simply due to the fact that the big man had other business interests and only got around to bedevilling Werry on occasion, or if it was something to do with May Carpenter. It was difficult for Hasson to be certain, but he had a feeling that the relationship between the two had developed since the encounter he had witnessed from the bathroom, and he became intrigued with the problem of determining what sort of person actually lived behind May’s facade of primitive, uncomplicated sexuality.

  According to Werry the facade was all there was. It was a judgement Hasson had thought to be unfair and insensitive, but as the days wore on he began to accept the fact that it was impossible to hold any kind of conversation with May. It began to appear to him that she was a gorgeous female android with only two modes of operation — signalling a romantic interest in the men she met, and actually indulging that interest. Hasson, perhaps by failing to make the correct responses, had confused the identification processes and caused himself to be placed in a category with which the mechanism was not programmed to deal. At times he felt guilty over thinking about another human being in such terms and decided that the failure in communications was due to his own real inadequacies, rather than those he imagined in May, but that insight — if insight it was — had no material effect on their relationship or lack of it. It appeared that she was prepared to deal with him only on her own terms and those terms were unacceptable to Hasson, partly out of consideration for Al Werry, partly because a remnant of pride would not allow him to stand in line with Buck Morlacher.

  His relationship with Theo Werry became equally stagnant and unproductive, although in that case Hasson knew exactly what was wrong. The boy had all of the young male’s natural respect for strength and courage, a respect which perhaps was enhanced by his handicap, and it was e
asy to guess the opinion he had formed of Hasson. In addition, the generation gap had been yawning between them ever since Hasson had put forward his views about angels in general, and their shared interests in music and literature were unable to bridge it.

  Hasson chose to bide his time with Theo, watching closely for the first sign of encouragement, but the boy remained aloof, spending much of his free time in his bedroom. On a number of occasions as Hasson was going along the darkened landing he saw the door to Theo’s room being limned with brief flashes of light, but he passed on his way each time, forcing himself to ignore the distress beacon, knowing that any attempt to answer it would be regarded as an intrusion. Once, well after midnight, he thought he heard a voice in the room and hesitated at the door, wondering if Theo could be having a nightmare. The sound died away almost immediately and Hasson passed on his way back to his television set, saddened by the idea that even the spurious vision of bad dreams could be cherished by a blind person.

  As the new pattern of his life became a routine Hasson welcomed the dulling of his perceptions. Monotony was a mind-sapping drug to which he quickly became addicted and he drew comfort from a rapidly growing conviction that nothing of any significance would ever happen to him again, that night and day would continue to merge into the undemanding and featureless grey blur of eternity.

  He was, therefore, taken by surprise by two miracles which occurred within a few days of each other.

  The first miracle was external to Hasson and concerned the weather. For perhaps a week he was dimly aware of great changes taking place out of doors, of the light softening and the air growing warmer, of the sounds of trickling water replacing the night-time stillness. On the television there were reports of floods from other parts of the country, and once when Hasson looked out of his window he saw adults and children engaged in a British-style snowball fight in a nearby garden — an indication that the nature of the snow itself had changed. It had ceased being a light dry powder and now could be moulded into solidity, a mock-solidity which heralded its oncoming dissolution.

  And then Hasson got up one morning to find that the long Albertan summer had begun.

  Conditioned as he was to the protracted and uncertain seasons of the Western European seaboard, to the reluctant, ragged retreat of winter and the equally hesitant advance of milder weather, Hasson was scarcely able to comprehend what had happened. He was standing at his window looking out at a transformed world whose dominant colours were greens and yellows when he became aware of the fact that a second miracle had taken place.

  There was no pain.

  He had wakened and had risen from his bed without pain, accepting the condition as instinctively and unthinkingly as a creature of the wild stirring itself in response to the light of dawn. Hasson turned away from the window and looked down at himself, feeling the morning sunlight warm on his back, and made a few tentative movements like a gymnast limbering up for a display. There was no pain. He crossed to the bed, lay on it and got up again, proving to himself that he was a whole man. There was no pain. He touched his toes, then rotated his trunk so that he could touch the back of each heel with the opposite hand. There was no pain.

  Hasson looked all around the bedroom, breathing deeply, the sudden possessor of untold riches, and made further discoveries. The room seemed more homely — its framed photographs nothing more than signs of family occupancy — but it had also grown too small. It was a suitable place for sleeping in at night, but there was a huge country outside, unexplored and intriguing, full of new places to visit, new sights to see, people to meet, food and drink to enjoy, fresh air to breathe…

  With a rush of pleasure and gratitude, Hasson found he could contemplate the future without flinching, with no welling up of the darkness of the soul. He could anticipate reading, listening to music, swimming, attending parties, meeting girls, going to the theatre, perhaps even strapping on a CG harness and…

  No !

  The icy prickling on his forehead made Hasson realise he had gone too far. For a moment he had allowed himself to remember fully what it was like to stand on an invisible peak of nothingness, to look down at his booted feet and see them outlined clear and sharp against a background of fuzzy pastel geometries, to alter the focus of the eyes and translate that background into a dizzy, detailed spread of city blocks and squares many kilometres below, with rivers like twists of lead stapled by bridges, and ground cars shrunk to specks and halted by distance on white threads of concrete. He shook his head, dismissing the vision, and began to make plans whose scope did not extend beyond his own mortal capabilities.

  Several days went by in which he was content to consolidate his new position, days in which he held himself ready to experience a mental and physical relapse. The bedroom which had once been a haven of security was mildly claustrophobic now. He reduced his time at the television set to an hour or two before going to bed, and instead began taking walks which were brief at first but which soon lasted three or more hours.

  One of his first expeditions was to the health food store, where Oliver Fan gave him a single appraising glance and, without allowing him time to speak, said, “Good! Now that you’ve discovered some of the benefits of proper diet I can begin to make some real money out of you.”

  “Hold on,” Hasson replied, feeling an ingenuous pleasure over the fact that his state of well-being was noticeable. “I admit I’m feeling better, but what makes you so sure your stuff had anything to do with it? How do I know I wasn’t naturally on the point of picking up a little?”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “All I’m saying is that there must be a natural tendency to…

  “To get over illness and injury? There is. Homeostasis is the word for what you’re talking about, Mr Haldane. It’s a powerful force, but we can assist it or hold it back — as in the case of those painful little moon craters in your mouth that you had for months and haven’t got any more.” Oliver shrugged expressively. “But if you feel you haven’t had value for money…”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Hasson said, reaching into his pocket.

  Oliver grinned. “I know you didn’t — you were just showing that you’re no longer afraid of me.”

  “Afraid?”

  “Yes. The day you first walked in here you were afraid of everybody in the world, including me. Please try to remember that, Mr Haldane, because when you’re making a journey it’s very important to know where you started from.”

  “I remember it.” Hasson stared at the little Asian for a moment, then an impulse extended his hand. Oliver shook hands with him in silence.

  Hasson remained in the store for more than an hour, waiting in the background while other customers were being served, fascinated by Oliver’s discourses on alternative medicine. At the end of the time he was still not entirely certain about Oliver’s credentials and his fund of anecdotal case histories, but he was carrying a bag filled with new additions to his daily diet, the chief of which were live yoghurt and wheat germ. He also took with him the conviction that he had made a genuine friend, and in the days that followed he began calling regularly at the store, often just for the conversation. In spite of his professed commercialism, Oliver seemed happy enough with that arrangement and Hasson began to suspect that he himself was providing material for yet another dietetic dossier. He had no objections to that, and in fact had to fight off a fulfilling-of-the-prophecy syndrome which tempted him to give Oliver exaggerated reports of his progress.

  The progress itself, however, was genuine and exhilarating. There were occasional psychological fiat spots, reminders that elation was not a normal state of mind, but — as Dr Colebrook had predicted for him — Hasson found he could handle them with increasing confidence and skill. He extended his programme of exercise to cover walks which lasted six or eight hours and took him many kilometres into the hilly terrain which lay to the north and west of the city. On those days he carried food he had prepared for himself, and during the lunch breaks would
read and re-read an early copy of Leacock’s Literary Lapses that he found in a store in Tripletree.

  He had bought the book with the intention of being prepared for a reconciliation with Theo, but the boy had kept up his barriers of reserve and Hasson had been too intent on his own affairs to try pressing the matter. In the process of recovery he became almost as obsessive and self-centred as he had been during the illness, pursuing fitness with a miserly lust, and in that state of mind the problems of others receded into unimportance. He knew for example, that the return of warm weather had made the fantastic eyrie of the Chinook Hotel a much more habitable place at night, and that there had been a corresponding increase in the activities of the young fliers who used it as a headquarters. He was aware of AL Werry fretting about empathin parties in the tower, and the growing frequency of offences which air police jargon reduced to convenient sets of initials (AC, aerial collision: TDO, transportation of dense objects: AD, aerial defecation) — but which represented a genuine social menace — and none of it had any significance for him. He was isolated from the rest of humanity — just as surely as when hovering on the high threshold of space — fighting a private war, and had no reserves for anything else.

  The closest he came to involvement was one morning when climbing a high saddle back to the west of the city, trying for a view of the Lesser Slave and Utikuma Lakes. A huge silence lay over the land, undisturbed by insects in that early part of the summer. There was no visible trace of human existence and it was possible to imagine that time moved at a slower pace here, that the last of the Pleistocene glaciers had barely retreated and the first of the Mongoliform tribes had yet to pick their way across the Bering Strait from the west.