“Eh? You want to, to spend the night?”
She kissed him long and unsteadily, getting little response. “Well, if you … yes, of course you may.” His face grew still fierier. He stared straight before him, hands passive in his lap. “However, don’t expect—I mean, you know, a hard day, a terrible experience, not to mention awareness of being spied on. I’d scarcely be up to, uh—”
She cast herself across him. “Oh, you poor lamb! Do you think I care what happens, as long as it’s us two?”
According to her wish, they undressed; according to his, they turned off the light. They lay for an uncounted while in each other’s arms, hardly stirring. But then she began to caress him, slowly undemandingly, but more and more intimately. “What?” he whispered. “It’s just my way. You mind?” she answered in endless gentleness.
“No—no—sure, Gayle, whatever you want—”
There was no haste. She had never been one to hurry things, nor to insist on any particular outcome of them. She only lay against him, fondling, sleepily purring a little. At last he began to fondle her in his turn.
There was not even any exact moment when she took him into herself. When they were done, he lay with his head between her breasts and wept for happiness.
And the hell with Haverner.
The master grimaced. “Disgusting,” he muttered to himself.
He switched off the receiver, leaving the recorder on in case he later wished to know just what had happened next. Quite likely he would not; he had never approved of pornography. If only Shaddock and Thayer had had a fight, like that beauty which Petrie maneuvered Rance into …!
Seeking refreshment before he retired, he went to a window. It stood open on a mild night, so that he heard the surf afar, like a voice that whispered to him. Above the distant heights, some starlit pieces of cloud hinted at a face.
“You are disappointed,” Samael said.
“Well, yes,” Haverner admitted.
“Why? Was our objective not to discover what the subjects would do under these extraordinary circumstances—whatever it might be?”
Haverner sighed. “I suppose that was, is, your aim. Mine … Very well, I thought of this experiment as a testing to destruction.”
It was as if the face smiled. “That will probably come tomorrow.”
“We’ll see. You did have some excellent suggestions.”
“Which you will get to watch enacted in person, if you like.”
He gnawed his lip. “Unfortunately, no. The real action will take place inside their heads, where I cannot go.”
“I do not think,” said Samael, “that tomorrow even you would want to go there.”
JULIA PETRIE
Dawn stands white over the sea. It nearly drowns a sickle of dying moon. Westward, where the land rises in formless black tree-masses, the sky is still purple and a few stars Unger, tiny and icy. Birds have begun to twitter here and there. Lawns and flowers are one glitter of dew. A breath of salt air brings surfsong and coolness to clothe me.
Look, look well. Inhale the odors, taste the wind, hear the gravel beneath your striding feet. Feel that motion, the infinite subtle interplay of nerve and muscle. Gather in all the reality you can, to take down where you are bound.
The veranda is shadowy, but windows are aglow in the house. My time is almost come. I go around to the patio and enter the dining room by its French doors. (Smells of coffee and bacon, purity of linen and silver, startling orange of an egg yolk.) Sunderland Haverner is there, Ellis Nordberg and nobody else. Surprising. I expected Larry would sulk, ostentatiously avoiding me, and that that Gayle slattern would oversleep, whatever her intentions. But isn’t Byron interested?
“Good morning, Mrs. Petrie,” says the terrible old man. “I hear you rose two hours ago.”
“Yes, I wanted a walk,” I say, not telling him why, though doubtless he knows. Exercise, wide-open senses, the right preparation for what waits. Or so I think.
“You have breakfasted, then?”
“Yes.” (It is best not to have much undigested food in the stomach under the conditions I plan.) I slipped the help a substantial tip for making them begin early. Well, I can afford it. Regardless of what happens, I’ve half a million dollars, free and clear.
Ellis, primly dressed, wets his lips. A faint film of sweat stands on his forehead. Good. The more ill at ease he is, the better. I give him my most poisonous politeness. “You’ve said you needed the entire sum for your purposes, Mr. Nordberg. That’s become impossible. Do you want to resign and save yourself trouble?”
The look I get! Technically it’s nonsense that eyes have expression; it’s the tissue around them. But blanched blue hates me from behind its glass. “No,” he forces out of his mouth.
I knew beforehand. Half a million is better than none. Besides, he wants to impress Haverner. You’d like being pilot fish to our great cold shark, wouldn’t you, Ellis?
“Don’t blame me for any consequences, then.” I trust he understands what I am really saying: You are a murderer, Ellis Nordberg; two men are dead because of you; I mean to whip you, and I hope to do you harm in the process.
Glancing at my watch, perhaps too elaborately, I tell them, “In ten minutes, gentlemen. The living room. I’ll be there.”
Anselmo already is. He surprises me by rising from his couch and bowing. “ ’Ow do you do, Meessees Petrie?” His smile actually seems to have warmth. Why? Well, he knows what my game will be. He knows better than I do. Doubtless he likes me not only for staying the course, but for deliberately invoking horror at its end, when I could have decreed something nominal and taken my safe five hundred thousand. I’ve shown him … What’s the female equivalent of cojones? We’re equals of a sort, this huntsman and I.
I see the slim black box on a table beside us. I know what’s inside, and my heart stumbles. Almost convulsively, I take his hand. “Wish me luck,” I say.
“Vaya con Díos,” he answers low.
Can you go with God into hell?
You can into heaven. Maybe. Can I force this journey of mine to be in that direction? Do I dare? No, it’s practically certain that’ll be impossible anyway. I asked Haverner to design a hell for us, and he’s good at that. ’
Light strengthens in the windows. Haverner’s cane replies to my heart. He limps in, nods, settles himself where Anselmo was. I don’t imagine he’ll stay for more than the beginning of our battle. Or will he? I can imagine him hovering over us like a vulture over two corpses…. Stop it, Julia! The one place he cannot follow you is into your head, where all the hells and heavens are.
Ellis, entering behind him (of course), stiffens to a halt. His eyes seek mine, recoil, rush about. “Well?” be barks. “Well? What’s your game? Let’s get started. Sooner we get started, the sooner we can end this fool”—remembering Haverner —“this experiment.”
I savor each word. “It’s quite simple, Nordberg. And quite scientific. You’re in favor of science and technology, aren’t you? Here’s a little applied chemistry.”
His look finds the box and is caught by it.
“Open that, please, Anselmo,” I say. The brown hands snap back the lid. Two loaded hypodermic needles lie on red velvet. Does Ellis guess the truth at once? He chokes on a breath. I feel enough glee at his discomfiture to cover— almost—my own fears.
“Choose your weapon,” I say. “Either of those, loaded with a thousand-microgram solution of lysergic acid diethylamide. You’ve heard of it under the name LSD.”
“What?” He throws his hands aloft before he whirls on the devil to whom I have sold a part interest in my soul. “Mr. Haverner, no!” he yammers. “What is this … I mean, an illegal drug, a dangerous drug!”
Haverner does not condescend to explain once more that here the law is his whim and nothing else.
Red and white mottle Ellis’s face beneath the scraps of peeling skin which are Orestes’s memento mori to him. “It’s not fair! Some hippie like her, used to those things.”
“The dossier on Mrs. Petrie gives be no reason to doubt her,” says Haverner, playing the fish. “She discussed her idea with me some time ago, and I decided it was entirely acceptable. True, her background gives her more information about this substance and its effects than most rivals could be expected to have. That is an advantage. However, I believe it’s counteracted by the fact that both of you will receive identical dosages and you, Mr. Nordberg, have the greater body weight.” He yanks deftly to drive in the hook. “To be sure, you may elect to forfeit the contest.”
Ellis’s head swings from Haverner’s faint geniality to Anselmo’s impassivity to whatever is in me. He has to wet his lips twice before he can ask, “What’s the plan? What do we do?”
“You will receive your injections,” Haverner says. “This is to make any cheating impossible, as might occur if the drag were taken by mouth in the usual way. Going directly into the bloodstream, the chemical has almost immediate effect. It will peak in about four hours, thereafter declining. Most persons get back to normal in twenty-four hours or less from the start.”
I wish he hadn’t felt it necessary to tell the snake that. Knowing roughly what to expect can be a help. I add, “You should be warned, Nordberg, there may be recurring hallucinations for several days. And there’s always the risk of permanent damage.”
Haverner frowns. “Rare,” he says, “at any rate in subjects who are not habituated. The chances are excellent that, by this time tomorrow, you will be yourselves again.” Damn him, he is being fair.
“Then what—” Ellis rallies, squares his shoulders, flings out a nearly self-possessed question. “What’s the purpose? She can’t just mean for us to sit around giggling.”
What a relief! Haverner forgets, or (does he ever forget to do anything?) does not see fit to say that the outward signs of LSD are much more controllable than those of alcohol. Some who came to us at the hospital showed no traces whatsoever; they only told us that demons were loose in their skulls, and pleaded for help in curiously flat, objective voices.
People tend to act out their expectations. If Ellis expects to become the maundering maniac of popular mythology …
“No,” says Haverner. “What she asked was for me to devise ways to make this a, ah, a difficult time. After all, the commonest reaction to LSD is a sense of ecstasy, mystical awareness, childlike marvel, or something else equally absurd. Mrs. Petrie wanted me to try to assure a bad trip, as they call it. Needless to say, she has been given no hint of what I have planned.”
“That is,” I put in, “Anselmo’s more our leader today than I am. Or, m-m, Mr. Haverner himself if he chooses, but I guess mostly Anselmo. We do whatever we’re told. Only we mustn’t speak. The first one who balks, or asks for help, or passes out, or screams, or otherwise shows he can’t stand the gaff, loses.”
Ellis replies like a lash. “Does that include you?”
Ouch! “No, certainly not. I’m just giving you your chance at half the prize.”
And myself the chance of punishing you, murderer, and of denying you the money you’d use to buy further evil, or the closeness to horrible Haverner you might also gain. Haverner’s empire mustn’t have an heir, it’s got to die with him. My banner is flying; my sword is aloft. If I’ve had to do dishonorable things, it’s been for an honorable end that includes more than saving my little girl….
Oh, yes, true, it also includes that independence which the additional half million will nail down for Malcolm and me. He could do so much, given this; and I—I could do whatever it may be I desire.
Whip my enemy onward! “Take off your coat, Nordberg, and roll up your sleeve. The game is beginning.”
He glares, I hear his raw breath for seconds before he yells, “All right, harlot!”
Oh, my, oh, my. I have got him going, haven’t I, if he starts off on Bible language this early in the morning?
I, in a loose comfortable dashiki-like gown, lift a fold of cloth to bare my own left arm. Anselmo glances from Ellis to me. “Either one,” Ellis rasps. “Damn you.” With a slight, amused shrug, Anselmo picks up a hypodermic and glides to me.
His left thumb and forefinger pinch the flesh. It is a virgin needle that enters me. I hardly feel the prick. Anselmo is skilled at this kind of shooting, too. My heart bangs. Suddenly, well-nigh overwhelmingly, I’m aware of him, his sinewy clasp and the smells of leather, gun oil, man.
He lets me go. Through an east window I see the sun come out of the waters, one enormous blaze. “Remember,” I say, “we follow orders strictly, and we don’t make a sound unless we’re told to.”
Ellis stares away from the needle while he’s injected. His fists are clenched as if to rip the skin across the knuckles. “I’ll outlast you, you bitch,” he vows. “The Lord is with me.”
I could declare that that cost him the game. But no, Haverner would surely overrule me. How hard Ellis tried not to flinch when he was penetrated!
My skin tingles a little. Am I really getting disoriented, or is this simple nervousness, hyperventilation, my frightened body at war with itself?
Be at ease, Julia, be at ease. Sit down, since nobody has forbidden it. Never forget, the anticipation of a bad trip is a powerful factor in bringing one on. Remember, you told Haverner not to subject us to anything physically dangerous. You did. Didn’t you?
No matter. It’s cool in here, and faintly murmurous from the sea. Or the air conditioning? No, must be the sea, the Mother, singing to me. Have I ever heard Her in this room before? Well, LSD does open the perceptions. Feel the couch underneath my shoulders, back, buttocks, thighs, cradling each last least muscle in a softness like Kilby. See how yonder sunbeam slants gold through a window, dust motes dancing in it that are stars, stars and planets dancing in the radiance of God. (Call It God until It reveals Its true name.) Nordberg has taken a chair. By rolling my head in time with a star, I can thrust both him and Haverner out of sight. Anselmo passes across my view with his panther gait.
I smile at him. His return glance is appreciative. Okay, I enjoy displaying myself to him. Wish I’d specified nudity today. No harm in that. My sex life was lousy, this past couple of years, till I came here. It should become good again when I return in triumph, but I don’t kid myself that everything can be healed overnight. Let me strut a tiny bit before that handsome stud.
Larry—
No. You’re done with Larry Rance. You eased him out quite neatly.
You might cop a feel on me as you go by, Anselmo. I wouldn’t mind.
He passes from sight. Oh, well, probably for the best. Adultery may be addictive. You’ve done what was necessary, Julia. To do more would be the real unfaith. Though Malcolm—
Watch the world, Julia, while you can, before you enter your madness.
That’s what it is. Even (the more rational) regular users admit that what LSD creates is either schizophrenia or the next thing to it. A thousand micrograms is a heavy dose; let’s see, I had it figured out as thirty-five millionths of an ounce, didn’t I? Less than that will jam the circuits and scramble the programs of this ten-million-million-unit computer we carry around in its bony box to love and grieve and declare, “I am.” Well, it doesn’t take a very much heavier blood clot in the right place to dam off every reality.
Careful, careful. You’re hoping Ellis Nordberg will have more brittlenesses than you do. But don’t strain yours. You’ve planned this. You kno
w a few techniques. Relax. Think happy thoughts. Watch the music billow golden through the sunbeam. See Anselmo again, off to fetch something. The sun is in him.
Golden, golden. Whatever happens, half a million dollars. (Unless your mind breaks … No! It won’t! I feel good. I begin to see why acidheads do.) That kind of sum you don’t put in a savings bank for a pittance of interest; it commands a return that stays well ahead of inflation, and it hires experts to minimize the taxes. No problem about having Kilby’s machine at home, with extra equipment and a specialist standing by. She’ll be so much happier—less unhappy?—so. much happier. I hear the machine happily humming in the sun.
Malcolm, our financial monkey off his back and a chunk of investment in capital in hand, should soon be making even better money than that, of course. He won’t sit idle. Dear earnest Malcolm! I miss you, sweetheart. Why are you wearing Larry Rance’s head?
Or Ken’s? No, it isn’t Ken who’s touching off the soft little flames that dance across me and in me, red, red, and gold. Not really. I told you, Malcolm, in honesty, I told you I was no virgin, that I’d lived with one other man before we met, you and I. What I never told you was how much I was on the rebound from the final disaster of it. Ken and I, we weren’t a possible pair; I learned the hard way that bronze curls, clean profile, and football player’s muscles aren’t enough, but sometimes, Malcolm, I’ve closed my eyes and pretended you were him.
Shall I now? There he is, right in that picture frame. No, that’s Larry. Hang on, hang on. Stop crowding them out of the universe, Larry. There’s room for everybody in the singing. It is everybody. You’ve got to be out there somewhere, Malcolm.
Whoever you’ve been making love to in Manhattan, have you sometimes pretended she was me? Go screw with Larry, you girl, and let me have Malcolm back. Where is he?
We can repair what we’ve had. Can’t we, Malcolm? We’re intelligent, unprejudiced, realistic adults. We’re joined by Kilby, and by those further children we may have, and by the joy we used to find in each other and will again, again, again, children around us, a tide of children; we’re drowning in them but where’s Kilby? Kilby died!
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