He said, “Yes,” and his mouth was very dry. He didn’t know whether it came out as an articulate monosyllable or not, and he wetted his lips and tried again. He said, “Yes, I’m afraid so, Clare.”
“Why?”
He couldn’t make himself turn to look at her, he stared blindly ahead. He said, “I—I can’t tell you, Clare. But it’s the only thing I can do. It’s best for both of us.”
“Tell me one thing, George. Are you really going away? Or was that just an excuse?”
“It’s true. I’m going away; I don’t know for how long. But don’t ask me where, please. I can’t tell you that.”
“Maybe I can tell you, George. Do you mind if I do?”
He minded all right; he minded terribly. But how could he say so? He didn’t say anything, because he couldn’t say yes, either.
They were beside the park now, the little neighborhood park that was only a block square and didn’t offer much in the way of privacy, but which did have benches. And he steered her—or she steered him; he didn’t know which—into the park and they sat down on a bench. There were other people in the park, but not too near till he hadn’t answered her question.
She sat very close to him on the bench. She said, “You’ve been worried about your mind, haven’t you George?”
“Well—yes, in a way, yes, I have.”
“And you’re going away has something to do with that, hasn’t it? You’re going somewhere for observation or treatment, or both?”
“Something like that. It’s not as simple as that, Clare, and I—I just can’t tell you about it.”
She put her hand on his hand, lying on his knee. She said, “I knew it was something like that, George. And I don’t ask you to tell me anything about it.
“Just—just don’t say what you meant to say. Say so-long instead of good-bye. Don’t even write me, if you don’t want to. But don’t be noble and call everything off here and now, for my sake. At least wait until you’ve been wherever you’re going. Will you?”
He gulped. She made it sound so simple when actually it was so complicated. Miserably he said, “All right, Clare. If you want it that way.”
Abruptly she stood up. “Let’s get back, George.” He stood beside her. “But it’s early.”
“I know, but sometimes—Well, there’s a psychological moment to end a date, George. I know that sounds silly, but after what we’ve said, wouldn’t it be—uh—anticlimactic—to—”
He laughed a little. He said, “I see what you mean.”
They walked back to her home in silence. He didn’t know whether it was happy or unhappy silence; he was too mixed up for that.
On the shadowed porch, in front of the door, she turned and faced him. “George,” she said. Silence.
“Oh, damn you, George; quit being so noble or whatever you’re being. Unless, of course, you don’t love me. Unless this is just an elaborate form of—of runaround you’re giving me. Is it?”
There were only two things he could do. One was run like hell. The other was what he did. He put his arms around her and kissed her. Hungrily.
When that was over, and it wasn’t over too quickly, he was breathing a little hard and not thinking too clearly, for he was saying what he hadn’t meant to say at all, “I love you, Clare. I love you; I love you.”
And she said, “I love you, too, dear. You’ll come back to me, won’t you?” And he said, “Yes. Yes.”
It was four miles or so from her home to his rooming house, but he walked, and the walk seemed to take only seconds.
He sat at the window of his room, with the light out, thinking, but the thoughts went in the same old circles they’d gone in for three years.
No new factor had been added except that now he was going to stick his neck out, way out, miles out. Maybe, just maybe, this thing was going to be settled one way or the other.
Out there, out his window, the stars were bright diamonds in the sky. Was one of them his star of destiny? If so, he was going to follow it, follow it even into the madhouse if it led there. Inside him was a deeply rooted conviction that this wasn’t accident, that it wasn’t coincidence that had led to his being asked to tell the truth under guise of falsehood.
His star of destiny.
Brightly shining? No, the phrase from his dreams did not refer to that; it was not an adjective phrase, but a noun. The brightly shining? What was the brightly shining?
And the red and the black? He’d thought of everything Charlie had suggested, and other things, too. Checkers, for instance. But it was not that.
The red and the black.
Well, whatever the answer was, he was running full-speed toward it now, not away from it. After a while he went to bed, but it was a long time before he went to sleep.
V
Charlie Doerr came out of the inner office marked Private and put his hand out. He said, “Good luck, George. The doc’s ready to talk to you now.”
He shook Charlie’s hand and said, “You might as well run along. I’ll see you Monday, first visiting day.”
“I’ll wait here,” Charlie said. “I took the day off work anyway, remember? Besides, maybe you won’t have to go. He dropped Charlie’s hand, and stared into Charlie’s face. He said slowly, “What do you mean, Charlie—maybe I won’t have to go.”
“Why—” Charlie looked puzzled. “Why, maybe he’ll tell you you’re all right, or just suggest regular visits to see him until you’re straightened out, or—” Charlie finished weakly, “—or something.”
Unbelievingly, he stared at Charlie. He wanted to ask, am I crazy or are you, but that sounded crazy to ask under the circumstances. But he had to be sure, sure that Charlie just hadn’t let something slip from his mind; maybe he’d fallen into the role he was supposed to be playing when he talked to the doctor just now. He asked, “Charlie, don’t you remember that—” And even of that question the rest seemed insane for him to be asking, with Charlie staring blankly at him. The answer was in Charlie’s face; it didn’t have to be brought to Charlie’s lips.
Charlie said again, “I’ll wait, of course. Good luck, George.”
He looked into Charlie’s eyes and nodded, then turned and went through the door marked Private. He closed it behind him, meanwhile studying the man who had been sitting behind the desk and who had risen as he entered. A big man, broad shouldered, iron gray hair.
“Dr. Irving?”
“Yes, Mr. Vine. Will you be seated, please?”
He slid into the comfortable, padded armchair across the desk from the doctor.
“Mr. Vine,” said the doctor, “a first interview of this sort is always a bit difficult. For the patient, I mean. Until you know me better, it will be difficult for you to overcome a certain natural reticence in discussing yourself. Would you prefer to talk, to tell things your own way, or would you rather I asked questions?”
He thought that over. He’d had a story ready, but those few words with Charlie in the waiting room had changed everything.
He said, “Perhaps you’d better ask questions.”
“Very well.” There was a pencil in Dr. Irving’s hand and paper on the desk before him. Where and when were you born?”
He took a deep breath. “To the best of my knowledge, in Corsica on August 15th, 1769. I don’t actually remember being born, of course. I do remember things from my boyhood on Corsica, though. We stayed there until I was ten, and after that I was sent to school at Brienne.”
Instead of writing, the doctor was tapping the paper lightly with the tip of the pencil. He asked, “What month and year is this?”
“August, 1947. Yes, I know that should make me a hundred and seventy-some years old. You want to know how I account for that. I don’t. Nor do I account for the fact that Napoleon Bonaparte died in 1821.”
He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms, staring up at the ceiling. “I don’t attempt to account for the paradoxes or the discrepancies. I recognize them as such. But according to my own memory, and aside from logic pro or con, I was Napoleon for twenty-seven years. I won’t recount what happened during that time; it’s all down in the history books.
“But in 1796, after the battle of Lodi, while I was in charge of the armies in Italy, I went to sleep. As far as I knew, just as anyone goes to sleep anywhere, any time. But I woke up—with no sense whatever of duration, by the way—in a hospital in town here, and I was informed that my name was George Vine, that the year was 1944, and that I was twenty-seven years old.
“The twenty-seven years old part checked, and that was all. Absolutely all. I have no recollections of any parts of George Vine’s life, prior to his—my—waking up in the hospital after the accident. I know quite a bit about his early life now, but only because I’ve been told.
“I know when and where he was born, where he went to school, and when he started work at the Blade. I know when he enlisted in the army and when he was discharged—late in 1943—because I developed a trick knee after a leg injury. Not in combat, incidentally, and there wasn’t any ‘psycho-neurotic’ on my—his—discharge.”
The doctor quit doodling with the pencil. He asked, “You’ve felt this way for three years—and kept it a secret?”
“Yes. I had time to think things over after the accident, and yes, I decided then to accept what they told me about my identity. They’d have locked me up, of course. Incidentally, I’ve tried to figure out an answer. I’ve studied Dunne’s theory of time—even Charles Fort!” He grinned suddenly. “Ever read about Casper Hauser?”
Dr. Irving nodded.
“Maybe he was playing smart the way I did. And I wonder how many other amnesiacs pretended they didn’t know what happened prior to a certain date—rather than admit they had memories at obvious variance with the facts.”
Dr. Irving said slowly, “Your cousin informs me that you were a bit—ah—‘hipped’ was his word—on the subject of Napoleon before your accident. How do you account for that?”
“I’ve told you I don’t account for any of it. But I can verify that fact, aside from what Charlie Doerr says about it. Apparently I—the George Vine I, if I was ever George Vine—was quite interested in Napoleon, had read about him, made a hero of him, and had talked about him quite a bit. Enough so that the fellows he worked with at the Blade had nicknamed him ‘Nappy.’”
“I notice you distinguish between yourself and George Vine. Are you or are you not he?”
“I have been for three years. Before that—I have no recollection of being George Vine. I don’t think I was. I think—as nearly as I think anything—that I, three years ago, woke up in George Vine’s body.”
“Having done what for a hundred and seventy some years?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. Incidentally, I don’t doubt that this is George Vine’s body, and with it I inherited his knowledge—except his personal memories. For example, I knew how to handle his job at the newspaper, although I didn’t remember any of the people I worked with there. I have his knowledge of English, for instance, and his ability to write. I knew how to operate a typewriter. My handwriting is the same as his.”
“If you think that you are not Vine, how do you account for that?”
He leaned forward. “I think part of me is George Vine, and part of me isn’t. I think some transference has happened which is outside the run of ordinary human experience. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s supernatural—nor that I’m insane. Does it?”
Dr. Irving didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “You kept this secret for three years, for understandable reasons. Now, presumably for other reasons, you decide to tell. What are the other reasons? What has happened to change your attitude?”
It was the question that had been bothering him.
He said slowly, “Because I don’t believe in coincidence. Because something in the situation itself has changed. Because I’m tired of pretending. Because I’m willing to risk imprisonment as a paranoic to find out the truth.”
“What in the situation has changed?”
“Yesterday it was suggested—by my employer—that I feign insanity for a practical reason. And the very kind of insanity which I have, if any: Surely, I will admit the possibility that I’m insane. But I can only operate on the theory that I’m not. You know that you’re Dr. Willard E. Irving; you can only operate on that theory—but how do you know you are? Maybe you’re insane, but you can only act as though you’re not.”
“You think your employer is part of a plot—ah—against you? You think there is a conspiracy to get you into a sanitarium?”
“I don’t know. Here’s what has happened since yesterday noon.” He took a deep breath. Then he plunged. He told Dr. Irving the whole story of his interview with Candler, what Candler had said about Dr. Randolph, about his talk with Charlie Doerr last night and about Charlie’s bewildering about-face in the waiting room.
When he was through he said, “That’s all.” He looked at Dr. Irving’s expressionless face with more curiosity than concern, trying to read it. He added, quite casually, “You don’t believe me, of course. You think I’m insane.”
He met Irving’s eyes squarely. He said, “You have no choice—unless you would choose to believe I’m telling you an elaborate set of lies to convince you I’m insane. I mean, as a scientist and as a psychiatrist, you cannot even admit the possibility that the things I believe—know—are objectively true. Am I not right?”
“I fear that you are. So?”
“So go ahead and sign your commitment. I’m going to follow this thing through. Even to the detail of having Dr. Ellsworth Joyce Randolph sign the second one.”
“You make no objection?”
“Would it do any good if I did?”
“On one point, yes, Mr. Vine. If a patient has a prejudice against—or a delusion concerning—one psychiatrist, it is best not to have him under that particular psychiatrist’s care. If you think Dr. Randolph is concerned in a plot against you, I would suggest that another one be named.”
He said softly, “Even if I choose Randolph?”
Dr. Irving waved a deprecating hand, “Of course, if both you and Mr. Doerr prefer—”
“We prefer.”
The iron gray head nodded gravely. “Of course you understand one thing; if Dr. Randolph and I decide you should go to the sanitarium, it will not be for custodial care. It will be for your recovery through treatment.”
He nodded.
Dr. Irving stood. “You’ll pardon me a moment? I’ll phone Dr. Randolph.”
He watched Dr. Irving go through a door to an inner room. He thought; there’s a phone on his desk right there; but he doesn’t want me to overhear the conversation.
He sat there very quietly until Irving came back and said, “Dr. Randolph is free. And I phoned for a cab to take us there. You’ll pardon me again? I’d like to speak to your cousin, Mr. Doerr.”
He sat there and didn’t watch the doctor leave in the opposite direction for the waiting room. He could have gone to the door and tried to catch words in the low-voiced conversation, but he didn’t. He just sat there until he heard the waiting room door open behind him and Charlie’s voice said, “Come on, George. The cab will be waiting downstairs by now.”
They went down in the elevator and the cab was there. Dr. Irving gave the address.
In the cab, about half way there, he said, “It’s a beautiful day,” and Charlie cleared his throat and said, “Yeah, it is.” The rest of the way he didn’t try it again and nobody said anything.
VI
He wore gray trousers and a gray shirt, open at the collar, and with no necktie that he might dec
ide to hang himself with. No belt, either, for the same reason, although the trousers buttoned snugly enough around the waist that there was no danger of them falling off. Just as there was no danger of his falling out any of the windows; they were barred.
He was not in a cell, however; it was a large ward on the third floor. There were seven other men in the ward. His eyes ran over them. Two were playing checkers, sitting on the floor with the board on the floor between them. One sat in a chair, staring fixedly at nothing; two leaned against the bars of one of the open windows, looking out and talking casually and sanely. One read a magazine. One sat in a corner, playing smooth arpeggios on a piano that wasn’t there at all.
He stood leaning against the wall, watching the other seven. He’d been here two hours now; it seemed like two years.
The interview with Dr. Ellsworth Joyce Randolph had gone smoothly; it had been practically a duplicate of his interview with Irving. And quite obviously, Dr. Randolph had never heard of him before.
He’d expected that, of course.
He felt very calm, now. For a while, he’d decided, he wasn’t going to think, wasn’t going to worry, wasn’t even going to feel.
He strolled over and stood watching the checker game. It was a sane checker game; the rules were being followed.
One of the men looked up and asked, “What’s your name?” It was a perfectly sane question; the only thing wrong with it was that the same man had asked the same question four times now within the two hours he’d been here.
He said, “George Vine.”
“Mine’s Bassington, Ray Bassington. Call me Ray. Are you insane?”
“No.”
“Some of us are and some of us aren’t. He is.” He looked at the man who was playing the imaginary piano. “Do you play checkers?”
“Not very well.”
“Good. We eat pretty soon now. Anything you want to know, just ask me.”
“How do you get out of here? Wait, I don’t mean that for a gag, or anything. Seriously, what’s the procedure?”
The Fredric Brown Megapack: 33 Classic Science Fiction Stories Page 30
