Here, they stood outside the door, which, uncharacteristically, was both shut and locked. Lia gazed into the room through a pane of glass fortified with wire in a mesh of interlocking diamonds. On six simple beds lay six comatose people, all of them, if skin color and physiognomy meant anything, Middle Easterners, probably Arabs. Two of those lying zonked on their monastic racks were young women. Electrodes or sensors of some kind were taped to these persons’ pulse points—at their arms, throats, and temples—and each of them wore a set of padded earphones. Lia could tell that even though they all had their eyes closed, beneath their lids their eyeballs were desperately jitterbugging. Expressions common to seizure victims came and went on their youthful faces. A man in a wrinkled white smock moved among the beds, monitoring both his patients and the tape machine into whose hypnagogic propaganda they were collectively plugged.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Lia said. “I can guess.”
“The drugs have no bad side effects,” Grace assured her. “They simply heighten our subjects’ receptiveness to the tapes.” Turning to Pollard, she asked, “What are they listening to today?”
“These are newcomers, Grace. Palestinians. They’re getting an introductory lesson in Arabic about the sanctity of each person and the need to love our neighbors as ourselves. Etcetera. It’s not that foreign to them. We’ll be moving on to democratic ideals and the practical satisfactions of capitalism as soon as we’ve got them fully indoctrinated in the basics. Teaching them the satisfactions of American popular culture, well, that’ll have to wait until we’re sure they’re not going to backslide into fanaticism.”
How do you define fanaticism? Lia wondered. I could come up with a definition that would include you, Grace, and all the other LAC wizards trying to make the world safe for Nabisco, the Chrysler Corporation, and the CIA.
Abruptly, an anguished cry echoed down the long corridor toward them. Behind this cry came the sound of running feet, a commotion completely unexpected in the solitude and gloom of the center. Lia looked back the way they had come to see one of the young men from the subway room careen around the corner, bounce off the wall, and stumble midway down the long hall toward them. He looked wild-eyed and distraught. As soon as he saw them—specifically, Pollard and Miss Grace—he halted, bending at the waist as if hugely winded and then straightening again to raise one lean arm into the air and to shout, “I’m not a goddamn American, you vultures! I am not from Indianapolis! I am Vietnamese! If I must suffer such indignity in this place, then—pfui!—I spit on it!” He spat on the linoleum, and Lia was shocked to see that the ejected strand of saliva shone a baleful crimson in the half-light of the corridor.
“My God,” she murmured.
And then the young man’s pursuers—fellow students and center employees—appeared in the mouth of the turnoff, sliding into view like Keystone Kops, and would have advanced and captured him, Lia supposed, if Grace had not held up her hand and shaken her head to indicate that they should leave him be.
“Vo Quang Lat,” she said, “aren’t you only a couple of months away from receiving your certificate?”
“Fuck my certificate!” he shouted. “Fuck it!”
A buzzer began to sound, an amplified burr that made the whole labyrinthine building quake. The noise—the continuous cycling of the alarm—seemed to go on forever. Vo Quang Lat began to stalk them again, his bloody-looking mouth shaping reproaches, curses, accusations, scoldings, all his recriminations rendered inaudible by that damned blatting.
“Stay where you are, Lat!” Pollard cried. “You’re going to get yourself in deep trouble!”
But Lat kept coming.
Lia thought, What’s he going to do? Throw himself on Pollard? Try to strangle Grace? Is he lumping me with them simply because I’m standing here beside them? And who gave him that vicious punch in the mouth? His teeth must be rattling in his head.
Now Lia could hear what the imperfectly indoctrinated Lat was spieling: “… I’m sick of these games! All I want is to go home. Is that too much to ask? And is it too much to ask that you stop trying to turn my country into Disneyland and all our people into Mouseketeers?” The Vietnamese spat again, another distressing dollop of crimson.
As the alarm continued to sound, Lat’s pursuers began to surge forward again. Grace thrust out her hand to stop his advance, but even when the LAC worker in the white smock came out of the locked room, Lat, shaking his fist and cursing, kept coming. Lia stepped back, but Grace told him calmly that he would regret this behavior, he would especially regret forfeiting his certificate on the brink of full Americulturation.
Lat wasn’t listening. One hand plunged into the pocket of his pleated slacks and emerged with…
Lia couldn’t see, and she had no chance to weigh Lat’s action because two military policemen—MPs—appeared in the corridor at her back, knocking aside a pair of heavy swinging doors and jumping to opposite sides of the hall to protect themselves if the madman they were trying to apprehend was armed. Each MP was carrying a pistol, and when they saw the crowd behind Vo Quang Lat, one MP, speaking loudly, urged its members to retreat as quickly as they could. Lia knew that these army cops feared that if they had to shoot, a stray bullet might hit a bystander
“Drop it!” the other MP shouted.
Pollard got down on all fours. Grace, Lia, and the man in the white smock hurried to press themselves against the wall.
Lat, confused, watched his pursuers retreat into the auditorium corridor, then pivoted back around to unriddle Pollard’s bizarre behavior. When he took his hand from his pocket, both MPs—knees bent, legs apart—fired a pair of shots. The noise was deafening. Afterward, Lia understood that either she or Grace had screamed. Probably me, she thought. Probably me.
Meanwhile, Vo Quang Lat clutched first his arm, then his belly, and gracelessly collapsed.
A liquid redness poured from his mouth, a deep scarlet that had already dyed his lips and discolored his teeth. The hand taken from his pocket scattered beads—a broken rosary?—onto the scuffed linoleum of the corridor.
They’ve killed him, Lia numbly marveled. They’ve just up and killed the poor fella.
As one MP knelt beside Lat, Grace, cucumber cool, took Lia by the elbow and led her to the shooting victim. The other MP helped Pollard up, and soon all six of them, including the man in the lab coat, had gathered about the fallen Vietnamese. Lia, to her chagrin, was crying.
“He’s not dead,” Grace said. “The MPs attached to LAC never use real bullets. They’re equipped with high-compression tranqs. The impact knocked Lat down, but the drugs are only now beginning to act. Except that Miller there”—she nodded at the kneeling MP—“pulled out one of the darts. To keep from sending our friend to cloud-cuckoo-land for longer than he needs to be there.”
“But the blood—”
Miller picked a bead off the floor, stood up, and placed it in Lia’s hand. “That’s a betel nut,” he said. “And all this filthy red crap you see on the dude’s mouth and shirt, well, it’s only the juice from the betel nuts he was chewing.”
“We thought maybe he had a pocketknife or something,” the other MP said. “That’s why we hurried to tranq him.”
Grace said, “Vietnamese peasants chew betel nuts to deaden their senses to the poverty of their lives. Not Lat, though. He put in a supply so that he could spit defiance—literally—at our center’s work.” She wheeled on the LAC’s director. “Didn’t anyone see this coming, Pollard?”
“Lat seemed to be doing fine, Grace. If anything, he seemed ahead of schedule. This was, uh, wholly unexpected.”
“Shit,” Grace said. “Shit to the seventy-seventh power.”
The MP named Miller, Lia noticed, was scrutinizing her jacket. “I like your pin,” he said in a low, confidential tone. “And I just want you to know that I’m a Christian, too.”
On the drive back up Highway 27 to Pine Mountain, Grace assured Lia that she had seen the Fort Benning LAC on a very unusual day. In the
nearly twelve years that it had been operating, you could count recidivist lapses like Vo Quang Lat’s on the fingers of two—possibly three—hands. Of course, this estimate didn’t include hard-core terrorists or guerrillas, who were virtually a different breed from an ally as grateful as the South Vietnamese or even from foes as beaten and woebegone as the Red army of the North and their National Liberation Front—that is, Vietcong—comrades.
“What’s going to happen to Lat, anyway?”
“Why?” Grace asked.
“I was just wondering. I mean, will he be punished? Put in a cell somewhere or … ?”
“Executed?”
“Surely not. I mean, for suffering a kind of breakdown while undergoing the Americulturation process?”
“Of course not. Absolutely not. We’ll counsel with him and then start over again.”
The Cadillac cruised smoothly through the dapples of light and shade overlapping Highway 27 from the pine trees standing sentinel to the east. On Lia’s left, that early evening sun was raying red spokes through the ragged trees, plunging earthward near Lannett or Opelika, and Lia felt that she had been away from Pine Mountain for years, not merely a single afternoon.
“How would you like to go to work for us at the Fort Benning LAC?”
Lia fought to keep from barking her astonishment. Right. Me, a product of the precrackdown antiwar effort, shrinking Oriental egos for King Richard. Just my agreeing to session with you has probably put my marriage in jeopardy. Going to work at one of your centers would spell D-I-V-O-R-C-E for sure. I can imagine what Cal is going to say about my afternoon already. But hire on with you? Ye gods, it doesn’t bear thinking about…
“I take it that’s a no?”
“I’ve got my own practice, Grace.”
“And I’ve seen how staggeringly well you’re doing with it, too, haven’t I?”
About as staggeringly well as you seem to be doing nowadays at your LAC, Lia thought. But she said nothing.
“You could counsel with difficult cases. Lat, for instance.”
“I’m not trained to Americulturate, Grace. It’s wholly beyond my expertise.”
“That’s not so. Our first session convinces me that you can do just about any kind of psychotherapy you put your mind to.”
“Not this.”
“Why not give us one day a week?”
“I’ve already committed myself to giving you one day a week. I can’t give up another.”
“What if it were the same day?”
A terrific uneasiness stole over Lia. “Please don’t make that a condition of taking therapy with me, Grace. You’d be backing me into a corner.” Of course, Lia reflected, it may be that you enjoy backing people into corners.
The Fleetwood’s tires hummed on the asphalt. The sun’s rays slanted into the car like blood-slathered knives.
“Let me tell you something,” Grace said. “A confidence. Not one having to do with my feelings of aimlessness and ennui, but a confidence involving Hiram and my relationship with him.”
Spare me, Lia prayed. For now, anyway, spare me.
“The President has pledged not to run again, to retire to San Clemente and write his memoirs. Well, it’s entirely possible that he’ll endorse my husband for the ‘84 Republican nomination. If you climb aboard now, Lia, you’ll be a virtual shoo-in as the First Lady’s psychotherapist. Being First Lady will probably get me out of my doldrums for good, and being my personal shrink, that’ll make your whole career. You’ll never have to grub for clients or status again. The world will beat a path to your couch.”
“Lounger.”
“Whatever. I want you to think about this, Lia, and I want you to discuss it with—” She stuck.
“Cal?”
“Of course. With Cal. The President believes that after the thrashing he gave Jimmy in ‘76, Georgia deserves another candidate, and Hiram—even if his only elected post was as a representative to the state legislature—is just the fella to succeed him. I’m going to help Hiram, and I want you to help me.”
“I’m not a politician, Grace. I’m not a campaign worker. I do cognitive psychotherapy.”
Grace turned her head slightly and gave Lia a look of such smug contradiction that Lia was both angered and intimidated. I don’t like what’s happening here, she thought. This woman is trying to substitute her various private greeds for my own will. What scares me is that she may be able—somehow—to pull it off.
They crested the mountain, purred past Callaway Gardens, and coasted into the sunset-flooded town, where the actress left Lia at her doorstep, dismissing her with a nod and driving back uptown to Highway 27.
Lia noticed, with both relief and gratitude, that Cal’s beat-up ‘68 Dart was already parked on the edge of the yard. Her own hubby was safe at home. Nyah nyah nyah, she thought at the Cadillac’s retreating taillights. That’s one thing I’ve got on you, lady: my sweet, stable, satisfying marriage. And she entered their apartment to give Cal a kiss and to ask him how his day had gone.
15
APING JOHN WAYNE’S walk, Twitchell, minus his beret, ambled through West Georgia Commons mall. In Gangway Books, he spoke briefly with the young woman at the register, then strolled on up the concourse to a video-game arcade called the Barrel of Fun. He entered this noisy place through a paneled opening that looked like the mouth of a big wooden barrel lying on its side.
Where are you, my gooky gook gook? Twitchell sang in his head. Come to Daddy, do.
It was dark in the game room. Purple and amber lights from the video screens fractured the shadows, but the kids standing at the consoles—truants? dropouts?—were mere cutouts, not recognizable people. Twitchell had to make two circuits around the room to find Le Boi Loan.
Lone Boy was standing in a nervous stoop at a game called Phun Ky Cong. Twitchell, the father of two teenage boys, smiled; he had played this baby himself. It was a big favorite of the kids. Or, at least, it had been a year or two ago. You used your joystick to move a figure called Grady Grunt through the Tunnels of Cu Chi in pursuit of a Viet Minh guerrilla named Phun Ky Cong. Whenever you got Grady close enough, you pressed your button and blasted away at Cong’s narrow ass with a flamethrower.
It wasn’t all that easy. Cong was always trying to maneuver Grady into a pitfall lined with bamboo stakes or directly beneath a tunnel opening through which Cong and his VC buddies could drop a skull-cracking rock. If that weren’t enough, Twitchell recalled, you had to fry five Phun Ky Congs before Grady could advance to the next video stage, an even more labyrinthine and treacherous level of the Cu Chi tunnels.
Twitchell stood at Loan’s shoulder, watching. From the upright boxes all around them burped peculiar noises: Pop-pop-pop! Blippa-blip-blippa! Ka-pow-pow-pow! As always, the sound effects made Twitchell nervous, and as soon as Lone Boy had positioned Grady in a good place to barbecue Cong, he put his hand on the little guy’s shoulder. “How’s it goin’, sharpshooter?”
Lone Boy’s hands came off the box’s controls. He whirled, his eyes showing a lot of white. “Hey, you shithead, I’m on my fuckin’ lunch hour!”
Twitchell said, “I’m sure you are, Loan.” Such defensiveness, such empty bravado. The poor gook’s scared to death. On Lone Boy’s screen, the Cong figure, unhampered, dug a tunnel under Grady Grunt, causing Grady to plummet into a net that closed around him like a string bag around an onion. A peppy little dirge played. The game was over. Lone Boy had lost.
Lone Boy glanced at the Phun Ky Cong console. “Fuck it all to hell! You cost me my goddamn quarter!”
“I’m trying to save you something worth a helluva lot more than that. The respect of a very fine lady.”
“You’re gonna give me another quarter, dork.”
“Hey, man, a Green Beret gives no quarter.” Twitchell strong-armed the feisty Lone Boy to a corner of the Barrel of Fun where the two forlorn pinball machines stood. No one was playing them; no one was going to play them. “Does the word reindoctrination ring any bells with y
ou, my friend?”
It sure as hell did. The little guy’s face altered. Now he knows where I’m coming from, gloated Twitchell.
“Who are you?” Lone Boy asked, trying to regain his composure. He pushed the Secret Service man’s hand off his arm.
“You already know what you need to know. I think we can skip my name.”
“I don’t know what I need to know. Like, for instance, what do you want?”
“When’re we gonna see some results?”
“I know where he lives. I took some time and found out where he lives.”
“The lady I’ve mentioned—even she knows where he lives. So that’s nothing. What else have you got?”
“Two-three days ago, I took this order of books to him, a whole bunch of Philip K. Dick’s stuff. He was glad to get it.”
Christ, thought Twitchell. “Big fuckin’ deal, Loan. When’re you gonna move? That’s our question.”
“Listen, I work days. I work evenings. Sometimes, I got to sleep, don’t I? And see my family?”
“You agreed to a set of conditions.”
“I can’t go in there while they’re in there, can I? It only leaves me days, and I work days.”
“Take one off. Phone in sick.”
“And they’ve got a dog. A big mother. They keep him chained out front while they’re away.”
“Go in through the back.”
“This dog, man, it’ll hear me. It’ll bark. It’ll eat me up if it gets off its chain.”
With that, Twitchell again grabbed Lone Boy’s arm. He pulled the Americulturated Vietnamese to his side and walked him through the mall to the parking lot behind it. The little guy kept jerking his elbow, but Twitchell refused to let him go and pretty soon they were standing over the trunk of a late-model Dodge. A jalopy laid rubber at the other end of the mall; a high-flying jet braided its contrails through a tenuous macrame of spring clouds.
“Use this.” Twitchell handed Lone Boy a military pistol and a flat rectangular case.
“Shoot him? I won’t shoot him. First, I’d take your goddamn program all over again.”
Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas Page 20
