by Jim Stark
"That's it,” said Paula as she disconnected the microphone from Annette's lapel and grabbed her LieDeck. “I'm out of here. What's your badge number?"
"You want my badge number?” asked Inspector Farley with a look of shock on his face. “I ... don't think so."
"You know the law,” said Paula. “You have to give me your badge number if I ask for it, so let's—"
"We're under martial law, lady,” said Inspector Farley sternly. “I don't have to give you squat. I could have you arrested and held in prison for a very long time, without a trial, without even a charge. Now, are you really sure you want to pick a fight with me?"
Paula spun about, yanked open the door to leave and ran smack into Sergeant O'Neil, who backed her into the room. “Is there ... a problem here?” he asked.
"You witnessed the deal,” said Inspector Farley. “You'll have to ask Annette if she objects to any part of the discussion."
"And ... do you?” asked the real police officer, looking over at the patient in the bed.
"Oh yes, I do,” said Annette, with a voice as fragile as a dry flower. “I don't like her at all. I tell you what, Ms. Choquette. You give me the tape, and I'll get you an interview with Mr. Helliwell. An exclusive."
"Deal,” said Paula as she took the tape recorder from her purse, removed the cassette, and handed it over. “When?"
"I'll call him right now,” said Annette, weakly. “Please ... can you wait outside?"
As the door closed, Annette and Victor broke up, quietly.
"You're really bad,” she giggled.
"No worse than you,” he countered. “And besides, I know her from way back. She's a bitch, and she deserves whatever she gets. I don't want to have anything to do with her."
"What the hell were you going on about Scientology for?"
"Oh, I was just giving her a blind alley to get lost in,” he said. “I hope she wastes a lot of time on that one."
Annette seemed to be searching her memory chips for something lost or buried ... or never there. “And what was that bullshit about the CIA killing some guy ... George...?"
"Cluff,” said Victor as he turned his LieDeck back on. “And it wasn't bullshit. I told you about him before, but you must have forgotten, I mean with the trauma and all. That stuff about Cluff and the CIA—that was why I was such a hermit all those years, and that was why I was so scared to visit you, or even call."
Annette forgave him, again, as the memory returned. Victor kissed her on the cheek again, squeezed her hand, and took his leave.
As he closed the door and rejoined Sergeant O'Neil, he could see “the bitch” behind the police cordon, several yards away, almost dancing with anticipation.
"So it's a go?” she asked excitedly.
Victor moved towards her to be sure her LieDeck picked up his words. “I'm sorry,” he said, putting on his most sincere policeman's face.
"Beep,” went her LieDeck.
"You lie," she hissed.
"So sue me,” said Inspector Farley. “Helliwell said that he wants to have nothing to do with you,” he explained serenely, “and you'll notice there was no beep as I said that."
"Well ... at least give me my damn tape back,” Paula snarled.
"Sorry,” he said, as he turned to leave with Sergeant O'Neil.
"Beep,” went her LieDeck.
"I'll get you for this,” she screamed at his back.
"Beep,” went her LieDeck, again.
Chapter 58
UNDER THE SKIN
Victor sat in the backseat of a Patriot car as it made its way through the streets of Ottawa. He had thoroughly enjoyed his visit with Annette, as well as his unanticipated encounter with Paula Choquette. More precisely, he had enjoyed the pummeling of Ms. Choquette. I'm still a full-blown Human Two at heart, he said to himself, and he found that thought mildly depressing. People are ... social, he reminded himself. If we're going to change, if we're going to become Human Three, we have to go at it together, as a group. I'll need ... others ... to travel that road with me.
He found his ruminations going back to a day not so long ago, April 16, less than two weeks ago, when he'd sat in the back of Senator Cadbury's limousine, full of hope, on his way to make his fortune, on his way to making this world a better place. He stared down at the fingers that had jutted out from a cast of his own construction, the grungy cast that hid the magical device that was supposed to chuck the goddam moneylenders right out of the temple. No such luck. Not yet, anyway.
The tapes, he remembered. That's what I'm screwed up about. Things aren't turning out the way they were supposed to. The world can't cope with half a LieDeck Revolution. That's not half a loaf. That's more like half a baby—as in Solomon. I've got to give them the other half. I've got to release those tapes.
Victor's on-again/off-again plan to do a written report based on the reel-to-reel tapes had infuriated Randall Whiteside and Cam O'Connor, not to mention the Government of Canada and a whole gaggle of foreign governments that were convulsing from the impact of the LieDeck. And Steve Sutherland wasn't exactly impressed with all the flip-flopping either, since he had been assigned the job of helping write the report.
Victor wasn't really feeling the pressure that he knew was out there, pressure for him to act more responsibly, or to “grow up,” as Godfrey had reportedly expressed it. True to his word, Randall had told Patriot Security to protect him from such pressures, to assure his freedom and peace of mind as vigilantly as they assured his physical safety.
Still, the inventor of the LieDeck had often felt guilty, remorseful, angry, disgusted, amused, terrified, sad, and occasionally despairing, in random sequences—sometimes several of these things concurrently. Fortunately, he thought, I choose not to conduct my life based solely on my emotions.
He looked outside as Elgin Street rolled by. There was hardly any traffic, vehicular or pedestrian. Of course it was a Sunday, but by all reports the churches were as bare as Old Mother Hubbard's cupboards. Mostly, he decided, all those empty pews were a typically Canadian way of saying: “We're stunned at the sudden imposition of martial law, and at the presence of soldiers on our street corners and tanks in the parks.” It looked alarmingly like the false and eerie calm that was found in the belly of a hurricane. People seemed to have developed a curious uncertainty, a kind of quiet confusion, at having been stripped of their traditional social and psychological underpinnings, an indefinable need to huddle in their homes, where they could cling to some tangible sense of who they were, maintain a fingernail grip on what life was about, or for, or made up of.
"It wouldn't be like this if I...” Victor spoke out loud, and then caught himself. The Patriot driver was circumspect enough to let it pass, to pretend he hadn't heard. Victor realized he had a half dozen ways of completing that thought. If only I hadn't invented the LieDeck; if only George Cluff hadn't invented the C.V.A.; if only Louis St. Aubin hadn't warned Randall that the LieDeck would be classified top secret; if only the military had not felt that such a device should be classified top secret; if only there had been no Cold War II; if only there was no never-ending war on terror; if only Randall had talked to me before passing out LieDecks willy-nilly at the UN; if only, if only, if only...
He knew the emerging global bummer wasn't his fault, knew that in his mind. But on the emotional level, he blamed himself. If only I hadn't insisted that Randall leave me out of the decision-making process. If only I had stayed at the manor house last Monday—he flushed with embarrassment at the idiocy of his decision to resume driving cab—maybe I could have stopped the decision to release the LieDeck early, to the UN, to the media and to the public. But would I have tried to stop it? Could I have said “no ... stop ... don't do it?” That scenario could have cost me millions of dollars.
He marveled at the odd sense of rudderlessness that enveloped him. Where would the world be today if the LieDeck had been kept under wraps, if the military had classified it top secret and then used it to conduct Cold War II an
d the War on Terror? He found it discouraging to realize that he had no insight into such things, no education, training or psychic powers that might have allowed him to predict history more accurately than the flip of a coin. As the car turned onto Catherine Street, he found that he could not prevent all these irritating and answerless questions from dominating his consciousness. He was convinced that his dwelling on these things was utterly pointless and unproductive, but still, there was no escape.
His mind turned back to the three tapes he'd made, to the wonderful dream contained therein, to the radical analysis of human nature that he had ... well, “discovered” was the word he always used when he spoke out loud to himself on the subject, or when he was in the throes of explaining things to Winnie. Those ideas would fly in the face of everything that was conventionally accepted about the remarkable two-legged beast that had risen so convincingly to the top of the food chain and then soiled the nest for everyone. It wasn't scholarly ridicule or rejection that he feared. His analysis of human nature was LieDeck-verifiable, after all.
Whatsisname ... Nobel, Alfred Nobel, the Peace Prize guy ... the guy who invented dynamite, he thought. He remembered this great man's naïve assumption that his new substance was so horrible that men would never again dare to make war. If the LieDeck was the political and social equivalent of dynamite, as media commentators had so often said, then those reel-to-reel tapes, which he had buried in a waterproof container near the lodge, were nuclear landmines.
Victor made a decision at that point, for the fourth or fifth time—he'd lost count. He would definitely not go public with his ideas about this new human consciousness until things had settled down. Small wonder I vacillated, he thought, making an extra effort to assure that those words didn't accidentally escape his lips.
People are so ... primitive. They don't even want to stop lying to themselves, for the love of ... He almost thought the word “God,” out of habit. They can't even expunge the fucking “isms.” How are they going to cope with a new definition of who they are if they can't even deal with what they already know to be true? Illusion is frosted glass. Break it, and 20/20 vision is unavoidable, is it not? “None so blind as those...” he said, audibly, by mistake.
"I beg your pardon?” said the driver.
"I was just thinking,” said Victor. “Do you mind stopping at the Destiny Foundation for a few minutes?"
"Not at all,” lied the Patriot agent.
...as those who will not see, Victor finished in his mind. He felt righteous about his most recent position regarding the tapes, but it seemed his mind could not entirely agree. I have to talk this decision over with Steve, he realized, again. He'll be at the Foundation now—pretty sure.
Victor knew Ottawa well, having roamed its streets for Blue Line for a dozen lonely years. He knew his driver was angry at having to double back half a mile and then wait. He's barely said a word since we left the hospital. I wonder what he thinks of me. And I wonder what others think of me. I wonder what would happen if I walked into a grocery store and yelled “Hi everybody, I'm the guy who invented the LieDeck!” Would they all cluster around with big grinning mugs and hassle me for my autograph and clutch at my clothing? Or would they rush out and fetch a couple of logs, some nails and a crown of thorns? Or would they ask if it's possible to transcend the bullshit and become more than we are? “No, they'd probably ask me which aisle the arse-wipe is in,” he scowled under his breath.
The Destiny Foundation, Randall Whiteside's charity, operated from a Victorian brick house on a quiet side street in the Glebe, a trendy and quite expensive section of Ottawa sprinkled with doctors, dentists, top-level bureaucrats and big-league drug dealers. As an institution, the Foundation had a mandate to develop economic policy options for poor countries, and it had a solid reputation for being more effective than most charities in that field. There was a big, varnished wooden sign on the front lawn, and carved under the Foundation's name was its motto: “DARE GREATLY.” Not too greatly, thought Victor.
"This must have been a private home for a large family at one time,” he said as the driver parked and scanned the landscape for danger.
"I suppose,” said the agent, out of politeness only.
Victor got out and closed the door with considerably more force than was necessary, as a hint. He walked up the half dozen stairs to the wooden porch. They've had an armed Patriot agent at the door ever since the LieDeck Revolution began, so that ... Victor had trouble finishing that thought. “Ever since the LieDeck started screwing up the world,” he muttered before he realized he was speaking out loud again.
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Helliwell?” said the guard as he held the door open for the famous visitor.
"Nothing, nothing,” he said, which earned him two beeps from the agent's LieDeck. “Fine, it wasn't nothing,” he blurted out. “I talk to myself, okay?” he snapped, with more acid than he'd intended. “And what I was saying was none of your business."
"Beep,” went the agent's LieDeck.
Victor gave up on the doomed encounter and walked in. There was a wide, carpeted stairway to the right, with a wooden banister that had been polished by hired hands going back to the 19th century. He tossed a light “Hi there” wave at the pretty receptionist and plodded up the stairs, two flights.
At the back of the three-story building, a wall had been knocked out between two adjoining bedrooms to make a large meeting room. The L.A.P. had set up its new base of operation in the privacy of that room, and Victor entered without knocking. To his great surprise, it wasn't full of people debating the merits and dangers of the LieDeck. The only person in the room was Steve Sutherland, who was caught unawares, on his knees, by the window.
"Jeeze ... sorry Steve. Were you ... praying?"
"Nah,” Steve smiled as he rose. “I've just spent so much time thinking on my knees that I thought being in that position might help me sort a few things out."
He looks tired, helpless, confused, detached from his moorings ... like the rest of us, thought Victor. “Where's the gang?” he asked.
"Nobody showed up,” shrugged the reluctant chairman of the L.A.P. “Some called in with excuses ... including a few lies, oddly enough. The others didn't even bother to...” He ran out of words, chickened out, ran into a emotional brick wall, or something. One way or another, it seemed to Victor that people were giving up, biding their time, treading water, waiting for a current to wash them onto a shore, any shore ... or out to sea.
"How come you're dressed for Halloween?” asked Steve.
Victor had been so caught up with his contemplations that he had forgotten he was costumed as a cop. The peaked police cap was in the backseat of the waiting car, but he was still dressed to kill. “Oh ... that?” he said, swelling his chest. “Career change."
"I know the feeling,” said Steve, as he unconsciously reached to loosen up the stiff white collar that wasn't there any more.
"Look,” said Victor, “I'm heading back to the lodge. Patriot's got a car outside. No sense in you hanging around here. Why don't we ride back together? We can talk on the way. When we get back, maybe you can help me sort through the—uh—morality, or the wisdom, of releasing those tapes."
"We never did get around to doing that paper, did we?” said Steve, with a sigh, “what with all the...” Another wave curled up, foamed at the crest, crashed onto the rocks, and gurgled back to sea. Bill Doyle was dead. Buck Ash was dead. Louis St. Aubin was dead. And Annette was ... “How's Annette?” he asked as he gathered up his suit jacket.
"Super,” said Victor as he opened the door. “I didn't expect to find her so energetic. We had a wonderful visit. She's got you, under her skin," he sang lustily, a teasing glint in his eyes.
"Yeah,” smiled the former bishop. “Me too."
* * *
Steve felt somehow relieved when the Patriot vehicle passed beyond the city limits of Gatineau. The rest would be highway driving, smooth, billboard-free, fresh, not counting the occasional whiff of ma
nure as the farming season sloshed into gear. Metaphor for something, he supposed as he watched greens and browns suck up the afternoon sun.
He thought about the man beside him. Victor was ... what? ... an acquaintance? He was okay, on most fronts ... perceptive, thoughtful, funny. As they sat in the backseat, he realized that Victor had recently been making an effort to bond with him, on some level ... as colleagues, comrades in arms, pals, maybe all of the above. But there, in the car, the former bishop found he had no desire whatsoever to engage the man in conversation. Instead, he felt taciturn, weary.
As a result, nothing of consequence was discussed during the first half of their ride to the estate, to the lodge. Steve rummaged through the growing list of things in his life that were pecking at him from the inside, demanding verbalization, review, clarification, and coping. Victor just wasn't the right person to bounce stuff off ... not now, anyway.
In addition to Steve's storehouse of personal troubles, there was another item in his in-basket, staring at him, begging for attention. The L.A.P. had been laboring mightily to get a handle on the impact of Victor's invention, and although they had made respectable progress and contributed significantly to the contours of the new Godfrey Plan announced last Friday, martial law had still come to Canada the very next day. And today, the United States had fallen under martial law as well. President Barker was near death, from a heart attack—or so an announcer had said on the military-controlled radio and TV. Wars raged, and there was a wider international conflict brewing. Hell ... not brewing, thought Steve. We're up to our nostrils in the thing, and Victor has been no damned help at all.
It seemed to Steve that Victor was coping psychologically, although it didn't inspire confidence to see him sitting there, dressed up as a cop, cap and all. He was a complex man, Victor was, but he was also stubborn beyond belief. The last anyone had heard, he had decided to sit on the three reel-to-reel tapes he'd made. He wouldn't give them to the L.A.P. or the government—wouldn't even let Winnie listen to them—wouldn't even say where they were.
