The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “Now to answer your homy little question,” Gomez said, “Sara English falls into the same category as your wife: a full-time Transformationalist who has passed life analysis. You haven’t made that level yet. You are forbidden to have sex with anyone who has, and they’re forbidden to have sex with you. You can ball anyone you want to outside the movement unless they’ve been declared a regressive. But not in the Center. ”

  “And I’ve got to be back in my own bed by midnight, or I turn into a pumpkin?”

  “You got it,” Gomez said. He laughed. He leered at Weller. “Sticks in your craw, doesn’t it, Weller?” he said. “Some Transformationalist you are! Go ahead, tell me to get stuffed; that’s what you’re going to do, isn’t it?”

  Weller forced his mind into a state of logical, detached clarity. He didn’t need Bailor to tell him that this was the acid test If he refused to accept the life directive, it would be open warfare with Transformationalism. He didn’t feel as fearful about that as he would have yesterday, not with the Master Contact Sheet as ammunition. If they started really harassing him, all he had to do was send copies of the Contact Sheet to the media, to the presidents of all the non-Transformationalist companies on the list, to the district attorney, the IRS, and any other interested agencies he could think of, and Transformationalism would be in worse shit than anything they could lay on him.

  But all that could get him would be revenge. Sweet as that might be, it wouldn’t bring Annie back. It wouldn’t help him find her. It would only make it more impossible.

  However, if he did the unexpected and played along, that would be a critical step toward finally convincing even Gomez of his sincerity. Provided he could endure the situation with a smile and maintain the act full-time under constant paranoid pressure.

  But what would it be like to place himself so totally in their hands? Could he maintain the act long enough to pass life analysis and get to Annie? How long would that take? Would he crack? What would happen to him if he did? There were too many imponderables—he had to see Bailor before he made the decision.

  “Do I have to tell you my decision now?” he asked.

  “You do if you want a final chance to tell me what you think of me,” Gomez said. “After tonight, you won’t be seeing me again. ”

  Temporize, Weller told himself. You don’t have anything to lose by that. “You’ve got me all wrong,” he said. “I don’t want to tell you off. This is a heavy life decision for me, but I understand why you’re doing it, and I don’t resent it.” He smiled ingenuously. “You’re trying to find out where I really stand, and you’re confronting me with the same question. And you’re forcing me to answer it. I can’t say I like it, but I can’t help admiring the process.”

  Gomez shook his head unbelievingly. “You really can surprise me, Weller,” he said. “You’re telling me you’re accepting the life directive?”

  “I’m telling you I really have to think about it,” Weller said. “Do I have to give you my decision now?”

  Gomez shrugged. “We’re beyond bullshit,” he said. “From here on in, it’s what you do that counts. You either show up Monday or you don’t. You don’t have to say another word.”

  Weller gave Gomez the old Transformationalist Stare. “Then let’s leave it at that,” he said. Gomez stared back at him. Their eyes locked for a long moment, a contest of wills, without communication.

  It was Gomez who broke it off with a little laugh. “You’re something, Weller,” he said. “I’d really be glad to be wrong about you. If you turned out to be the real thing, you’d be quite an addition to the movement. You might even have the head to be a Monitor. ” He reached across the desk and shook Weller’s hand. “I can’t say it hasn’t been interesting,” he said. “Though I can’t say it’s been nice knowing you, either.”

  “Likewise,” Weller said, and he meant it. If Gomez had not been an agent of Transformationalism, if that sharp, superior mind had not been programmed by John B. Steinhardt, if he wasn’t a Monitor, they might have been friends. There were not many men he respected the way he respected Gomez, despite everything, in the face of every reason not to. Ironically he was pretty sure that Gomez felt the same way about him. In a strange way they were going to miss each other.

  Weller poured himself a shot of straight bourbon and gulped it down. Pouring himself another, he found his attention caught by the condition of his living room, something he had managed to avoid noticing for weeks.

  Dirty glasses, pizza cartons, beer cans, and old Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets covered every available inch of table space. Dust was everywhere, like a carpet of filthy snow. The kitchen, he realized, was even worse—mounded with cruddy dishes and pots, the stove larded with grease, the refrigerator filled with rotting unnameables. The bedroom was a pit of dirty clothes and grimy sheets, and the towels in the bathroom looked and smelled like something in an old gas-station men’s room. I’m really becoming a slob, he thought. As if I were refusing to adjust to Annie’s absence, as if I were taking it out on the house, as if cleaning up the place would be admitting something I won’t let myself admit. Maybe living at the Center is the right idea. At least I’d enjoy crapping that up.

  He shuddered, swilled down his second drink, went to the telephone and dialed the number of Bailor’s exchange. He had a scheduled meeting with Bailor on Saturday, but that was too long to wait. He had to have it out now, tonight. He had to get the decision made immediately; living with the uncertainty was unbearable.

  The operator answered on the third ring.

  “Hello, this is Jack Weller. I want to get in touch with Garry Bailor immediately. ”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Weller. Mr. Bailor is no longer with us.”

  “’What?” A bubble of acid liquor burst in Weller’s gut.

  “You’re sure you’re okay, man?”

  “Yeah,” Weller said over his shoulder, “I’ll survive.”

  But by the time he had reached his car, he wondered about that. Bailor had disappeared and pulled the hole in after him. Or someone had made him disappear and wiped out all traces of his existence. Were the Monitors even now interrogating him? Had they simply snuffed him?

  Or had Bailor been a phony all along? A Monitor agent that they used to establish a dependency so they could yank the rug out from under him at this strategic moment? Weller shuddered—that was real paranoia, delusions of reference, they called it. The paranoiac believes that the whole world is a conspiracy organized against him.

  He got into the car, started the engine, and began driving home. He drove slowly and carefully now, letting the driving become a mindless task, lost in his own thoughts.

  All that really mattered now was that Bailor was gone. The decision was now Weller’s alone; there was no one left to help him make it. There were only two alternatives and both seemed totally unacceptable. If he gave up, if he let himself be scared off, he would have nothing—no Annie, no job, no prospects, no hope. Transformationalism had become the totality of his existence; they had swallowed him whole already. But if he went on, he would be sucked in even deeper. Along that path might lay something even worse than becoming a total cipher—he might end up really being programmed, truly converted. He might end up becoming the enemy he was fighting. Both alternatives were unacceptable, but he was forced to choose between them.

  He parked the car in the garage and went into the house. The miasmic depression of the filthy living room was unbearable. The emptiness of the bedroom was unendurable. The foul kitchen filled his mind with memories of Annie cooking there, the room all spotless and shiny. Even the toilet seemed like the Black Hole of Calcutta. He wandered from room to room aimlessly, like a ghost, unable to stand being anywhere in the house. It was dead, it was a moldering tomb, and his life was a corpse, rotting inside it.

  He felt the decision unfolding its inevitability within him. A line from an old Dylan song cycled through his brain over and over again. “You’re invisible n
ow, you’ve got no secrets to conceal. ”

  Finally he realized that some deeper level of his psyche was trying to tell him something, because the line was only half-true. He had nothing left in his life, but he did have a secret to conceal. Or reveal.

  The Master Contact Sheet. There was enough ammunition there to make the movement pay dearly for what it had done to him. At the very least it represented a kind of insurance…

  I’ll Xerox up a lot of copies, he decided. I’ll put them in sealed envelopes with cover letters, stamp them, and address them to the district attorney, the Times, a couple of TV stations, and the IRS. I’ll make up four packets of duplicated lists to be sent to the media and the authorities. And I’ll mail them tonight—to my agent, to Waily Bruner, to Bob Shumway, and to Uncle Bill—with instructions to mail out the envelopes if they don’t get word from me to the contrary every thirty days.

  I’ve really got something on them, he realized. And this is fail-safe. And this can do more than assure my own safety. I can use it to blackmail them into letting Annie go once I find her! One member more or less certainly isn’t going to be worth having that Master Contact Sheet made public to them!

  And if I go on, if I live at the Center, maybe I can dig up more dirt, maybe I can build up a dossier that will destroy them once and for all. Maybe I can somehow get Annie back and torpedo Transformationalism too.

  He found that now that the decision had been made, he could stop pacing and sit down on the edge of the couch. He had nothing left to lose, but he now had plenty to gain. The risk was great and the odds imponderable, but his commitment to the battle had been total for a long time. He only had to look around the house to realize that. The war was on already, all he could do was dare everything and go in for the kill.

  Eleven

  Weller found an overnight parking space only two blocks away, trudged wearily into the Los Angeles Transformation Center, showed his pass to the gatekeeper, took the elevator to the fourth floor, entered his unlockable room, and flopped down on the bed to wait till six-thirty, when dinner, such as it was, would be served.

  Like a good little Transformationalist he had been taking his meals at the Center during the four days he had been there. The idea of eating alone in tacky downtown Hollywood grease parlors was monumentally depressing, and he never seemed to have the energy to do anything else. Besides, they had him down for dishwashing, and he’d have to be back at the Center by seven-thirty to do his assigned shit work anyway.

  The room itself was as featureless as such a tiny cubicle could be: a Salvation Army bureau, a closet, a night table with a single lamp, a cheap motel desk and chair set, and a bed. The carpet was a dingy beige, and the lime-green walls were not even adorned with a framed photograph of John B. Steinhardt.

  A monk’s cell, or not even that, since a monk spent a lot of time in his cell contemplating, whereas this room was a place to sleep and nothing more; deliberately designed, no doubt, to be so obnoxious that the occupant would be forced to spend most of his waking hours in the communal areas of the Center, soaking up the Transformationalist group-think. If the Center had not once been a hotel, the toilets probably would’ve been communal too, with the privacy doors taken off the crappers.

  Weller checked his watch: five minutes after six. He could start drifting down to the dining room soon. Not that he looked forward to dinner with any enthusiasm, but being awake in this room for any length of time made anything else seem relatively attractive. Well, almost anything else. He could go to the library and browse through Transformationalist textbooks and pamphlets or the complete science-fiction novels of John B. Steinhardt. He could go watch some inspirational tapes in the video room. He could take part in a rap session on some fine point of Transformationalist dogma. He could sign up for some role-reversal games. He could masturbate, if the lockless door didn’t make him too paranoid.

  Or he could go down into the private lobby and chew the fat with some of his fellow inmates and amuse himself by trying to figure out who was a Monitor or who would be reporting what he said to whom.

  He had done that his first night at the Center, after stowing his clothing in his room, eating a solitary meal, and giving himself his first case of housemaid’s hands washing dishes in the kitchen. Might as well find out what I’ve gotten myself into, he had thought, as he dried his hands. He left the big restaurant-style kitchen, walked down the hall past the dining room, and entered the private lobby, which had probably been a meeting room in the days when the Center was a hotel.

  It was a big barn of a room, with a high ceiling, and scars on the asphalt-tile floor where a stage had obviously once stood. Mismatched old couches, chairs, and low tables were scattered around the room in no particular pattern. One lemon-colored wall was graced by the biggest standard photo of Steinhardt that he had yet seen. There was an um of coffee on a table in one comer, and in another an ancient black-and-white television console was muttering to itself with no one watching.

  About thirty people drifted around the room in small groups. Most of them were younger than Weller, and most of them, male and female, wore jeans, T-shirts, army-surplus gear, or finery snatched off the racks at the May Company. Weller immediately felt like an alien, as if he had wandered onto the wrong set.

  He drifted around the room quietly and invisibly, like the Flying Dutchman, absorbing random bits of dialogue.

  “—said she had gotten an appointment to the Institute—”

  “—one of John’s early novels, but you can tell the seeds are there—”

  “—is a better mediatative deconditioner than Carson, if you ask me—”

  “—that’s right, the Monitors! At least they’re going to give me a preliminary screening—”

  “—really a bitch eptifying my consciousness behind that one. It’s my major block—”

  No one seemed to be talking about the Dodgers, politics, dope, sex, career, movies, or anything else that didn’t relate to Transformationalism. Could it really be that these people had no private inner lives, nothing beyond the Transformationalist programs they were running on?

  He glided to the periphery of a group of four: a dark-haired woman in her late twenties seated on a couch with an intense-eyed young man with a strange 1950s crew cut, two other men standing in front of the couch talking to them, one with longish blond hair, the other a burly type in T-shirt andjeans. “—of course, it’s just a rumor—”

  “—sounds possible, and everyone knows they’re doing things at the Institute years ahead of anywhere else—”

  “—assuming thoughts do have a one-to-one relationship with brain waves, I don’t see why you couldn’t produce a given state of consciousness by reversing the polarity of a brainwave monitor—”

  “—but John doesn’t make that assumption anywhere—”

  “—doesn’t say no, either—”

  The woman on the couch looked up at Weller; she was thin, plain-looking, and something about her face made her eyes seem as if they were set too close together. “Hi,” she said, “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  Weller nodded noncommittally.

  “Have you heard anything about the brainwave inducer?”

  “Not much,” Weller said ambiguously.

  “Are you into mind-matter interface theory?” the woman asked. “None of us really are. Do you know if it’s even possible to produce a state of consciousness electronically?” Weller shrugged. “I’m in the media end myself, ” he said. The blond longhair looked at him strangely. “You work for Changes?”

  Weller nodded.

  “What do you do?”

  “I direct.”

  There was an intake of breath; they were suitably impressed, but there seemed to be something more, a certain tension seemed to have descended on the little group. “Then what are you doing here?” the woman asked.

  “Just following a life directive. ”

  “That’s weird,” the crew cut said. “That’s really weird. There’s no one
else on that level living here. ”

  The four of them studied Weller guardedly. I’m older, I’m in a position way above them, and there’s no one else here like me, Weller thought. It must be more Monitor paranoia. He resisted the impulse to play to it; this was definitely a time to maintain a low profile, and for all he knew, one of them could be a Monitor.

  “So it goes,” he said, shrugging, and drifted off, leaving what he was pretty sure would be an altered conversation behind him.

  Weller glided in and out of a few more conversations— a discussion about a young man’s problems with getting his parents to accept his commitment to the movement, a disputation about the significance of a minor character in Transformational Man, a rehash of last night’s role-reversal game—all of which served only to increase his sense of alienation.

  This really was a roomful of people who ate, slept, and drank Transformationalism. More than that, the people living at the Center seemed to be the very bottom end of the movement—shiftless, confused kids without a pot to piss in or a dime to contribute to Transformationalism’s coffers. Scooped up as Steinhardt’s slavies as they might have been by the Hare Krishna movement or the Jesus Freaks, had they happened to be caught by those wavelengths first. The psychic lumpenproletariat of the seventies.

  One night of trying to relate to that had been enough for Weller. Better to stay in his room twiddling his thumbs than put himself in a situation where he would be bound to shoot his mouth off sooner or later. There was no way he could keep talking about Transformationalism with these kids without finally telling them a thing or two or being tempted to play Monitor, and they didn’t seem to talk about anything else. And he knew that the Monitors would be getting reports on anything he said to anyone.

  Six-twenty. Time to drift down to the dining room, he thought. If I’m in luck, they’ll let me keep to myself. Though he had a hunch that if he seemed to be making an effort to keep to himself, it would be a black mark in a dossier somewhere too.