The Lost Perception

by Daniel F. Galouye

  Helen returned with the coffee, but had to stir Gregson’s when she saw that he was trembling too much to manage the spoon.

  “On the other hand,” Forsythe said, “there’s the economic situation. On top of having our treasury drained to stamp out the Valorian threat, the Security Bureau has this new crash research project under way that…”

  Helen frowned at her uncle, but said lightly, “I don’t think Greg is up to listening to the world’s woes.”

  “I was just getting around to the good part.”

  “Research on what?” Gregson asked, almost indifferently.

  “The Screamies.”

  Gregson sank dismally into the chair.

  Helen apparently understood that he should be spared any suggestion of the Screamies. But there was no way she could warn her uncle without being obvious.

  “Bureau’s all excited over a research breakthrough,” Forsythe pushed on cheerfully.

  “They don’t think the disease’s organic at all—but a condition caused by something in the region of space the Solar System’s going through. Some sort of radiation that’s supposed to affect the mind directly.”

  “Bill,” Helen broke in tactfully as perspiration began to appear on Gregson’s forehead, “I think I left the fire on under the coffee. Will you check it please?”

  “Eh? What’s that? Oh—of course.” He shuffled out chuckling to himself, apparently convinced he had merely been called upon to accommodate the couple’s desire to be alone.

  But Gregson had been oblivious to the exchange between the two as he reeled on the edge of a seizure.

  Helen knelt before him and took his hands between hers. “Everything’s going to be just like it was two years ago, darling,” she assured. “Only much better.”

  He looked down at the promise that glowed on her face, drawing courage from her sincerity, and his mind closed itself against the horrible ravages that had come so close.

  * * *

  Over the weeks that stretched into mid-July, Helen was a constant and devoted attendant, forcing upon him calorie-laden sweets and large amounts of rich food. Never did she appear discouraged by the silence he occasionally displayed whenever he withdrew into himself to muster his resistance against the next seizure.

  Of course the attacks came despite his intense resolution—but with less frequency. And they were generally limited to those quiet moments just before falling asleep or after awakening. On these occasions, his mind was hurled open, as though by a violent wind, and exposed once more to blinding, dazzling torment almost as fierce as during his first Screamie assault.

  Generally, though, not much was to be seen of Forsythe. He appeared at tunes to direct the two men who drove out several mornings a week to help with the crops. But, for the most part, he stayed to himself, even to the extent of taking meals in his room.

  At first, Gregson hardly noticed Bill’s preference for solitude. And, when he had become sufficiently observant to detect the anomalous behavior, he charged it off to a grudging decision on the old man’s part to avoid complicating the recovery of his guest But with returning strength came increasing attention to details and Gregson was eventually able to note that Helen, too, seemed to be under some sort of strain.

  He was reluctant to discuss it with her at first. And, when he finally did, it was during another stroll in the pasture where they had walked together almost two years earlier.

  Underneath the same tree against which she had leaned then, he came sharply to the point of concern.

  “What’s wrong with Bill? Why’s he staying to himself?”

  He thought he caught a flicker of uncertainty on her face before she smiled and said, “Bill’s fine. He may be sulking a bit, perhaps. I told him to stay out from under your feet.”

  But Gregson couldn’t dismiss the impression that there was considerable concern beneath her bland expression. “I’m no longer the little fellow who’s always getting sand kicked in his face at the beach. Put on thirty pounds in the last six weeks. Haven’t had a Screamie attack in the last four. See? I can even talk about them now. In other words—you don’t have to hide anything.”

  It seemed she was ready to tell him something. But she simply laughed and said, “Only thing I’m hiding, is plum pudding with rum sauce for supper.”

  She leaned back against the tree, just as she had done so long ago, and the pleasant warmth of this July Saturday seemed to bring a special softness to her eyes.

  No longer was he emaciated and hollow-eyed, as he had been on leaving the institute.

  No longer did he feel presumptuous in even touching her.

  But when he pinned her against the bark and kissed her, she responded coolly and turned her face aside almost immediately.

  “Turnabout on top of turnabout,” he observed, puzzled. “Two years ago you accepted, right here on this spot.”

  Distantly, she said, “And you rejected.”

  “And now it’s your turn again?”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  “But I don’t understand. I’m not going back to the bureau.”

  “The bureau wasn’t the only thing between us then, was it?” she asked thoughtfully. “You remembered Philip, didn’t you? And you didn’t want me to have another prospective husband go Screamie.”

  He couldn’t deny it.

  Her eyes focused on the distance. “First there was Philip. And then you. And now…”

  “And now?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t want to take the chance.”

  “I’ve been through the barrier!”

  “But / haven’t. You ever think what it might be like—having children under plague conditions? God, it would be awful going Screamie while you’re pregnant. Or having your own child screech himself to death in your arms.”

  Against both logic and emotion he was powerless to argue.

  * * *

  The hopper, heralded by the roar of its jets, swooped low over the hedgerow, zoomed back into the sky to position itself over the bull’s-eye, then verticaled swiftly down.

  Helen welcomed the interruption. “A visitor! Come on, I’ll race you back to the landing area!”

  He was proud of the fact that he beat her by half a block as he drew up in front of the lean young man with the Security Bureau Medical Corps arm band who stood beside the craft.

  “You Arthur Gregson?” the doctor asked.

  When Gregson nodded, he added, “How’re you feeling? All right, I’d say, judging from that furlong sprint. I’m Horace Miles.”

  Gregson introduced Helen and asked, “You on bureau business?”

  “I’m supposed to give you a physical. But from what I’ve seen so far, it’ll be superficial. Any trouble with Screamie seizures?”

  “Not in over a month. Why?”

  “Hm-m-m.” Miles accompanied them toward the house. “De-isolation six weeks ago, and no relapses over the last four. Full recovery response, I’d say. Radcliff will be glad to hear that.”

  “I hadn’t planned on going back to the bureau. I don’t owe them anything.”

  “Of course not,” Miles readily agreed. “You did more than your share during the initial Valorian operations. But Radcliff asked me to pass on this message: The work you, and only you, can do now will be even more vital than what you’ve already done.”

  “What is it?”

  “Can’t say. I’m just an MD entrusted with a message. But I hear tell you’re needed to help bring an end to the Screamies. Radcliff expects to see you at his office Monday.”

  An hour later, after they had seen Miles off at the bull’s-eye, Helen said dejectedly, “I suppose you’ll be leaving Monday.”

  “I wouldn’t be endowed with human curiosity if I didn’t And if I can stop just a single person from going through what I did, that trip will be worth the effort”

  She watched the craft disappear over the hedgerow, then looked down at her hands. “I wasn’t going to tell you this—not now. I was going to pick a tim
e when I could be sure there’d be no chance of a relapse. But, since you’re leaving day after tomorrow…”

  He seized her shoulders. “What is it, Helen?”

  “I know why Bill’s so quiet and withdrawn, why he’s secluded most of the time. I found a supply of sedative vials in his room.”

  “You mean…?”

  “Quietly, without complaining, without even uttering a sound, he’s going Screamie.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  It wasn’t until Sunday night, under pressure of Monday morning’s departure, that Gregson decided he could no longer put off his confrontation with Forsythe.

  There was no doubt that Bill was doggedly trying to fight off the disease. That morning Gregson had watched from the kitchen while Forsythe had leaned against the barn and suddenly lowered his face into his hands, shuddering violently. It was obvious, then, that the nuclear fires of hell were raging in his brain.

  Still, all that day, Gregson had procrastinated, not knowing how to approach him on the subject. And it wasn’t until late in the evening that Helen led him upstairs and into Forsythe’s room.

  She turned on the table light, gently folded back the covers and eased the sleeve of Forsythe’s nightshirt up along his arm, exposing an area of livid flesh mottled with hypodermic punctures.

  “He’s been injecting himself with a diluted solution for weeks!” she exclaimed.

  Forsythe snorted himself awake. “Greg? Helen?”

  “Yes, Bill—Helen and I are here.”

  “Then you know. But I don’t suppose I had much of a chance of hiding it, did I?”

  “I’m going to call the Pickup Squad.”

  Forsythe reached for his robe. “Not until I start screaming and can’t stop. Until now, though, I’ve been doing all right”

  “I thought I was too,” Gregson reminded. “But the roof caved in on my seventh attack.”

  “Seventh? Hell, I’ve had seventy. Still going strong.” Forsythe sat on the edge of the bed. “Figure you have to learn’ how to turn the stuff on and off before you can see what it’s all about.”

  “And what do you suppose it’s all about?”

  “Helen told you, and then me—two years ago. A sixth sense.”

  “I didn’t say that,” Helen protested. “I just said that talking about a sixth sense was one of the tricks Kavorba used to confuse me.”

  “And I don’t believe he was trying to confuse you. I say he was just trying to tell you, in terms he could only hope you would understand, what the Screamies really are.”

  “And what’s that?” Gregson asked.

  “As I said, something basic, natural—a new form of perception.”

  Gregson wondered whether the other’s mind had been affected by his resistance to the disease.

  “Hell,” Forsythe went on, “the Security Bureau itself just admitted the plague might be caused by ‘radiation from space.’”

  “But bombardment of the brain by some sort of radiation is a long way from a new form of perception.”

  “Is it?” Forsythe laughed dryly. “What is any form of perception except excitation of a specially sensitive area?”

  * * *

  Gregson saw now that he could readily discount everything the old man was saying, for Forsythe had evidently convinced himself the Screamies were something to be accommodated.

  Helen dropped into a chair. “You mean you’re going through all this just because of what that Valorian told me two years ago?”

  Forsythe shook his head vigorously. “For reasons of my own. Consider an entire world that’s never known light, even though its inhabitants all have eyes. Let’s take the case of Mr. X. He’s gotten along on four senses. But he turns a corner and somebody throws a hundred-candlepower beam in his face. What do you suppose happens?”

  “I… I don’t know,” Helen said. “I suppose it frightens him.”

  “It scares living hell out of him! Unless be can learn to close his eyes and keep them shut against this strange, roaring, burning silence, he’ll go insane, die of terror or kill himself.”

  Gregson gripped the bedstead. “Really, Bill—we’re not interested in your attempt to explain the plague. We’re just determined to see you get the proper attention.”

  “That’s right, Bill,” Helen said earnestly.

  “But I’m going to be all right! I just want more time to experiment. Don’t you understand? I can explain so many things now!”

  Helen shook her head. “You’re only rationalizing. Now that you’ve gotten the Screamies, you’re trying to convince yourself they aren’t all that bad.”

  Forsythe snorted. “Don’t drag out your psychiatric couch for me, young lady. What’s the main symptom of a Screamie seizure, besides intense pain?”

  When there was no answer, he supplied his own: “Hallucinations. And isn’t it odd that, sooner or later, you begin imagining those hallucinations are grotesque, twisted representations of the things about you?”

  “Bill,” Gregson pleaded, “let me call the isolation institute.”

  “Don’t you understand?” the other went on, undiscouraged. “That’s the way it would have to be if you were bumping heads with a new form of perception? At first you wouldn’t recognize your surroundings as perceived through a new sense. Take a congenitally blind person who suddenly starts seeing. He’d have to learn to identify a waterfall by the way it looks, rather than by the way it sounds.”

  Gregson could see there was no hope of quietening him now.

  “Greg!” the other said tensely. “I can even tell you what the sixth sense will be Eke! Look at your hands. You can see a wealth of detail—lines and creases, hair, coloration, the whorls of your fingertips. That’s infinitely more than you would perceive through feeling the hand, or ‘listening’ to it with a bat’s sonar system.

  “Now, can’t you imagine how much more refined a perception our sixth sense would permit? It would be as superior to seeing as seeing is to hearing or feeling. We’d be aware of infinitesimal detail, of special relationships between things, perhaps even of cosmic and microcosmic principles that we can’t begin to understand now.”

  Gregson looked down at his hands finally. But not because Forsythe had asked him to.

  Rather, it was an expression of sympathetic understanding. For now he knew that Bill desperately wanted the Screamies to be a new means of perception, because he needed something to compensate for his insufferable blindness.

  “Think what it would mean in terms of communication,” the old man entreated. “Merely by exchanging glances, you and Helen know a lot about what each other is thinking. When we can interpret sixth-sense impressions, we might ‘see’ deep into one another’s thoughts!”

  He evoked only an impatient sigh from Helen.

  But he continued, almost desperately, “It would be like seeing into the future! If a sighted person in a world of the blind sees robbers lying in ambush ahead, he can ‘predict’ he’ll be waylaid when he reaches the spot!”

  In the ensuing silence, he called out hopefully, “Greg?”

  “Over here, Bill,” Gregson said compassionately after a while.

  “You said that woman in London accurately predicted your seizure. Doesn’t that suggest anything at all—that she might have been using some of her sixth-sense powers without even realizing it?”

  Gregson knew then that Forsythe had built his whole case on that one coincidence. “Bill, you’ve got a head start toward being the one in every thousand who survives the Screamies. I showed the same ability to fight off the initial attacks. And I made it safely over the barrier. You’ve got to let us bring you to the institute.”

  “Only way you’ll take me there,” the other said adamantly, “is kicking and screaming—literally.”

  Later that night, while Helen served Gregson coffee in the kitchen, she asked, “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone dragging me to an institute against my wishes.”

&nb
sp; “But it’s more than that! He’s obsessed with the idea of a sixth sense!”

  “Not really obsessed. It’s just something for him to cling to at the moment.”

  “You’re going to New York tomorrow?”

  “I have to.”

  “What am / going to do?”

  “Just stand by with a sedation kit until I get back.”

  Her face brightened. “How long will that be?”

  “Right away. I’m telling the bureau I can’t go back to work for them no matter what the job is.”

  * * *

  From the window of Security Bureau Director Weldon Radcliff s outer office in the Secretariat Building, Manhattan impressed Gregson as not having changed appreciably during the two years of his absence.

  Apparently no additional headway had been made in reconstruction. Those buildings which had stood gaunt and gutted against the skyline in 1997 were, for the most part, still gaunt and gutted. There were fewer persons in the streets below and, proportionately, less traffic.

  But now there were the ululations of many hypodermic sirens, all blending into an ominous undertone, which was a derisive and relentless reminder of the horror that lurked everywhere.

  He turned his attention to a commotion at the corner of East Avenue and Forty-Second Street, where a line of pickets, bearing crudely lettered placards, had come marching into view. Emblazoned in bright red and deep black characters, the posters were legible even from Gregson’s distance:

  “SECBU—DRAIN ON OUR RESOURCES!”

  “SECBU USURPS NATIONAL POWER!”

  “REPRESENTATION DEAD!”

  “BILLIONS DOWN THE DRAIN—NO SCREAMIE CURE!”

  “WHY AN INTERNATIONAL GUARD—WITH NO ALIEN THREAT?”

  “DISSOLVE THE BUREAU!”

  “NATIONAL GOVERNMENT FIRST!”

  Gregson watched an Army truck jolt to a halt at the corner and disgorge a contingent of United States Militia. Clad in ill-fitting and occasionally torn fatigues, the soldiers vividly contrasted the flawlessly unformed Guardsmen who protected the Secretariat Building.

  Adjusting masks, the militiamen hurled tear bombs, then began rounding up the demonstrators and herding them into the truck.