Up the Walls of the World

Chapter 6

Thursday morning means the Military Air Transport terminal, a scruffy extension of the National Airport warren. It reminds Doctor Daniel Dann of a small-town airport. Crowded, not many uniforms visible, the air-conditioning already beginning to fail.

He makes his way around a party escorting a famous senator—much shorter than his photos—and gets caught among five plump women gretting a saluki dog. Beyond them is Lieutenant Kendall Kirk’s yellow hair.

“Ah, there you are, Dan.” Noah Catledge bustles up. “Two to go. Good morning, Winona .”

Winona turns out to be the Housewife, in a turquoise knit pantsuit. “This is so exciting!” She giggles up at him.

“Put your bag over there,” Kirk says officiously. To Dann’s surprise, Kirk also has a dog on a lead, a large, calm, black Labrador bitch. He recalls that Deerfield is supposed to be in a forest preserve. Evidently one of the military’s many private hunting grounds.

He looks around, telling himself not to hope. Beyond Winona is the bearded, leukemic ensign, Ted Yost. And there’s the little man, K-30—wait a minute: Chris Costakis. Beside him are the two girls, W-11 and W-12, the Princess and the Frump. The Frump is a thin, short, sullen creature in grimy brown jeans with a black knapsack. Beside her the Princess looks like Miss America , pink-cheeked, with a wide, white-toothed Nordic smile. Dann notices the meanness of his thought, knows what’s the matter with himself.

Next minute nothing’s the matter. Behind the senatorial party a tall beige-and-black figure is drifting toward them. She’s coming with us. He catches himself grinning like a fool and turns away.

“Ah, there you are, Rick. All here.”

Rick is the twin, R-95. He ambles up expressionlessly, hung with a bright orange plastic bag labeled Dave’s Dive Shop.

Kirk herds them all out the end gate. It feels strange not having tickets. At the main gate the senator and entourage are boarding a shiny executive jet with Air Force markings. Three huge, dusty Air Force cargo planes wait beyond. Their own plane turns out to be a small unmarked twin-engine Lodestar, rather beat-up looking.

For a moment a queer sense of alien reality pierces Dann’s insulation. Kirk’s pompousness about the supersecret installation, the code names, their “classified” status had all seemed to him absurd games played by grown boys. But the very normal, busy, used look of this big terminal impresses him. The planes: millions of miles flown on unknown errands apart from the civilian world. A whole worldwide secondary transport system in the shadows… He hopes it is secondary.

Behind him she is coming too.

At the plane Kirk is talking to a shirt-sleeved man holding a clipboard. The Labrador patiently sits.

“The Gates of Mordor,” the Frump said loudly as they climb up into the Lodestar. What does that mean? R-95—Rick—looks around at her. The Princess smiles, suddenly looking like a worried young girl.

Dann sits by a window. Obviously she won’t sit by him. No; the long beige-clad legs pace by and stop beside the turquoise bulges of Winona . Into the seat beside him drops little K-30, Chris Costakis. His legs don’t reach the floor. Pituitary dysfunction, probably could have been prevented, Dann thinks automatically. The clipboard man closes them in and goes up front.

With no ceremony, the engines start and they are taxiing to the runway. A minimal engine run-up, no waiting. Almost at once they are in the air.

Absurd happiness blooms inside Dann. She can’t leave now. We’re really going on this trip together. Stop being childish.

Chris Costakis is speaking in his high, unconvincingly tough voice.

“Heading south. We’re not going far in this, has to be around Norfolk .”

Dann doesn’t care if it’s around Vladivostock, but he nods politely.

“We’ll be comfortable. The Navy does itself good.” They chat desultorily. Costakis turns out to be a locksmith, semi-retired. “They call us security engineers now. Eighty percent of my jobs are electronic. I had to slow down when my liver acted up.”

That confirms Dann’s note of the fiery flush in the little man’s palms. An old wives’ sign but often accurate. “How in the world did you get into this?”

“I did a lot of work for Annapolis , the Navy security people. Catledge came around looking for volunteers to test. I got what you call a sixth sense about combinations, always had. So I tried out. I scored real high.”

“You mean you can guess the numbers in a combination without, ah, listening to the tumblers or whatever one does?” Dann is happy enough to take any nonsense seriously.

“It’s not guessing.” Costakis’ shiny, bulbous face closes up; he gives Dann a sly look.

“Of course. I beg your pardon. Please go on.”

“Well… Numbers, see. Some days I’ve gone as high as thirty out of fifty. But it has to be a man. From a woman I can’t pick up a thing.”

Dann gazes at the little man’s high, ill-formed forehead, his few sandy hairs. Hundreds of times he’s fastened electrodes to that skull. Does some unnatural ability really lurk in there? His thoughts touch the closed compartment in which lies the memory of a sliding water glass, and veer off, shaken. And all these others here, can they really do something abnormal? Incredible. Yet this is a real plane, taking them to a real place. Real money is being spent. Even more incredible, is a submarine actually steaming out to sea with Rick’s twin in it? Crazy.

The government always spends money in crazy ways, Dann reassures himself. Especially the military. He recalls some absurd scandal about condoms in balloons. This is just another. Float along with it.

Genially he asks Costakis, “If nobody is around who knows the combination, how can you, ah, read the numbers?”

“They don’t have to be around.” Costakis purses his small mouth. “Maybe I read someone, maybe there’s traces, see? I don’t want theories. I just know what I can do. Gives me like an interest in life, see?”

“I see.” Delicious, Dann thinks. I am in the realm of fantasy. The faint glow of his chemical supplement to breakfast has taken firm hold.

Costakis is peering down. “I told you, Norfolk . That was U.S. Three-Oh-One.” His tone is not quite casual.

“You know the area well?” From his internal shelter Dann looks benignly on the unappetizing little man. He is totally unaware that his own knobby face emanates a profound and manly empathy that a TV casting director would give an arm for.

“I know Route Three-Oh-One.” Costakis pauses and then blurts out with dreadful cheeriness, “I spent twenty hours lying on it with a busted head. Nobody stopped, see? Hitch-hiker sacked me and took my car. Broad daylight, man, it was hot. I couldn’t move, see? Just jerk my arm. Last ride I ever give anybody.”

“Twenty hours?” Dann is appalled. “Couldn’t they see you?”

“Oh yeah, they saw. My legs were on the concrete.”

“But the police—”

“Oh yeah. They picked me up. Threw me in the drunk tank at Newburg. I was about gone when the doc noticed me.”

“Good lord.” A cold shaft of pain is probing for Dann, sliding through his defences. Shup up, Costakis.

“ ’Course, if I had family or something, they might’ve looked for me,” Costakis goes on relentlessly. “Had one brother, he got killed on Cyprus . Went back to try to find Dad’s grave, he got caught.” He grins in a hideous parody of fun. “What woman would look at me?”

Dann makes a wordless sound, knowing life has tricked him again. The unwelcome reality of the little man is flooding in on him. The loneliness, the horror vitae. Confirmed by twenty hours lying alone in pain, being passed… Dann shudders, wanting only to turn him back into K-30, an unreal grotesque.

“So I can use an interest in life, see?”

“Of course.” Stop, for God’s sake, I can’t take it. Dann’s hand is feeling for the extra capsule in his pocket. No closeness, nobody. What woman would look at me? Costakis is undoubtedly right, Dann sees; to a woman that pumpkin-headed, pygmoid body, the inept abruptness, would probably be actively repulsive. To a man he is a cipher, faintly annoying, exuding a phoney jauntiness and knowledgeability that smell of trouble inside. Keep away. And everyone has, of course, always will… To be locked forever in rejection… I can use an interest in life… Pity grabs painfully at some interior organ Dann suspects is vital. Panicked, he bolts over Costakis and heads for the plane lavatory.

Coming back, he notices the extra member of the party. Sitting at the very back, behind Kirk’s dog, is an unknown civilian. He must have got on last.

Pretending to look at the dog, Dann gets an impression of greying black hair, grey, very well-tailored suit, a vaguely New England face with a foreign trace. Must be a passenger for wherever they are going.

Costakis has seen him looking.

“The snook,” he whispers, grimacing. “The big enchilada.”

“What, C.I.A.?” Dann whispers back.

“Shit, no. No action there now. D.C.C., I bet.”

“What’s D.C.C.? I never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t. Boss spooks. Defense Communications Component, name doesn’t mean anything. I saw them in Annapolis , everybody jumped. Hey, look at that, I was right. That smutch is Norfolk . We’re starting down.”

The clouds are opening. Below them woods and meadows are swinging up. Dann sees a little lake. General exclamations in the plane.

They land in sunlight on an apparently deserted country airstrip, which seems unusually long. At the far end Dann can see the sock and a couple of choppers in front of the control shack. Apparently they are not going to taxi back. The plane’s steps are unfolded.

As they file down, Dann sees that a grey sedan and a grey minibus have already come out to them. He notices an odd structure looming at their end of the strip—a parachute tower, in need of paint. His blood-chemistry is repairing his internal damage. It is a fine summer day in fantasyland.

The clipboard character has reappeared and is loading their bags in the bus. Before they are all out, the sedan has raced away with Costakis’ spook inside.

“Oh look, aren’t those real deer?” Winona’s turquoise arm points to a dozen pale tan silhouettes grazing in the woods alongside.

“That’s right, that’s right!” Noah enthusiastically shepherds them into the bus. “I told you it would be delightful.”

The Frump makes a snorting noise.

The bus carries them through more woods and meadows on a narrow blacktop road. Not a country road; the straight lines and square corners bespeak the military mind. They pass what Dann thinks is an unkempt firelane.

“Obstacle course,” Ensign Yost says.

After what must be five miles they pull up at three old-style wooden barracks, standing by themselves in a grassy clearing. A volleyball net hangs in front of one. The June sun is hot as they get out.

“Look—a swimming pool!” Winona carols. They all stare around. Beyond the far barracks is a very long, shabby pool speckled with floating leaves.

“I told you to bring your suits,” Noah says like Santa giving presents. “Well, Kendall , this looks just fine, if our equipment is only here. We must check on that at once.”

“It’ll be here,” Kirk says shortly. “You don’t do anything until you all sign in.”

Another sedan has driven up. Out of it gets a large, bearded, bear-like man in rumpled grey fatigues. He is carrying a folder.

“Captain Harlow,” Kirk announces. The man wears no insignia; Dann recalls that Captain is a higher rank in the Navy. “All in the day-room, please.”

“This building will be your test site, Dr. Catledge,” Captain Harlow says as they troop into the large room at the front of the first barracks.

It looks exactly like all the rec-rooms Dann saw in his service days; plywood, maple, chintz, a few pinups. Over the battered desk is a sign: WHAT YOU SEE HERE LET IT STAY HERE. The desk is littered with copies of Stag, Readers Digest, sports magazines.

Noah has trotted into the corridor leading to the bedroom cubicles, the toilets and the back door.

“These bedrooms will serve as test stations, Captain,” he says briskly. “But we’ll need doors installed to close off each end.”

“Just tell Lieutenant Kirk your requirements,” the ursine captain says pleasantly. “You’ll find we move fairly fast here. Now I need your signatures on these documents before I turn you loose. Read carefully before signing, please.”

Dann notices that his hands and wrists are delicate; the bearishness is an affectation. Kirk hands round papers; general fumbling for pens and places to write.

Reading , Dann is informed that he is now subject to National Security Directive Fifteen, paragraph A-slash-twelve, relating to the security of classified information. He is, it appears, swearing never to divulge any item he has experienced here.

He signs, visualizing himself rushing to the Soviet embassy with the news that there is an ederly parachute-tower near Norfolk , Virginia . Kirk gives him an ID card bearing his own color photograph in plastic and a wad of what appear to be tickets.

“Pin the badges on you at all times,” Harlow tells them. “Your lunch is laid on in Area F Messhall. The bus will wait while you take your bags over to the living quarters. Ladies in the end barracks, please.”

“Right by the pool!” Winona exclaims. “Captain, can we take walks around here? The woods look so lovely.”

“Your badges are for Area F only. Don’t pass the area fences.” He smiles. “Don,’t worry, you’ll get plenty of exercise. It’s a square mile.”

“Can we walk home from the messhall?”

“If you wish. The bus will take you to and from meals. The schedule is over there. Lieutenant, will you come with me?”

As he and Kirk go out, Costakis mutters to Dann, “Harlow. That’s a new one. I’ve seen him without the beard.”

The men’s barracks next door is hot and stuffy; Yost and Costakis turn on the air conditioners. Their cots are stripped, the bedding folded on them. Dann picks a cubicle on the side nearest the women’s building and transfers some vials to his pockets. When he comes out onto the steps, R-95—Rick—is waiting for him.

“Ron’s scared,” Rick says in a low, morose voice.

“Your brother… he’s in the submarine?” Dann is trying to recall Rick’s last name: Ah, Waxman. Rick and Ron Waxman.

“Yeah. He doesn’t like it.” Rick gives him a smouldering look. “I don’t like this either. I wish we hadn’t come.”

“I’m sure he’ll be all right. They seem to be taking good care of us.”

“You really think so?” Rick shoots the question at him as if trying to penetrate to some fund of truth in Dann’s head. Why is Rick asking him, of all people? Abstractedly, he smiles his good smile and utters more reassurance, making fof the bus.

Kirk is waiting for them at the messhall door. It turns out to be a great dim, cavernous space, filled with big military-rustic tables, all empty except for a small group at the far end. The place looks old. Adjusting his eyes, Dann sees ghosts: battalions, whole clandestine armies have trained here for God knows what.

A plump man in fatigues and silver bars takes their mess tickets and seats them right by the door. Not near the others. Dann understands; Noah’s people are in quarantine. We’ll meet no one and see as little as possible of anything that may be going on here. He squints through the dimness. At the two far tables are men in fatigues, a few smartly uniformed Waves. Station personnel, or embryo spies? He sits down between Ensign Yost and the Frump; he will not let himself look at her, sitting beyond Noah, Kirk, Winona.

“I sure hoped we’d be on the water,” Ted Yost says. “Call this a shore installation?” He sighs. “I wish I could have gone in the sub.”

“Ron didn’t want to go,” Rick tells him sulkily. “He had to because he’s the best sender. He hates it.”

“I know.” Yost smiles with unexpected sweetness, his gaze far off.

Their food comes fast, on trays; enormous breaded veal cutlets, baked potatoes, applesauce. Good, but too much of everything. As it arrives, four people at the far end get up to go. Among them Dann sees the bearded “Captain Harlow” and a tall, thin, grey civilian. Kirk jumps up and strides down to them.

“The Black Rider,” mutters the Frump’s voice beside him. I must stop calling her that, Dann thinks. What the hell is her name? Something Italian. From beyond her the Princess smiles at him intently.

“I’m so glad you’re with us, Doctor Dann.” Her voice is very soft.

“Everybody! Give me your movie-tickets!” It’s Kendall Kirk back, looming at them in his insufferable clean-cut way. “The movie-tickets, those yellow ones. You never should have been issued them,” he says severely, as though it was their fault.

There is a general confusion while the movie-tickets are being separated from the meal-tickets and passed back to Kirk. Dann is delighted with this evidence of military bumbling. At last Kirk sits down again, and starts talking with Noah about their missing equipment.

The Frump has been making scornful comments, sotto voce. Her swarthy face looks surprisingly like a worried small boy’s. Dann experiences a rush of outgoing geniality.

“You know, after all this time of having to refer to you as Double-you-eleven and twelve, I’m not sure we’ve ever been introduced. I’m Daniel Dann.”

“Fredericka Crespinelli.” The Frump says it so like a handshake that Dann glances down and sees her small fist curled tight.

“I’m Valerie Ahlgren,” the Princess laughs. “Hey, Daniel Dann, that’s neat. It’s Dan any way you say it. I’m Val, call her Frodo.”

The Frump—Fredericka—scowls. Dann prods his memory.

“Frodo—that’s from a book, isn’t it?”

“How would you know?” Fredericka—Frodo—demands.

“Wait—Tolkien. Something Rings. And Mordor was the Black Realm, wasn’t it?” He smiles. “Do you see this place as a black realm?”

“Oh yes,” says Valerie. But her friend asks curtly, “What are you, a psychiatrist?”

“Goodness no. I’m just interested. To me this place seems, well, somewhat ramshackle and abandoned. Maybe it was blacker once.”

“It’s not abandoned,” Valerie says intensely, looking furtively about.

“Ghosts, maybe,” Dann chuckles.

“Didn’t you notice those magazines—all recent?” Frodo frowns. “They use this place.”

“That’s why we’re so glad you’re with us,” Val says quietly. “People like us, we’re vulnerable. They don’t like us.”

For an instant Dann thinks she’s telling him they’re lesbians, which he had rather assumed. (The perennial male puzzle: How, how?) But then he realizes her glance had summed up the whole table.

She means, he sees, people like Noah’s subjects. People who are supposed to be telepathic, to read minds. Nonsense, he thinks, meaning nonsense that they read thoughts and nonsense that the powers of Deerfield would dislike them.

“They value you,” he tells her gently. “They’re taking all this trouble to see what you can do.”

“Yeah,” Frodo grunts. Valerie just looks up at him so earnestly it gets through. She’s really worried, he sees. Probably people like this are inclined to paranoid suspicions, living among unreal perceptions.

“I wouldn’t worry. Really.” He summons up his doctor smile, willing her trouble away as he used to will away more tangible ills.

Slowly she smiles back at him and touches her friend’s hand. Surprisingly, it’s a strong, radiant smile, quite transforming her face. At the same moment he glimpses Frodo’s fingers; her nails are bitten off to stubs. H’mmm. His notion on their relationship somersaults. Who is the strong one here. Or must there be a strong one, do their small strengths complement each other?

“Anyway, it’s nice being by ourselves,” Val says. “Sometimes it hurts so much, in crowds.”

“You can say that again,” says Ted Yost from Dann’s other side. He and the girls exchange looks. Dann has a moment of crazy belief; what would a barrage of thought from a crowd be like for a telepath? Horrible. But of course it’s not that; they’re probably abnormally sensitive to voice-tones, body-signs of hostility.

Across from him, Chris Costakis has taken no part in this conversation; he eats stolidly, his gaze darting about. Beside him, Noah and Kirk have been going over the requirements; the doors to be installed, the missing biomonitors, the computer terminal, the power supply.

“They want the first test at eighteen hundred tonight,” Kirk says.

“ Kendall , until we get our hands on our equipment I refuse to try anything. This is going to be done right or not at all.”

“Okay, okay. They’re putting on the pressure.”

“Then they must get my equipment and get it set up right.”

“It’ll be here.”

“And properly installed.”

Kirk glances at Dann, who looks carefully blank. He knows and wants to know nothing of the entrails of the shiny cabinets he uses. To his relief Costakis speaks up abruptly.

“I can give you a hand, Doc.” The little man is still offering his help to a rejecting world.

“Good, good, Chris,” says Noah enthusiastically. “I’m glad to have someone who understands the function. If you’re all finished, shall we go?”

“Now for that pool!” Winona sings out. Behind her, Margaret Omali towers up.

As they walk toward the bus, she turns away.

“I’ll walk.”

“But the computer!” cries Noah. “We need you, Miss Omali!”

“It won’t be there,” she says flatly. “One mile, I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

She strides away, followed by Noah’s expostulations. Dann sees Kendall Kirk take one tentative step and says firmly, “I believe I’ll walk too. That was a heavy lunch.”

Kirk gives him a nasty look and gets in the bus. Dann finds he has to stretch even his long legs to catch up with her. The bus passes them then disappears. He swings along in silence beside her, feeling wild and happy.

“You meant it. Four miles an hour,” he says finally. “I hope you don’t mind my sharing your walk?”

“No.”

He searches for a topic. “I’m, ah, puzzled. If it wouldn’t bother you to tell me, how do they put a computer out here in the woods?”

“They install a terminal and tie in via telephone line. There’s a small computer capability at the Headquarters here, they won’t specify what. Through it I can access TOTAL. The phone line is fast enough for our purpose.”

He is enchanted that she will talk, he would listen to her read stock quotations. “What’s TOTAL? A big computer?”

Her perfect lips quirk. “More than that. TOTAL is the whole Defense system. We only use a tiny part.”

“It must be enormous.”

“Yes.” She smiles again in secret pleasure. “Nobody knows exactly how far the network extends. One time it printed out all your credit ratings.”

“Good Lord!” But he is thinking only that she is walking a little slower, relaxing. The blacktop is cool in the forest lane.

“And could you tell a layman why we need a computer? It seems to me that their answers are either right or wrong.”

“No, it’s more complex than that. For example, a subject might give a wrong letter which is right for the letter before or after. If this occurs in a series, it’s significant. Do you remember J-70; that Chinese girl? She read letters ahead, five out of six sometimes. Dr. Catledge calls it precognition. The program has to analyse correspondence against increasing distance in time forward or back.”

“But what about chance?” he asks, floundering in this rarified air.

“The basic program computes against chance probabilities,” she tells him patiently. “Including each subject’s tested letter-probability base.”

“Oh.” His poisoned cortex reels, makes a desperate effort to . please her. “So—even if a subject gets them all right you have to subtract something for chance.”

“That’s right.” She smiles, really pleased. He is ridiculously elated.

“I can see it’s complicated.”

“Some of the math gets quite interesting. Take repeated letters—”

“Thank you for explaining.” He is enchanted by her mysterious competence, but he cannot cope with repeated letters. “Look!”

Three deer are browsing in the verge ahead. They bound across the blacktop, showing their white, flame-shaped scuts.

“One of them was all spotted,” she says wonderingly. A city girl.

“Yes. A fawn, a young one. The spots help camouflage it while it lies still.”

“Oh, I wish my Donnie could have seen that,” she says very low.

He recalls the bare apartment. “Your son? He doesn’t live with you?”

At the words, the bottom of his world shivers, threatens to drop him into his private hell. For one second, he had been back in another life of simple joy. Stop it. Vaguely he hears her saying, “No. He’s with my mother in Chicago .”

Her tone has changed too. The Keep Out signs are up.

The magic is gone. But before he can feel it, a car roars up behind them and they have to jump aside. It’s a grey panel truck.

She laughs. “I knew that terminal wasn’t there.”

They walk on, the bad thing is over. He wants to hear her voice, even if it means computers.

“Tell me, is it true that computers are now so complicated that no human mind can really know what one is up to?”

“Oh, yes.” The smile comes back. “And of course TOTAL, well, it can access any government computer, and whenever it wants data it can interface with almost any computer network in the country, if you have the code. Some foreign ones too. It got into CBS once.” Her face takes on a dreamy, tender look, eyes more beautiful than Sheba’s queen. “I love to think of it. The wonderful complexity, yet all so cool and logical. Like a different kind of life trying to expand and grow.”

“Sounds a little scary.” But Dann isn’t scared, he’s delighted. The tall alluring creature strolling the wildwood, talking mysteries. “I won’t ask you if they think. I gather that’s silly. But since our life is a function of the complexity of our internal connections, maybe it could be alive in a way. Maybe it likes you too.”

She chuckles. “Oh, I’m not that crazy, I know it’s a machine. But sometimes I wonder if certain programs aren’t just a little alive. Do you know TOTAL has ghosts?”

“What?”

“Ghost programs. It’s hard to flush a really big computer, and a network is impossible. Nobody is going to shut down TOTAL. People make mistakes, see. Their programs generate self-maintaining loops.” She actually unbends enough to give him a teasing look. “Tapes spin when nobody is using them. Ghosts.”

He grins back like a kid. “What kind of ghosts?”

“Well, there’s a couple of war-games, nobody knows their address, and some continuing computations. And there’s supposed to be a NASA space-flight simulation still running. It doesn’t do anything most of the time because it’s still traveling through space. When it lands or whatever it’ll show up. It could be part of the ghost in my program. I found out we’re using an old NASA link.”

“Our ghost?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Every so often it acts up on anything to do with time. Like printing out the date.”

“NASA… Now you’re getting close to my friends.”

“The stars?” She remembers, she remembers!

“Yes. The air’s so clear here. If you like, I could show you some this evening.”

“Maybe.” The reserve is back, but no hostility. Beautiful Deerfield ! They round the last corner and see the barracks with two trucks outside. Men are carrying in a door. Margaret quickens pace.

When they come into the day-room, equipment and cables are everywhere. Two Cuban-looking men are hanging the door across the corridor. Margaret heads for crates in the corner. Above the hammering Noah and Costakis can be heard yelling to each other.

“Okay! Plug in.”

There is a flash and all lights go out. The air conditioners have stopped and the corridor is now too dark to see. Lieutenant Kirk comes in and Noah trots up to him.

“ Kendall , we simply have to have more power here.”

“You need a bigger pot up there,” Costakis points at the electric pole outside.

Ted Yost puts his head in and says unexpectedly, “If there’s a laundry here maybe they have one. Laundries use a lot of juice.”

Margaret Omali says nothing, she is probing into crates.

Dann takes himself outside, follows the sound of desultory activity around to the back. Rick Waxman is shooting baskets at the edge of the woods. Ted Yost comes out the back door and joins him.

Dann sits down on a white-washed bench. After a few minutes the ensign has to quit; he walks away toward the pool, trying not to show distress. Presently Rick comes over to Dann, idly spinning the ball on one finger.

Dann is surprised to see that Rick’s expression and posture are quite different. His face is clear and friendly, he is a normal, attractively muscular young man with his hair tied back like an early American patriot. Dann, who has no extra senses, receives a strong impression of one from whom a burden has been lifted. “Is your brother better?” He surprises himself, acting as if he believed all this.

“Popped a bunch of tranks and passed out.” Rick grins. “I hope it doesn’t mess up the test.”

“You mean, he might not be able to, ah, transmit?”

“Oh, he’ll be able to transmit, all right.” Rick’s grin fades. “The question is, what. He hates those numbers.”

Rick bounces the ball a few times, then sits down beside Dann and stretches in the sunshine. Like a man enjoying respite, like a prisoner let out, Dann thinks. He recalls Ron Waxman, of whom he has seen little. A shade larger, a more taciturn Rick. Probably because of the size difference Dann has assumed that Ron was the dominant brother.

“Tell me, have you two always been together? I mean—”

“I know what you mean. Yeah, our folks tried to split us up. Ronnie couldn’t take it.”

Rick’s eyes have changed, the statement has some meaning. Dann puzzles, unhappily divining pain. “Your brother is more, more sensitive?”

Rick looks down at the grass. “Sensitive,” he says in a low, pentup voice. “My brother is so fucking sen-si-tive. All my life, he can’t take it. He can’t take anything. He can’t listen to the news, he can’t go on the street. There’s an accident on the road, we have to turn around and go back.” He sighs, looks up sideways at Dann. “We tried to take a trip to Denver last year, he picks up vibes somebody died in the motel room. We had to go right home. I wanted to see the Rockies , you know?”

He laughs shortly. “All the things I want, he can’t take. I was pre-med, we both had scholarships. Oh, he’s smart. But he couldn’t take that at all. So we tried law school. Two semesters, that lasted.”

Oh, God. Weakly, Dann asks, “Can’t you go on by yourself, Rick? You could leave Ron with your folks.”

“No way. They crashed in a plane five years ago.”

“Oh…”

“No way,” Rick repeats somberly. “He needs me. And he’s sending all the time. Whatever I’m doing. I read him.” He laughs meaninglessly, bounces the ball.

Dann is appalled, resentful. Why do they do this to him? His hand goes to his pocket, he touches the magic that will turn Rick back into a phantasm.

“Women, it’s a disaster,” Rick goes on. “Half the time he can’t and when he can it’s worse.” He gives Dann a clear, open look as if he were explaining a sore back. The change in him is amazing. “Funny, I can talk to you… Of course, he’ll wake up pretty soon.” He sighs bleakly.

“What do you do for a living, Rick?”

“Pit. We work in the pit at Honest Jack’s. Ronnie’s good with his hands and I can watch out he doesn’t get back wrecks.”

“You mean, auto mechanics?”

“Yeah.” Rick looks down at the stained, callused hands that might have done other work.

“And how did you get into this, ah, project?”

“Catledge bought his car at Jack’s. I guess he has his eye out for twins. The bread helps.”

“Rick, what if your brother were, well, in a—”

“You mean if he was dead? If I had him put away? I guess I could.”

“So?”

“If he wasn’t dead I’d have to go to China . Maybe that’s not far enough, if he was really unhappy. While our folks were alive I rode to Buffalo on the bus once, you know, just to get away. While I was gone our dog got hit by a car. I could hear Ron like he was in the room. I guess he could make me hear him in China if he wanted. And his being … dead, that wouldn’t solve anything. It’s more complicated …”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not just him.” Rick twirls the ball again, looks at Dann. “See, it’s not like I was all right except for him. I’m not. He’s part of me.” His voice is almost a whisper. “He’s the part of me that can’t take it. Can you dig that? It’s like he’s part of me, only outside where I can’t fix anything. He got—left out. We’re, I’m not, I’m not okay without him. I mean, I need this break. But if he doesn’t wake up pretty soon, I, I can’t…”

He falls silent, rolling the ball between his coarsened hands. Above them a mockingbird is trilling arpeggios. Dann sees Rick is talked out, wants to be left alone to enjoy his respite. He touches Rick’s shoulder, unaware that the boy has derived comfort from their talk, and gets up and walks aimlessly away.

Dear God. The pain in Rick’s eyes. The waste. He is reminded of the pitiful history of a patient, a friend, who had an intermittently and inconspicuously mad husband. The dead dragging the living down. Or is it possible Rick and his twin are in some weird sense one person, cruelly sorted into two bodies? Life’s savage jokes. No matter. He dry-swallows the capsule. In a few minutes the chemistry of his bloodstream will carry reality away. He listens to the mockingbird, and discovers that his feet are carrying him around the end barracks, to the pool.

A man and three women are in the pool. Dann sits on one of the tin loungers on the shady side.

“Hi, Doctor Dann! Come on in!” The splashing turquoise-capped figure is Winona .

Dann makes benign, avuncular excuses and sits watching Valerie and Fredericka—Frodo—climb out on the sunny side. Frodo’s skinny, swarthy form is clad in a blood-red tank suit. Valerie is in sunny yellow, a seductive young body. She stretches out to sun. Frodo ceremoniously lets down the back of the chair for her, fetches a coke, lights her cigarette, sits cross-legged on the grass alongside. A pixie cavalier. It occurs to Dann that he is watching romantic love. He smiles, safe back in his cocoon.

The bearded figure of Ensign Yost climbs out and walks toward Dann, toweling vigorously. His bushy face laughs, he is every inch the folly mariner. Hard to remember the death working in that bone marrow. He sits down by Dann and lights a cigarette.

Dann starts the automatic rebuke, checks himself. Yost notices it, grins more broadly. They watch Winona’s determined progress up and down the pool. She splashes womanfully. Above them the mocker is still singing, varying his repertory with blue-jay shrieks.

“Peaceful here,” Dann offers.

Yost grunts. “I’d still rather be out in that sub.”

“I should think it would be extremely confining.”

“Yeah… But, a ship.”

Winona climbs out, fussily spreads out in a lounge by the girls.

“I got a couple thou put away, Doc,” Yost says meditatively. “If it gets bad again, I’m not going in hospital. No way, no sir. I’m going to lease me a little motor sailor and stay aboard, down the bay. Live there. Even if it’s winter.”

“I see.” Dann has heard something like this before, but the cocoon is holding. Something about this place seems to make for unfortunate confidences, he thinks remotely.

“On the water.” Yost’s voice is dreamy. “I don’t care if it snows. But they say this may last ’til next Spring. How about it, Doc?”

Dann is surpirsed; Yost seems to have come to believe in his disease.

“No one can predict, Ted,” he says, more or less truthfully. “What about your family?” Instantly, he regrets the question. No more revelations, no more.

“Don’t have one now,” Yost says inexorably. “When I got better last time Marie took the kid and split. I didn’t tell her it was temporary, see? Better for Dorothy that way.”

“Dorothy is your little girl?” Dann shudders, can’t help himself.

“Yeah. She’s six last week. I think Marie knew, she figured it was better for Dorothy too. Sometimes I feel bad, holding out the money for the boat. But Marie has a good job, she’s a GS-seven. That’s good security.”

“Oh, yes.”

Ted Yost talks on, describing the boat he plans to get. His deathship. But he is not morbid, he is looking forward with his whole soul to being on the water again, even if it is only the murk off Chesapeake Bay . Back to the sea, the oldest drive of all. Within his insulation, Dann winces. He knows none of this will happen, he knows how the relapse will come. Yost will find himself on the VA wards, trapped in tubing. Not the sea. Pity… What tragic flotsam has Noah collected here? Yost, Rick, Costakis—all in their different intolerable miseries. Well, he, Dann, can positively not take much more of this. And she has not appeared.

Announcing his intention to see how the equipment installation is coming along, he gets up to go.

“Thanks, Doc,” Yost says unexpectedly. What for?

As he rounds the end of the pool Valerie calls to him. Frodo is coughing evilly over her cigarette; Dann makes a mental note to check her and scratches it off again. Surprising how many of them smoke. Does it correlate with—whatever?

When he gets close he is momentarily bemused by Valerie’s bursting young breasts, her vulnerable little belly, and does not take in her whisper.

“Doctor Dann, that man is here again. What does he have to do with us?”

Dann stares around, finally spots a grey sedan beside the trucks in front of the barracks.

“You mean your Black Rider?”

“Yeah,” says Frodo. “What’s he doing here?”

“I don’t know,” Dann smiles.

“You could find out,” Valerie suggests. “Please, Doctor Dann. I’m so worried. He frightens me.”

“We didn’t agree to, to whatever he’s into,” Frodo adds rebelliously.

“I expect it’s some formality. They’re having trouble with equipment, you know.”

“Do you think we’ll do a test tonight?”

“I tend to doubt it. That’s what I’m on my way to find out.”

“Find out about him, please.” Valerie’s big blue eyes plead, her round cheeks tremble.

“I wish they’d get it over with and let us out of here.” Frodo stubs out her cigarette savagely. “This place is scaring Val. Me too.”

“I’ll let you know,” Dann promises. “But truly I wouldn’t worry.”

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Valerie breathes intensely.

Dann’s reassuring smile feels painted on. No more, no more. He all but lopes around the corner of the barracks, wondering how this peaceful place could scare anybody. They’re insane, of course. The mockingbird is still gurgling melodies.

On the steps of the test barracks Kirk’s black Labrador is sitting in the sun. Her tail thumps heavily as Dann goes by; he touches the big, hot head. Her eyes never turn from the door. Amazing how undiscriminatingly dogs give their devotion. Does it mean that Kirk has some good in him somewhere? Dann doesn’t perceive it.

He opens the door into Kirk’s back, generating a flurry of false apologies. The place is still a mess and Margaret is not there. But the tall grey-haired civilian is, apparently taking leave of Noah.

“Dan, I want you to meet Major Drew Fearing.” Noah waves, beaming. “Major, Doctor Daniel Dann is in charge of our psychobiological correlations. That is, the neural and physical changes that characterize successful transfer. Dan, Major Fearing is here from the Department of Defense. Do help me convince him that we can’t start tests without proper instrumentation. It would be a dreadful error, half the value would be lost. Really—”

Under Noah’s barrage Dann and Major Fearing have been looking each other over, or rather, Dann has received the impression of having been instantly and completely recorded on some device behind the veiled grey eyes. The eyes at once drift away, leaving him to examine Fearing’s exterior. Major Fearing—if that’s his real name, Dann recalls Costakis’ lesson—does not look military. Or Naval. Or foreign service. In fact, Dann has seldom met a less classifiable man. His former impression of Waspish aquilinity tinged with some exotic flavor is confirmed: Fearing’s lips and nostrils have a thin, baroque curve. His formal half-smile was gentlemanly and transient. Beyond that he conveys nothing except an intensely neutral quality.

Dann has been trying to sort his neurones into a orderly argument, but it proves unnecessary.

“Quite all right, Doctor Catledge,” Fearing says at Noah’s first pause. “Lieutenant Kirk will see that you have your equipment. We will signal the ship to delay the first test until, say, noon tomorrow?”

The voice is rather charming and conveys a new element: absolute authority.

“Right, sir.” Kirk is all doggy eagerness. No, thinks Dann, the Labrador is much more dignified.

“Fine, Major, fine,” says Noah. “But the equipment must be here.”

Kirk looks shocked. Dann is pleased by the little gnome’s spunk, and then wonders why. Why the hell not? Who is this Fearing character supposed to be?

Whoever he is, he has silently gone. Kirk has to trot to catch up. The sedan driver closes them in, lets the Labrador into the front, and they’re away. From the back of the barracks Dann can hear Costakis and the Cubans struggling with another door.

“Who is he, Noah?”

“Represents D.O.D., I believe. Some intelligence body interested in our effort. I never saw him before. Well, now we don’t have to worry.”

Dann turns to leave, turns back. “Noah… If I might suggest something. I’d keep that fellow as far out of sight as possible.”

Noah gives him an unexpectedly alert look and bobs his head.

Now why the devil did I do that, Dann asks himself, going out into the pleasant afternoon. And why do I feel traitorous; it was only good sense. The man upsets them. But something inside him acknowledges his real reason. Let nothing wake me up. Let this whole ridiculous business just go on being ridiculous, unreal, cool.

Just as he nears the pool it happens.

Dann has never had a “psychic” experience. It doesn’t occur to him that he’s having one now. Suddenly, the lawn, woods, barracks are invaded—transformed by a great wave of soundless motion, as if a hurricane was somehow blowing in place. He glimpses an immense landscape of wind-torn clouds while a light unlike anything he knows sweeps round him, roaring silently—

—And is gone.

He staggers in place, grasping something which turns out to be the back of a metal chair. Has he had a vascular-cerebral accident?

Dazed, he stares around, automatically checking limb and facial function. Everything nominal except his heart rate, which is about one-twenty.

As his gaze focusses he realizes that the women by the pool are in an agitated huddle. Ted Yost and Rick are running toward them.

“Doctor Dann! Doctor Dann!”

He walks to them, his heart slowing. What in God’s name was it?

“Doctor Dann!” Winona cries. “Did you feel it too?”

“Yes, I felt… something. I have no idea what in the world it was.”

“It wasn’t in this world.” Val rubs her eyes.

“That was the sea,” Ted Yost tells them. “It was a great storm at sea, we picked it out of somebody’s mind.”

“I tell you this is a shitty place,” Frodo says murderously.

“I don’t know…” Winona looks around puzzledly. “Was it bad? I felt something like Hello. Didn’t you get it?”

Rick says nothing. His eyes are sullen again. Not sullen, Dann corrects himself, pained. Has Rick woken up? Don’t be idiotic.

“The wind that blows between the worlds cut through him like a knife,” Dann finds himself saying unexpectedly. “Kipling. You wouldn’t know it,” he grins at Frodo, getting some of his own back.

Beside them the door of the women’s barracks opens and Margaret Omali steps out.

“Margaret, did you feel that too?” Winona calls up at her.

“Feel what?” She has a magazine in her hand, Dann sees.

“Like a big wind, in our heads,” Valerie says.

“That’s your department, not mine,” Margaret says without expression. She walks down the steps and heads for the test barracks, as if she had intended to do that all along.

“I felt that, what you call it.” Costakis bustles up to them. “So did the fellas. They’re taking off.”

In fact, the two Cuban workmen are hustling out to their truck, followed by Noah’s remonstrations. As they get in the truck one of them makes a hand sign at the group by the pool.

“They’re giving us the evil eye!” Frodo laughs.

“I tell you,” mutters Costakis obscurely. The truck accelerates away.

Winona giggles. “Say, do you think everybody in this camp felt it? Maybe they think we did it to them! Wouldn’t that be funny?”

Costakis looks up at her. “That could be just exactly right,” he says in his pinched voice. “Only you’re wrong, Missus. It wouldn’t be funny. It wouldn’t be funny at all. Not here.”