Vertigo

five

Hasson awoke to a room which was brilliant with diffused sunlight and he knew without looking at his watch that he had slept late. His head was throbbing so powerfully that he could actually hear the squirting pulses in the temple which was pressed into the pillow, and his tongue felt like stiffened chamois leather. There was also a fierce pressure in his bladder as a result of alcoholic enhancement of his body’s diuretic processes.

Not a hangover, he protested to the morning. The last thing I need is a hangover. He lay still for a time, reacquainting himself with the room, wondering what had happened on the previous day to trigger the nervy fluttering of excitement he could feel at the threshold of consciousness. There was pleasure involved — that much he knew — the pleasure of… Hasson closed his eyes momentarily as a picture of May Carpenter came into focus in his mind, quickly followed by all the recriminations and objections appropriate to his age, background and temperament. She was too young; she was mated to his host; he was fantasising like an adolescent boy; she was not his type; it was highly unlikely that she could have any interest in him whatsoever — but, but, she had looked at him in a certain way, and she had said, “That’s lucky for both of us,” and she had said, “Perhaps it’s just as well,” and the fact that he had never actually communicated with her and had no knowledge of her as a person was not very important, because there was an abundance of time in which to…

A sudden renewal of the pressure in his abdomen brought Hasson to his senses, making it dear that he had to face the task of getting himself into an upright attitude after many hours of lying in bed. The first stage in the operation was to transfer himself, still in the horizontal position, from the bed to the floor, because he was tackling an engineering job of Brunelian magnitude and the first requirement was a firm and immovable base. He began by dragging his legs sideways to the edge of the mattress by hand, then he rolled over, grasped the underlying frame and drew himself into a kind of a controlled fall to the floor. The inevitable flexure of his back and the abrupt change of temperature initiated a period of torment which he bore in near-silence, staring at the ceiling through slitted eyes. When the spasms began to subside he rolled again until he was lying in the prone position and could begin the slow process — largely guided by trial and error — of raising his upper body and very carefully, like a mason inserting props to hold an unwieldy mass of stone, bringing more and more of his skeleton under it until he had achieved verticality.

Two minutes after making the decision to rise, Hasson was on his feet — breathing heavily, chastened by what he had just been through, but now capable of movement. He shuffled about the room, putting on a dressing gown and collecting toilet articles, then listened at the bedroom door to satisfy himself that opening it would not precipitate the ordeal of having to speak to strangers. The landing was deserted and the upper part of the house had an empty feel to it, although there were muted sounds of activity from below. In the bathroom he brushed his teeth and made the depressing discovery that two mouth ulcers he had thought to be fading away were more painfully active than before. Returning to the bedroom, he contemplated the idea of getting under the covers again and switching on the television, but the dehydration of his system had given him a powerful yearning for tea or coffee which could not be denied. He dressed and made his way down to the kitchen, wondering how he would react if he found May there alone. He tapped the door gently, went inside and saw Theo Werry seated by himself at the circular table, eating a dish of cereal. The boy was wearing slacks and a red sweater, and there was a pensive expression on his handsome young face.

“Morning, Theo,” Hasson said. “No school today?”

Theo shook his head. “This is Saturday.”

“I’d forgotten. The days don’t seem to mean much to me now that…” Hasson checked himself and glanced around the room. “Where is everybody?”

“Dad’s outside clearing snow. The other two have gone into town.” Theo’s choice of phrase and a certain dryness of tone informed Hasson that he did not care much for May or her mother.

“In that case, I’ll brew myself some coffee,” Hasson said. “I don’t suppose anybody will mind.”

“I’ll do it for you, if you like.” Theo half-rose from his chair, but Hasson persuaded him to go on with his breakfast. While performing the domestic routine of making the coffee he spoke to the boy about his tastes and pursuits, discovering as he did so that conversation with Theo was less of a strain on him than trying to exchange pleasantries with adults. They talked briefly about music and Theo’s face became animated as he learned that Hasson shared his liking for Chopin and Liszt, as well as for some modern composers working for hard-toned piano.

“I suppose you listen to the radio a lot,” Hasson said, sitting down with his coffee, and realized at once that he had made a mistake.

“That’s what everybody supposes.” Theo’s voice had grown stony. “It’s fun being blind as long as you have a radio.”

“Nobody thinks that.”

But it’s supposed to be a great solace, isn’t it? Everywhere I go people turn on radios for me, and I never listen to them. I don’t enjoy being blind — unsighted, they call it at school — and nobody’s going to make me look like I’m enjoying it.”

“That’s a great bit of corkscrew logic,” Hasson said gently, all too aware of his own stumblings under the burden of illness.

“I guess it is — but then a wood-louse isn’t a very logical creature.”

“Wood-louse? You’ve lost me, Theo.”

The boy gave a humourless smile which saddened Hasson. “There’s a Kafka story about a man who woke up one morning and found he had turned into a giant cockroach. It horrifies everybody that one, the idea of being turned into a cockroach — but if he’d really wanted to sick people off Kafka should have made the guy into a wood-louse.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re blind and they’re busy. I’ve always hated those things because they’re blind and so busy. Then I woke up one morning and found I’d been turned into a giant wood-louse.”

Hasson stared at the black, vapouring liquid in his cup. “Theo, take some advice from a leading expert on the gentle art of beating oneself on the head with a club — don’t do it.”

“Mine’s the only head I can get at.”

“It was rough on your father too, you know — he’s having a bad time as well.”

Theo tilted his head and considered Hasson’s remark for a few seconds. “Mr Haldane,” he said thoughtfully, “you don’t know my father at all. I don’t think you’re really his cousin, and I don’t think you’re really an insurance salesman.”

“That’s funny,” Hasson parried, “that’s what my boss used to say to me every month when he looked at my figures.” “I’m not joking.”

“He used to say that as well, but I surprised him by inventing a new kind of policy which let people insure themselves against being uninsured.”

Theo’s lips twitched. “I read a story once about a character called Nemo the Nameless.”

Hasson chuckled, impressed by the speed with which the boy had classified his absurdity and correctly matched it. “You sound like another Stephen Leacock buff.”

“No, I don’t think I ever heard of him.”

“But he was a Canadian humorist! The very best!” Hasson was mildly surprised to find he could be enthusiastic about anything connected with literature — for months he had been unable even to open a book.

“I’ll try to remember the name,” Theo said.

Hasson tapped him lightly on the back of the hand. “Listen, I’m about due to re-read some Leacock. If I pick up a couple of books perhaps I could read them to you. What do you say?”

“That sounds all right. I mean, if you have the time…”

“I’ve got loads of time, so we’ll make it definite,” Hasson said, musing on the fact that immediately he had started thinking about doing something for somebody else his own state of mind had improved. It seemed there was a lesson to be learned. He sipped his coffee, wincing occasionally as the hot fluid came in contact with a mouth ulcer, and tacitly encouraged Theo to talk about anything that came into his mind, as long as it had nothing to do with Hasson’s past and his supposed family connections with Al Werry. Theo’s interest in flying quickly came to the fore, and almost at once there were references to Barry Lutze and to a local gang of cloud-runners known as the Hawks. As before, Hasson was disturbed to hear a note of uncritical admiration manifest itself in Theo’s voice.

“I’ll bet you,” he said, deciding to risk endangering his new- found relationship with the boy, “the leader of that outfit is called Black Hawk.”

Theo looked surprised. “How did you know?”

“It had to be that or Red Hawk. Those characters always have to hide behind some kind of label and it’s amazing how limited their imaginations are. Practically every town I’ve ever been in has had a Black Hawk or a Red Eagle fluttering around the place at night terrorising the smaller kids, and the funny part of it is that each and every one of them thinks he’s something special.”

Theo stood up, carried his empty cereal dish to the recycler and returned to the table before speaking. “Anybody who wants to do any real flying has to cover up his name.”

“That’s not the impression I get from the sports pages and TV. Some people become rich and famous through real flying.” Hasson knew from the expression on Theo’s face that his words were having no effect. The phrase “real flying’, as used by youngsters, meant flying illegally and dangerously, Throwing off all petty restrictions and flying solely by instinct, flying without lights at night, playing aerial Catch-me-if-you-can in the canyons of city buildings. The inevitable consequence of that kind of “real flying” was a steady rain of broken bodies drifting to the ground as their power packs faded, but it was a characteristic of youth that it felt itself to be immune from calamity. Accidents always happened to somebody else.

One of the difficulties Hasson had encountered in his years of police work was that all the arguments were emotional rather than intellectual. He had lost count of the occasions on which he had interviewed members of a group who had just seen one of their number smeared along the side of a building or sliced in two on a concrete pylon. In every case there had been an undercurrent of feeling, akin to dawn-time superstition and primitive magical beliefs, that the deceased had brought misfortune down on himself by violating the group’s code of behaviour in some way. He had defied the leader’s authority, or had betrayed a friend, or had shown he was losing his nerve.

The death was never attributed to the fact that the young flier had been breaking the law — because that would have opened the door to the notion that controls were necessary. The nocturnal rogue flier, the dark Icarus, was the folk hero of the age. At those times Hasson had begun to wonder if the whole concept of policing, of being responsible for others, was no longer valid. The CG harness, as well as inspiring its wearer to flout authority, aided and abetted by giving him anonymity and superb mobility. A Black Hawk and his aerial cohort could range over thousands of square kilometres in the course of a single night and then disappear without trace, like a single raindrop falling into the ocean of society. In almost every case, the only way to bring a rogue flier to book was to go after him and physically hunt him down through the sky, an activity which was both difficult and dangerous, and it seemed that the number of hunters would always be pitifully inadequate. And when he was faced with a sky-struck youngster like Theo, automatically predisposed to worship the wrong kind of hero, it seemed to Hasson that he wasted his entire life.

“… thinks nothing of boosting up to six or seven thousand metres and staying up there for hours,” Theo was saying. “Just think of it — seven kilometres straight up into the sky and thinks nothing of it.”

Hasson had lost track of the subject, but he guessed it was Barry Lutze. “He must think something of it,” he said, “otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered to tell you about it.”

“Why shouldn’t he? It’s more than…’Theo paused, obviously refraining a sentence. “It’s more than anybody around here has done.”

Hasson thought about his own brief sojourn on the edge of space, thirty kilometres up, but felt no desire to speak of it. “Doesn’t he think it’s a bit juvenile to go around calling himself Black Hawk?”

“Who said Barry is Black Hawk?”

“Have you got two top fliers around here? Barry Lutze and the mysterious Black Hawk? Do they never run across each other?”

“How would I know?” Theo demanded with a betrayed expression on his face as he felt for the coffee pot.

Hasson forbore to assist him, knowing that in the boy’s eyes he was guilty of prying into things an adult could never understand. For the first time in history young people could escape the surveillance of their elders, and that was a prize which was never to be relinquished. Complete personal mobility had shrunk the world, and enormously widened the generation gap. Barrie had been brilliantly prescient in his understanding of the fact that there could be no communication between Peter Pan and any member of the grown-up world.

Hasson maintained a contrite silence while Theo, aided only by memory and the thin ray from a sensor ring on his right hand, located a cup and poured himself some coffee. He was wondering how best to open peace negotiations when Al Werry entered the kitchen from the rear of the house in a flurry of cold air. Werry was breathing deeply, apparently as a result of his snow-clearing activities, Hasson was slightly taken aback to see that he had kept his uniform on while performing the household chore, but he forgot about the idiosyncrasy when he noticed that Werry was looking strangely flustered.

“Go upstairs, Theo,” he said without preamble. “Some people are coming to talk business.”

Theo tilted his head enquiringly. “Can’t I finish my…?”

“Upstairs,” Werry snapped. “Move it.”

“I’m going.” Theo was reaching for his sensor cane, which was propped against the table, when there was a sound of the house’s front door being thrown open, followed by heavy footsteps in the hail. A moment later the kitchen door opened and Buck Morlacher and Starr Pridgeon came into the room. Both were wearing flying suits and harnesses which bulked out their figures and made their presence in the domestic environment seem alien and hostile. Red patches glowed like warning pennants on Morlacher’s slabby cheeks as he advanced on Werry, while behind him Pridgeon examined the contents of the room with an amused, semi-proprietary interest. Hasson felt a mixture of outrage, sadness and panic.

“I want to talk to you,” Morlacher said to Werry, tapping him forcefully on the chest with a gloved finger. “In here.” He nodded towards the front room and strode into it without turning to see if Werry was following. Werry, after one stricken glance at his son, followed him, leaving Pridgeon behind in the kitchen with Hasson and Theo.

“You know why I’m here,” Morlacher’s voice was thick with anger, filling both rooms.

Werry, in contrast, was almost inaudible, “If it’s about that AC yesterday, Buck, I don’t want you to think…”

“One of the reasons I’m here is that you’re never in your God… damn office where you’re supposed to be, and the other one is about that murder on the east approach yesterday. It wasn’t an AC, as you put it — it was a Goddamn murder, and I want to know what you’ve done about it.”

“There isn’t much more we can do,” Werry said placatingly.

“Isn’t much more we can do,” Morlacher mimicked. “A VIP comes to this city on business and gets murdered by some crazy shit-head punk, and there isn’t much more we can do!”

Hasson, driven by the expression on Theo’s face, stood up with the intention of closing the interconnecting door. He turned without having made sufficient preparation for the move, and froze as his back locked with a sensation like a glass dagger having been thrust between his vertebrae. He leaned on the table for a second, then carefully extended his hand to the door knob.

“Now, Buck, he wasn’t really a VIP,” Werry said in the other room.

“When I say the son-of-a-bitch was a VIP,” Morlacher ground out, “that means the son-of-a-bitch was a VIP. He came up here to…,

Hasson slammed the door shut, reducing the overheard exchanges to a background rumble, and did his best to stand up straight. Pridgeon, who was walking around the room picking up small objects and replacing them, watched him with a kind of amiable contempt.

“Boy, you’re really in a mess, Al’s cousin from England,” he said, smiling through the wisps of his moustache. His teeth had the almost-greenish tinge that comes from a permanent accumulation of food residue, and there were charcoal-coloured pockets of decay close to the gums between the incisors. “Car smash, wasn’t it?”

“That’s right.” Hasson fought to keep back a conciliatory smile. Pridgeon shook his head and hissed in his breath. “Shouldn’t have been fruiting about in a car, Al’s cousin from England. You shoulda been treading sky like a full-grown man. Look at young Theo! Theo’s going to show “em something as soon as he’s able. That right, Theo?”

Theo Werry tightened his lips, disdaining to speak.

“Theo was on his way up to his room,” Hasson said. “I think he had finished breakfast.”

“Bull ! He hasn’t touched his coffee. Drink your coffee, Theo.” Pridgeon winked at Hasson, pressed one finger to his lips in a silencing gesture and poured a thick stream of sugar from the stainless steel dispenser into the boy’s cup. He stirred the resultant sludge and guided the cup into Theo’s hand. Theo, his face alert and suspicious, gripped the cup but did not raise it to his mouth.

“I think you put in too much sugar,” Hasson said lightly, sickened by his own complaisance. “We don’t want Theo to get fat.”

The playfulness disappeared from Pridgeon’s face on the instant. He performed his intimidatory trick of abruptly fixing Hasson with a frowning, baleful voodoo stare, then came towards him, head thrust forward, moving silently on the balls of his feet. This can’t be happening to me, Hasson thought, as he found himself nodding, smiling, shrugging, backing out of the kitchen, unable to bear the idea of the other man entering his personal space. Still under Pridgeon’s threatening gaze, he reached the foot of the stairs and put his hand on the banister.

“Excuse me,” he said, listening in fascinated dread to hear what words his mouth would utter next. “Nature calls.”

He went up the stairs with the intention of going to his bedroom and locking himself inside, but the bathroom door was directly ahead and — spurred on by the notion of trying to make it appear that he really had needed to relieve himself — he went through it and thumbed the concave button on the handle. The silence in the bathroom beat inwards upon him.

“Nature calls,” he breathed. “Oh, God! Nature calls!” Pressing the back of a hand to his lips to prevent their trembling, he sat down on the white-painted cane chair, remembering with a keen sense of loss the treasure trove of green-and-gold Serenix capsules he had so blithely thrown away. I’ll see a doctor and get some more, he thought. I’ll get some more Sunday morning pills, and I’ll get some television cassettes, and I’ll be all right. He lowered his head into his hands, feeling much as he had done while suspended in the high purple archways of the stratosphere — cold, remote, abandoned — and entered a period of timelessness.

His numb reverie ended with the sound of a door opening downstairs and a corresponding increase in the relentless, pounding surf-noise of Morlacher’s anger. He waited a few seconds and opened the door just enough to give him a vertically slitted view down into the hail. Morlacher and Pridgeon were standing in it, occupying most of the floor space while they closed up their suits in preparation for flight. The door to the downstairs front room was closed and there was no sign of Al Werry. Pridgeon opened the entrance door, admitting a white blaze of snow-reflected daylight, and went outside. Morlacher was on the point of following him when there was an extra movement and a darkening of the trapezium of brilliance on the hall floor, and May Carpenter came into the house. She was carrying a net shopping bag and was dressed in a traditionally styled tweed jacket and skirt trimmed with fur which gave her an oddly demure quality. Morlacher looked down at her with evident appreciation.

“May Carpenter,” he said, putting on a rakish grim which was totally unlike any expression Hasson had seen him use previously, “you get prettier every time I see you. How do you do it?”

“Clean living, I guess,” May replied, smiling, apparently unperturbed by his standing so close to her in the confines of the hail.

“That’s one for the book,” Morlacher chuckled. “All flower arranging and rug tying down at the PTA, is it?”

“Don’t forget the cake competitions — you should see what I can do with a piping bag.”

Morlacher laughed loud, put his hands on May’s waist and lowered his voice. “Seriously, May — why haven’t you been over to see me since you got back into town?”

She squared her shoulders. “I’ve been busy. Besides, it isn’t a girl’s place to go calling on a man, is it? What would people say?”

Morlacher glanced towards the room where he had been talking to Al Werry, then drew May closer to him and kissed her. She relaxed into it for a moment and Hasson saw the slight grinding movement of her hips which had thrown every organic switch in his body the night before. He remained transfixed at his vantage point, terrified of being caught spying and yet completely unable to move away.

“I have to go now,” Morlacher said as they separated. “I’ve got urgent business in town.”

May looked up at him through quivering eyelashes. “Perhaps it’s just as well.”

“I’ll call you,” Morlacher whispered. “We’ll fix something up.” He turned and disappeared into the white radiance of the outside world. May watched him depart, closed the entrance door and — without pausing to remove her outdoor jacket — came straight up the stairs towards the bathroom, taking the steps two at a time. Hasson almost slammed the door shut before realising the action was bound to be noticed. Dry-mouthed and sick with apprehension, he whirled away from the door and stooped over the washbasin as though busy cleaning his hands. May passed the bathroom and went into a bedroom further along the landing.

Hasson, moving with the exaggerated stealth of a burglar in a stage production, left the bathroom and plunged into his own sanctuary silently locking the door behind him. The discovery that his heart was labouring like a museum-piece engine strengthened his resolve to stay in his room as much as possible and avoid direct contact with the rest of humanity. He sat on the edge of the bed, turned on his television set and tried to become part of its miniaturised and manageable world. He had been alone for some thirty minutes when there was a knock on the bedroom door, and on answering it he found Al Werry waiting on the landing. Werry had left off his uniform in favour of duracord slacks and a black sweater, and the change had made him look younger.

“Have you got a minute, Rob?” he said in a conspiratorial undertone. “I’d like to have a word with you.”

Hasson opened the door fully and gestured for Werry to enter. “What’s it about?”

“Can’t you guess?”

Hasson avoided the other man’s gaze. “I’m just passing through this neck of the woods, Al. There’s no need to…”

“I know, but it would help me if I could talk to somebody. How about stepping out for a couple of beers?”

Hasson glanced at his television set which, once again because of time zone differences, was failing to provide the sort of programmes he wanted. “Would the television shops, stores, be open? I need to buy some cassettes.”

“We can do that as well — no problem. What do you say to a beer?”

“I’m dry as hell after last night.” Hasson confessed, reaching for his topcoat. Werry slapped him on the shoulder with something like his normal bonhomie and led the way down the stairs, jigging noisily on his heels. A minute later they were in the police cruiser and swishing along a street whose wet black pavement gave it the appearance of a canal cut through a field of snow. As the car picked up speed thick chunks of snow which had encrusted its hood broke off in the slipstream and shattered on the windshield without making a sound. Hasson deduced that the snow was powder dry and light, unlike the variety he was familiar with in England. The car swung out on to the main road and topped a low rise, giving him a panoramic view of the city looking arctic-pure and idyllic in the generous sunlight. Colours had intensified in contrast to the pervasive whiteness and the windows of houses appeared as jet-black rectangles. Off to the south the fantastic pylon of the Chinook Hotel shone like a steel pin which was holding earth and sky together.

Hasson, already becoming familiar with the general layout of Tripletree, studied the aerial sculptures of the traffic control system and used them as a guide to pick out other landmarks. Among the latter jutting up from a conglomerate of lesser buildings, was the glassy brown bulk of the furniture store where Theo had guided him on to the ring road the previous afternoon. On its roof, and glowing powerfully in spite of competition from the sun, was a huge bilaser projection representing a four-poster bed. Hasson frowned as an amber star began to wink on the computer panel of his memory.

“Quite a sign that,” he said, indicating the building to Werry. “Yesterday it was an armchair.”

Werry grinned. “That’s old Manny Weisner’s latest toy. He changes the image two or three times a week, just for fun.”

“He hasn’t had it long then?”

“About three months or so.” Werry turned his head and regarded Hasson with some curiosity. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Hasson said, trying to extinguish the amber star. Yesterday the sign had portrayed an armchair, and Theo Werry — who was blind — had said that it portrayed an armchair. The obvious explanation was that somebody had described the sign to him on a previous occasion when the image was the same and had not told him about the owner’s habit of switching it around. Armchairs were one of the most common sale items in any furniture store, therefore the degree of coincidence involved in Theo’s being right was not very great. Hasson dismissed the matter from his mind, irritated with its lingering habit of seizing on small shards of information and trying to build mosaic pictures with them. The question of what Werry wanted to talk to him about was of more immediate interest and importance. He hoped there were to be no confessions of corruption. In the past he had known other police officers to become too closely connected with men like Buck Morlacher, and none of the stories had happy endings. The thought of Morlacher brought back an associated memory of his own humiliating encounter with Starr Pridgeon, and it occurred to him that Morlacher and Pridgeon were a strangely assorted pair. He broached the subject to Werry.

“Fine example of an habitual criminal who has never done any time,” Werry said. “Stan’s been mixed up in everything from statutory rape to aggravated assault, but there was always a technical] flaw in the police case against him. That or epidemic amnesia among the witnesses. He has a repair business over in Georgetown — washing machines, fridges, things like that — but he spends most of his time hanging around with Buck.”

“What does Morlacher get out of it?”

“Company, I guess. Buck’s got a real hair-trigger temper specially when he’s had a few belts, and he’s got a habit of delicately hinting at his displeasure by kicking people in the crotch. If you see anybody walling around Tripletree with bow legs it doesn’t mean they’re cowhands — they used to work for Buck, that’s all. Most folks find reasons to stay out of his way as much as they can, but Starr gets on pretty well with him.”

Hasson nodded, mildly intrigued by Werry’s steadfast practice of referring to everybody, even men he had reason to hate or despise, by their first names. He gave the impression of regarding all human failings, from the trivial to the most serious, with the same kind of careless tolerance, and it was a characteristic which Hasson found difficult to square with the profession of law enforcement. He sat quietly, coping with minor aches in his back and hip, until Werry brought the car to a halt outside a bar near the centre of Tripletree’s shopping area.

“Ben’s Holotronics is just round the corner,” Werry said. “You go off and get your cassettes and I’ll set up a couple of halfs.” He went into the brownish dimness of the bar, walking with the jaunty lightness of a boxer in peak condition. He gave no sign of having anything preying on his mind. Hasson watched him disappear and made his way along the block through fierce sprays of reflected sunlight. Shadows flitted across his path every few seconds as fliers drifted down from the sky and landed on the fiat roofs of buildings all around. It was the standard arrangement in modern cities, because CG fields broke up when any massive object, such as a wall, intersected their lines of force. That was the reason there were no aircraft powered by counter-gravity engines, and it was also the reason for modem public buildings having flat roofs or being surrounded by wide landing strips. Any flier who went too close to a wall found himself to be a flier no longer, but an ordinary mortal, fragile and afraid, hurtling towards the ground at an acceleration of close to a thousand centimetres per second squared. The same effect occurred when two CG fields interfered with each other, which was the reason for Air Police Sergeant Robert Hasson taking the big drop over the Birmingham Control Zone, the endless screaming drop which had almost…

Wrenching his thoughts back into the present, Hasson located the store where he had bought his television set and went inside. The owner, Ben, greeted him warily, but brightened up on learning that he had not returned with a complaint. It transpired that he had a good selection of six-hour programme cassettes and was able to supply Hasson with a number of complete runs of British comedy and musical shows, some of which had been recorded only the previous year.

Hasson, like an alcoholic contemplating a well-stocked cupboard, felt a comforting glow within himself as he left the store carrying a bulging plastic bag. He was now self-reliant, self-sufficient, equipped to live his own life. The evocative scent of dried hops and malt reached his nostrils and an impulse made him glance curiously into the window of the next store along the block. The proprietor, the oddly named Oliver Fan, had been an interesting and sympathetic character with an unusual line of sales talk. You are not at ease within yourself. That part was certainly true, Hasson mused. As a snap diagnosis it had been a hundred per cent accurate, but perhaps it was one of those all- purpose pieces of patter such as used by fake fortune-tellers, designed to make the general sound like the particular. Perhaps it applied equally well to everybody who ever strayed through Oliver’s door. Believe me, I can help. Would a charlatan say that? Would he not be inclined to use a more ambiguous form of words which would give him latitude for twisting and turning under legal scrutiny? Hasson hesitated for a long moment and then, filled with a curious timidity, went into the health food store.

“Good morning, Mr Haldane,” Oliver said from his position behind the glass counter. “It is good to see you again.”

Thank you.” Hasson looked uncertainly around the laden shelves, breathed the mixture of heady aromas and felt lost for words, as though he had come to ask for a love philtre. “I . … I wonder if…”

“Yes, I meant what I said — I can help you.” Oliver gave Hasson a knowing, compassionate smile as he slid off his stool and moved along the counter. He was small and middle aged — of exactly the same size, build and coloration as millions of other Asians- and yet he had an individuality which impressed Hasson as being as durable as the bedrock of China itself. His eyes, by contrast, were as homely, accessible and humorous as Laurel and Hardy or Mark Twain.

“That’s a fairly sweeping statement,” Hasson said, testing his ground,

“Is it? Then let’s put it to the test.” Oliver took a pair of iodine- tinted glasses from his breast pocket and put them on. “I already know you’ve been seriously hurt in a driving accident, and you probably know that I know, so we can take all that as given. There’s no question of my using special powers or being able to see your aura the way some of those alternative medicine freaks claim to do. But — simply by looking at the way you walk and stand — I can tell that your back is giving you considerable pain. I would say that you also smashed up your left knee in the accident but that it is fairly well on the mend and that it’s your back that’s causing all the trouble. Am I right?”

Hasson nodded, refusing to be impressed.

“So far so good — but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? The physical injuries were bad, the spell in hospital was bad, the convalescence is long and painful and boring — but there was a time when you would have taken all that in your stride. Now you can’t. You feel you’re not the man you used to be. Am I right?”

“You’re bound to be right,” Hasson countered. “Is there any-. body the man he used to be? Are you?”

“Too general, eh? Too woolly? All right, you know your specific symptoms better than anybody, but I’ll go over some of them for you. There’s the depressions, the irrational fears, the inability to concentrate on simple things like reading, the poor memory, the pessimism about the future, the dozing like a lizard during the day followed by the inability to sleep properly at night unless you’ve had pills or booze. Am I right?”

“Well…”

“Is it difficult for you to meet strangers? Is it difficult for you to talk to me now?” Oliver took off his glasses as though to make confession easier, dismantling barriers.

Hasson wavered, tom between a cautious reserve and the urge to unburden himself to the stranger who seemed as though he could be more of a friend than any friend. “Supposing all those things were true, what could you do about it?”

Oliver appeared to relax a little. “The first thing to realise is that you and your body are a unity. You are one. There’s no such thing as a physical injury that doesn’t affect the mind, and there’s no such thing as a mental injury that doesn’t affect the body. If both aren’t right, both are wrong.”

Hasson felt a pang of disappointment — he had heard similar things from Dr Colebrook and a series of therapists, none of whom seemed to realise that he had lost the ability to deal in abstracts, that words which did not have a clear-cut, one-to-one correspondence with concrete realities were completely meaningless to him.

“What does it all boil down to?” he said. “You said you could help. What can you do to stop my mind feeling pains in my back?”

Oliver sighed and gave him a look of rueful apology. “I’m sorry, Mr Haldane — it looks as though I may have blown this one. I think I’ve let you down by saying the wrong things.”

“So there’s nothing you can do.”

“I can give you these.” Oliver took two cartons — one small and inscribed with Chinese characters in gold on a red background, the other large and plain — from the shelves behind him and placed them on the glass counter.

This is what it had to come down to, Hasson thought, his disillusionment complete. Doctor Dobson’s Famous Herbal Remedy And Spleen Rejuvenator. “What are they?”

“Ginseng root and ordinary brewer’s yeast in powder form.” “I see.” Hasson paused, wondering if he should buy the products just to compensate Oliver for his time, then he shook his head and moved to the door. “Look, perhaps I’ll come back an other time. I’m keeping somebody waiting.” He opened the door and began to hurry out of the store.

“Mr Haldane!” Oliver’s voice was urgent, but again there was no hint of annoyance over the loss of a sale.

Hasson looked back at him. “Yes?”

“How are your mouth ulcers today?”

“They hurt,” Hasson replied, sensing with amazement that Oliver had deliberately and clinically taken some kind of action on his behalf, had chosen words that were tied to an objective reality for no reason other than his need to hear them. “How did you know?”

“I may go in for mystery and inscrutability, after all.” Oliver gave him a wry smile. “It seems to get the best results.”

Hasson closed the door and retraced his steps to the counter. “How did you know I have mouth ulcers?”

“Old Oriental trade secret, Mr Haldane. The important thing is — would you like to get rid of them?”

“What would I have to do?” Hasson said.

Oliver handed him the two cartons he had left on the counter. “Just forget all those things I said about the unity of mind and body. This stuff, especially the yeast, will cure your mouth ulcers in a couple of days, and of you keep on taking it as directed you’ll never be troubled that way again. That’s something, isn’t it?”

“It would be. How much do I owe you?”

“Try the stuff out first, make sure it works. You can call back and pay for it any time.”

“Thanks.” Hasson gazed thoughtfully at the storekeeper for a moment. “I really would like to know how you knew about the ulcers.”

Oliver sighed, amiably exasperated. “Hospitals never learn. Even in this age, they never learn. They flood patients” bodies with broad-spectrum antibiotics and wipe out the intestinal bacteria which produce B-vitamins. A common symptom of B-vitamin deficiency is the appearance of mouth disorders, like those painful little ulcers, so what did the hospitals do? Would you believe that some of them are still painting them with potassium permanganate? It’s completely ineffective, of course. They send people out looking like they’ve been swigging the blushful Hippocrene — you know, with purple-stained mouth -hardly able to eat, hardly able to digest what they do eat. Lacking in energy. Depressed. That’s another symptom of B-vitamin deficiency, you know, and I’m getting back on to the kind of patter which nearly made you walk out of here in the first place.”

“No, I’m interested.” Hasson spent a few more minutes talking to Oliver about the relationship between diet and health, impressed and oddly comforted by his evangelistic fervour, then began to think about Al Werry waiting alone in the bar. He put his new purchases into the plastic bag on top of the TV cassettes and left the store after promising Oliver he would return early in the following week. In the bar he found Werry sitting in a comer booth with two full beer glasses and several empties on the table in front of him.

“I like drinking at lunchtime,” Werry said. “It has four times the effect.” His voice was slightly blurred and it dawned on Hasson that he had been personally responsible for emptying the half-litre glasses in a remarkably short time.

“You save money that way.” Hasson drank from the glass which Werry pushed over to him. The lager it contained did not impress him as a beer, but he was grateful for its cleansing and tingling coolness. He eyed Werry over the rim of his glass, wondering what he wanted to talk about and hoping that no marked response would be required on his part. It seemed that every conversational exchange he had made since arriving in Tripletree had added to his burden of stresses, and it was a process which could not go on indefinitely, or even for much longer.

Werry took a long drink of beer and leaned forward with a solemn expression on his face. “Rob,” he said, his voice charged with sincerity, “I really envy you.”

“Is it my money or my looks?” Hasson parried, genuinely surprised.

“I’m not kidding, Rob. I envy you because you’re a human being.”

Hasson produced a lopsided smile. “And you aren’t?”

“That’s exactly it.” Werry was speaking with the utmost conviction, like a preacher trying to make a convert. “I’m not a human being.”

Hasson, although baffled, realized with a sinking feeling that his tête-à-tête with Werry was not going to be an easy run. “Al, you’d pass for a human being any day.”

“But that’s all I do — I pass for a human being.”

“Rhetorically speaking,” Hasson said, wishing that Werry would get on with making his point in a more direct manner.

Werry shook his head. “It might be rhetoric, and it might not. Is it right to regard yourself as human if you haven’t got any human feelings? Isn’t that what the word human means -having humanity?”

“I’m sorry, Al” Hasson decided to show some impatience. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. What’s the problem?”

Werry drank more beer, his eyes remaining fixed on Hasson’s, somehow transferring a weight of responsibility to him. “You saw what happened at my place this morning. Buck came walking in like he owned the place and started leaning on me in front of my kid — and I just stood there and took it. What would you have done, Rob? What would you have done if you’d been in my shoes?”

“It’s hard to say,” Hasson replied, toying with his glass.

“All right — would you have got mad at him?”

“I daresay I would.”

“That’s it, you see. I didn’t get mad — because there’s something wrong with me. I don’t feel anything. Sometimes I hear this little voice telling me I ought to get mad in a situation like that, but it doesn’t carry any weight with me. I’m not afraid of Buck, but I don’t care enough about anything to make it worth my while to stand up to him. Not even my own boy.”

Hasson felt totally inadequate to receive such a confidence. “I don’t think any of us are qualified to analyse ourselves the way you’re trying to do, Al.”

“There’s no analysis — I’m just reporting certain facts,” Werry said doggedly. “There’s something wrong with me, something about the way I’m put together, and it affects everything I do, big or small. Tell the truth, Rob — when we met at the rail station yesterday you didn’t know me from Adam, did you?”

“I haven’t got much of a memory,” Hasson said, feeling he had lost the thread of the discussion.

“It doesn’t matter how good your memory is — the point is that you know what it’s safe to forget. You know what you can let go. But I’m so busy trying to convince people I’m one of the boys that I remember everything that happens so that I can enthuse about it afterwards and tell everybody about the great times we had, but the truth is I never have any great times. I don’t really exist, Rob.”

Hasson began to feel embarrassed. “Listen, Al, do you think this is a…

“It’s true,” Werry cut in. “I don’t really exist. I go around in my uniform most of the time, because when I’m wearing it I can convince myself I’m the city reeve. I haven’t even got a sense of humour, Rob. I don’t know what’s funny and what isn’t. All I do is remember things that other people laugh at, and then when I hear them again I laugh too, but when I hear a joke the first time I’m not even sure if it is a joke.

“I can’t even argue with people, because as soon as I hear the other guy’s point of view that becomes my point of view, as well. Then when I run into somebody who starts telling me the opposite I side with him right off.

“I don’t even …” Werry paused to drink more beer, again fixing Hasson with an intent, brooding stare. “I don’t even get much of a kick out of sex. I’ve read about the ecstasy of love, but I’ve never experienced it. When I’m on the lob and it’s right at the big moment … you know, when people are supposed to feel they’re knocking on the door of paradise … all I can think about is that I might have left the lights on in my car, or that my backside is cold. Things like that.”

Hasson felt a sudden heartless desire to laugh. He picked up his glass and studied the swarming of the tiny bubbles in the beer froth.

“That’s part of the reason Sybil walked out on me,” Werry continued. “We had arguments about the treatment for Theo’s eyes — she wanted to let the hospital cut the middle out of them, and I wouldn’t hear of it — but I think she got sick of living with somebody who was nobody. That’s why I get on okay with May. She’s another nobody. Her one ambition in life is to go around looking cute, and that’s all she does, so I know where I am with her.”

There was a longer pause, and Hasson knew that Werry had spoken his piece and that it was up to him to make some appropriate response. He glanced down at the plastic bag containing his dream cassettes and wished he could be locked in his bedroom in the parchment-coloured shade at drawn curtains, with the television set bestowing its sweet absolution. The unfairness of the situation-here was another person making impossible demands upon him — began to weigh heavily on his mind.

“Al,” he said finally, “why are you telling me all this?”

Werry looked slightly nonplussed. “I thought you would want to know — after what you’ve seen at my place — but I’ve probably got it wrong.”

“No, naturally I’d be concerned about a friend’s problems — it’s just that I’ve no idea of anything to say which might help.”

Werry gave him a wan smile. “Who said I wanted help, Rob? I’d need to care about things being wrong before I could care about getting them put right.” He finished his half-litre of beer and signalled a waiter at the other side of the room to bring a replacement.

Hasson gazed at him for a moment, then took refuge in a classical British non-sequitur. “Do you think there’ll be any change in the weather?”

As soon as they got back to the house Hasson went up to his room and locked the door. The bed had been neatly made up and somebody had drawn back the curtains to admit the days snow- reflected brilliance. He set his new purchases out on a tallboy, selected a cassette and dropped it into a slot on the television set. Gratifyingly familiar music seeped into the air and under the set’s proscenium tiny figures began to act out a domestic comedy, part of a series he had watched in England only twelve months earlier. He drew the curtains together, shed his outer clothing and got into the beds stoically waiting for the spasms in his back to subside. The artificial world of the television stage occupied his entire field of vision. It was as though he had retreated through time and space, back into his previous life, and he felt safe.

He had completed a day and a half of rest and recuperation and the thought of three further months of same kind of thing was unbearable. It was much better to be curled up in a womb-cave of eider, and to submerge his mind in the dreaming of other men’s dreams.