A Matter For Men Part 38

"Good. So get this-the time is over for games. And that includes self-righteousness. I'm telling you the truth now and you can count on me to keep on telling you the truth." His eyes were fierce. His expression was intense, but unashamed. I felt naked before him. Again.

I said, "This is very hard."

He nodded.

"I don't know if I can believe you or not."

"So don't believe me," Fromkin said. "Your belief is irrelevant. The truth is what's so, whether you believe it or not. The question is, what do you want to do about it?"

"Well-" I began. I felt myself smiling. "Revenge would be silly-"

"It's also out of the question." He smiled back.

"-so I might as well be useful."

"Good idea," Fromkin agreed. He leaned back in his chair. "You know, you may have forgotten, but you're an officer now. You fooled us. n.o.body expected you to live long enough to use your commission. But you have, so now we've had to create an appropriate job for you."

"I've got one."

"Eh?"

"I've already got a job," I repeated. "I'm working on the Chtorran ecology. There are too many people making guesses without enough information. There aren't very many people out there actually gathering it. I had an instructor once who said that if you offered him the choice between a dozen geniuses for his lab or a couple of idiots who could handle field work, he'd take the idiots. He said it was more important to observe the facts accurately than to be able to interpret them, because if you observed enough of them accurately, you wouldn't have to interpret them--they'd explain themselves."

"Makes sense. Go on."

"Right. Well, you've got almost n.o.body out in the field. This war against the Chtorr doesn't exist yet because you-we don't have any intelligence on them!" I thumped my chest meaningfully. "That's my job! I'm an intelligence agent! That's where you need me the most. Because we don't even know yet who or what we're fighting-"

He was holding up one hand to stop me. "Hold it! You're preaching to the choir, son. I got it." He grinned broadly. It was the cheeriest expression I'd ever seen on him. "You know, it's a funny thing. That's exactly the same job we had picked out for you."

"Really?"

"Really." He nodded as he said it. "I'm making the a.s.sumption that we are on the same side, then?"

I looked at him. "I guess we are."

He said, "I know. It doesn't feel like it, does it?"

"No, not really. Not yet."

"So I'll tell you this. You don't get to choose your friends or your enemies. They're always thrust on you. All you get to choose is which category you're going to put them in." He grinned. "Wanna be my friend?" He held out a hand.

"Yeah." I took it.

"Thank you," he said, looking into my eyes. His gaze was intense. "We need you." He held onto my hand for a long moment, and I could feel his grat.i.tude, almost like energy, flowing into me. I realized I didn't want to let go.

He smiled at me then, a warm expression like sunrise coming up over a cold gray beach. "You'll do fine. Major Tirelli will be by later to get you started. Do you have any other questions for me now?"

I shook my head. And then I said, "Just one-but it's irrelevant. Does the Mode training really work?"

He grinned. "Yes, it does. It did; I'm sorry it's such a low priority these days." His expression went wistful. "Someday, when there's more time, I'd like to tell you about it."

I said, "I'd like that."

That made him smile proudly. "I think you would." He stood up to go. "Oh, one more thing." He glanced at my meal tray. "Don't drink the orange juice."

"Huh?"

"I said, don't drink the orange juice."

I looked at his face. "I pa.s.sed another test?"

"Right." He grinned again. "Don't worry, it's the last one."

"Is it?" I asked.

"I sure hope so, don't you?" He was laughing as he left.

I looked at the meal tray. There was a gla.s.s of orange juice on it. I poured it into the potted palm.

THIRTY-NINE.

THE MORNING sun was very bright, and I felt terrific. My knee hardly hurt at all. The doctors had replaced my kneecap with one grown in a tank and shaved to fit my bones; they told me to minimize my walking for a week-and to guarantee that I did, they put my leg in a case so tight I couldn't bend it. But I could limp-with crutches or a cane-and as soon as I could I was out of the hospital.

I found Ted at the bus station.

He was sitting quietly and waiting. He looked subdued, which surprised me. I guess I didn't know what I was expecting. Silver antennae sticking out of his head? But, no-he was just sitting patiently in a corner, a detached look on his face.

I hobbled over to him, but he didn't see me-not even when I stood in front of him. "Ted?" I asked.

He blinked twice.

"Ted?" I waved a hand in front of his face. He didn't see me. His expression remained unchanged. Not just detached-absent. Blank. n.o.body home.

"Ted? It's Jim." He was a zombie.

I sat down next to him and shook his leg. He brushed my hand away. I shook his shoulder and shouted in his ear. "Ted?"

Abruptly, he blinked-and then a confused expression came over his features. He looked like a sleeper awakening suddenly in a strange place. He turned his head slowly and looked at me. Recognition finally came to him. "Jim ... ?"

"Ted, are you all right? I had to knock three times."

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I'm fine. I was just ... plugged in."

"Oh. Well, uh, I'm sorry if I interrupted you. But I just got out of the hospital, and this was my only chance to say goodbye before you shipped out."

"Oh," he said. His voice was flat. Distracted. "Well, thank you."

He started to go emotionless again, but I caught his arm. "Ted, are you all right?"

He looked at me, a flicker of annoyance in his eyes. "Yes, Jim, I'm fine. But there's a transmission coming in from Capetown that I want to return to."

"I got it," I said. "But I want you to take a moment to be with me. Okay?"

He blinked at me. I knew the expression. Bored patience. "What is it, Jim?"

"Well, I thought ... just that... we might have some things to say to each other......"

His voice went distant. "I saw your Chtorran again. We had a transmitter in the front row. He died. I experienced his death."

"Oh," I said. "Uh-that must have been very hard for you."

"It wasn't the first death I've experienced. I've been playing a lot of tapes." Suddenly, he looked very old.

I put my hand on his arm. "Ted, is it hard?"

He looked at me, but didn't answer. Was he listening to another voice again?

"Ted," I said, "what's it like?"

He blinked, and for just a moment he was the old Ted looking out at me from inside his body, and for just that moment I thought I saw stark terror. "Jim," he said intensely, "it's wonderful! And it's ... terrible! It's the most intense and exhilarating experience a human being can have. I've been a thousand different people-I can't explain it. It's all still so confusing. I'm being bombarded with experiences, Jim! Constantly. And I don't know which of them are mine-if any! I don't even know if it's me sitting here talking to you. You could be talking to any telesend on the circuit. I can remote-access anybody else's experience and, if necessary, even take over control. And they can use my body too!"

I opened my mouth to say something, but he stopped me with a desperate hand on my arm.

"No-listen to me. I'm out of the circuit now, but only for a moment. The trainees have to take the dirtiest jobs-it's that way in all the services. I'm on call sixteen hours a day. Yesterday, I was . . ." He stopped, as if he were trying to form the words and finding it difficult. His eyes looked red. "Yesterday, I was . . . ridden. By a Russian government official. I don't know if it was a woman or a h.o.m.os.e.xual or-I don't know, but whoever it was used my body to make love to another man. And all I could do was do it. I had no control of my own."

"Did you file a grievance?"

"Jim, you don't understand! It was wonderful! It was complete and absolute service! Whoever it was gave me the opportunity to confront a different experience! That's what this is about-the expansion that comes from confronting the totality of human experience!"

"Ted, can't you get out?"

"Get out?" Ted looked incredulous. "Get out? Jim, don't you understand? I don't want out. Even while I was hating it, I was loving it-good and bad. The Telepathy Corps is a chance to share the experiences of a million other human beings. How else could a person ever get to live a million other lives?" His eyes were feverish now, intense. "Jim, I've played the tapes! I know what it feels like to die-in a hundred different ways. I've gone down in plane crashes, I've drowned, I've fallen off buildings, I've burned to death and I've even been eaten by a Chtorran! I've been afraid in more different ways than I ever dreamed possible-and I've been exhilarated in as many different ways too! I've climbed mountains and gone into s.p.a.ce. I've lived in free fall and at the bottom of the ocean as a gillman. I've done so much, Jim-it's like making love to the universe! And I've made love a thousand different ways as well! It's all on the tapes. I've been a naked child in Micronesia and a fifteen-year-old courtesan somewhere in Osaka. I've been an old man dying of cancer in Morocco, and-Jim, I know what it is to be a woman, a girl! Can you comprehend what it, is to leave your own s.e.x behind, like a fish discovering air-discovering how to fly? I've made love as a girl! And I've carried the child that resulted and given birth to it!! I've nursed it and raised it! And I died with it when the plagues came! Jim, I've experienced more of life in just the past few days than I'd ever known in all the years before. And I'm terrified and excited because it's all coming down so fast I can't a.s.similate it. Jim"-he clenched my arm so tight it hurt "Jim, I'm disappearing! Me-Ted! My ident.i.ty is dissolving under the a.s.sault of a thousand other lives! I can feel it happening! And I know what it will feel like to stop existing as me, because that experience is recorded too! And, Jim, I want it even as I'm afraid of it. It's a kind of death. And it's a kind of o.r.g.a.s.m too! This is incredible stuff! Jim, my life is over! Now, I'm a part of something else, something larger and-Jim, I want to say this to you while there's time-"

Abruptly, his grip on my arm loosened. His face relaxed, the tension disappeared and he became detached again.

"Ted?"

"I'm sorry, I'm on call now, Jim. I have to go."

He started to rise, but I pulled him back down. "Wait-you started to say something?"

"Perdoneme?" A strange voice came from his mouth.

"Uh, nothing." I let go in horror.

Ted's body nodded. "Bueno."

It got up and walked away. The last I saw of Ted, his body was just getting on a helibus. The chopper clattered up into the air and disappeared into the east.

I wondered where Ted was in the circuit now. I knew it didn't matter. The half-life of even a strong ident.i.ty was less than nine months. I'd probably never see Ted again. His body, maybe, but the thing that animated it-where would that be? Experiencing what? Or whom? Within a few months, it wouldn't even be a personality anymore. Ted had known what he was getting into when he'd made the decision to receive the implant. He'd known what it meant. At least, that was what I wanted to believe.

I turned and hobbled back to the jeep I'd requisitioned. I didn't feel so terrific anymore. I had a lot to think about. I levered myself in and said, "Science Section, please."

The jeep replied "Acknowledged," and whined itself to life. It waited till its whirring stabilized, then backed smoothly out of the parking slot. As it eased forward, it announced, "Incoming message."

I said, "I'll take it."

Marcie's voice: "Jim, I want you to stop calling me. And stop leaving messages for me to call you. I have nothing to say to you. And you have nothing to say that I want to hear. I don't want to see you and I don't want to talk to you. I hope I'm making myself clear. I want you to leave me alone, because if you don't, I promise you, I'll file a postal grievance."

The message ended abruptly, and the jeep trundled across the tarmac. I thought about Marcie, tried to figure out what was going on. I remembered something Dinnie had said. "We're all crazy these days. All of us. We were crazy before the plagues too, but now we're really crazy." Or was that just a convenient justification? I didn't know.

Dinnie had said, "The thing is, none of us can see our own craziness, because it's the filter we look through. All we can see is what we project on the people around us. And then we blame it on them." She'd smiled and said, "Do you know how to tell if you're crazy? See if the people around you are."

I looked-and everybody around me was crazy.

That was the joke. You know you need help when the people around you are crazy.

The h.e.l.l with her. I didn't have time to be crazy anymore.

The jeep said, "Will there be a reply?"

I said, "No. And post this. Refuse all future messages from the same source."

"Acknowledged." I still felt lousy.

FORTY.

THE JEEP lurched to a stop in front of the Science Section, and I climbed out carefully. There were no guards here. None were necessary anymore. Since the reorganization, no doors would open for you unless you had a red card or higher. I had a gold card.

Once past the fourth set of security doors, I pointed at two lounging aides and said, "You're temporarily requisitioned. I have some things I want loaded."

They grumbled and fell into line behind me. "I don't want to hear it," I said.