Tom O'Bedlam Part 15

She brought herself back into the meeting. It was an effort, but she brought herself back in.

Briskly she said by way of getting things started, "We all agree, I think, that we're dealing with something that's very hard to comprehend. But I think the first thing that we need to acknowledge is that it's a phenomenon that can be measured and quantified and delineated in purely scientific terms." That sounded good.

Naresh Patel looked up from the sheaf of printouts he was studying. "Can it?

Tabulations like these, do you mean? Frequencies and geographical distribution of hallucinatory events, variable-similarity scales, imagery a.n.a.lysis, cognitive-filtering vectors, correlation of hallucination with Gelbard-Louit stability-index rating of hallucinator? But what if this is a phenomenon totally inexplicable by scientific means?"

What if it is, Elszabet thought. What if it isn't? Am I supposed to say something now?

Dan Robinson rescued her. She heard his voice, coming from what seemed like a very great distance.

"If it is," he said, "then we won't be able to explain it, will we? But why should we think it is, at this point? Pardon my hopeless western-materialistic bias, Naresh, but I happen to believe that everything in the universe has an underlying quantifiable rationale, which may not necessarily be accessible to human understanding because of limits in our current investigative techniques, but which is there nevertheless. Before the invention of the spectroscope, for example, it would have been the wildest sort of fantasy to claim that we could ever know which elements the stars were composed of. But for a modern astronomer there's no problem at all in looking at a star fifty light-years away, or, for that matter, five billion light-years away, and saying quite authoritatively that it's made up of hydrogen, helium, calcium, pota.s.sium -"

"Agreed," Patel said. "Yet I think it is conceivable that a seventeenth-century astronomer could have accepted the idea that it would someday be possible to discover such information. All that was missing was the spectroscope: a matter of technological progress, refinement of technique, not a quantum leap of conceptualization. And I agree with you also that all events do have some underlying rationale. To say otherwise would be to argue that the universe allows pure randomness, and I do not think that is the case."

The room was turning green again. Patel, Robinson, Bill Waldstein, and the rest were taking on a shining crystalline texture. Elszabet could hear what was being said, but she had no idea what it meant. She was not quite sure where she was, or why.

Patel went on, ". . . but I argue only that the event we consider here may not have a rationale that fits the dogmas of western scientific thought, and that therefore we will not approach any understanding of it by trying to measure and count."

"What are you really saying, Naresh?" Bill Waldstein asked Patel smiled. "For example, what if these shared multiple hallucinations are not hallucinations at all, but rather the first signs of the advent upon our world of the actual numinous force, the divine spirit, the G.o.dhead, if you will?"

"Are you going Hindu on us now?" Waldstein said. Crisply Patel replied, "There is nothing specifically Hindu, I believe, in what I have just suggested. Or eastern in any way, so far as I can see. I think that if we were to consult Father Christie on the subject of the Second Coming we might find that there are Christian elements to the concept, or Jewish messianic ones. I say simply that we are attempting to approach this matter in a scientific way when in fact it may be entirely outside the scope of scientific technique."

Dante Corelli said, "Come on, Naresh. Are you telling us just to shrug and give up and wait to see what happens? Nowthat's a Hindu notion if I ever heard one -"

"I do agree with Naresh on one point," Dan Robinson cut in. "Where he says these shared multiple hallucinations are not hallucinations at all."

Bill Waldstein leaned forward. "What do you think they are, then?"

Robinson looked toward the head of the conference table. "Elszabet, shall I respond to that?"

She blinked. "What, Dan?"

"Shall I respond? To Bill's query? Is this the time for me to explain my idea of what the s.p.a.ce dreams really are?"

"What the s.p.a.ce dreams really are," she said. She was lost. She realized that she must have been wandering in far-off realms. "Yes. Yes, of course, Dan," she said indistinctly.

The Green World lay just beyond the window. Rolling meadows, graceful looping leafless trees.

"Elszabet? Elszabet?"

"Go ahead, Dan. What's the matter? Go on."

She looked around. Dan, Bill, Dante, Naresh. Dave Paolucci from the San Francisco center down at the far end of the table. Leo Kresh, all the way up from San Diego. An important meeting. You have to pay attention. She stared at the grain in the redwood- burl tabletop. G.o.d help me, she thought. What's happening to me? What'shappening?

Robinson was saying, ". . . Project Starprobe, which was sent toward Proxima Centauri in the year 2057, I think, and which may now be producing a response in the form of a broadcast signal from the inhabitants of that world, a signal that is increasing in intensity as it approaches the Earth. I want to suggest that a vastly superior civilization in the Alpha Centauri system - Proxima Centauri is one of the three stars of that system, you know - has quite possibly sent a Starprobe of its own toward us, using a technology presently unknown to us but not in any serious way implausible, in order to make direct contact with human minds."

"For Christ's sake," Waldstein muttered.

"Is it all right if I finish what I'm saying, Bill? This signal, let's say, was received at first only by those here who were most sensitive to such things, which for some reason happened to be patients suffering from Tom O'Bedlam Gelbard's syndrome in this sanitarium and elsewhere. But as the intensity of the signal has increased, incidence of receptivity has widened to take in a broad segment of the human population, including, as I understand it, a good many people right in this room. If I'm correct, then, what we're confronting is not in any way an epidemic of some new mental illness, nor is it - forgive me, Naresh - any kind of metaphysical revelation, but in fact is a significant historical development, the inauguration of communication with intelligent extraterrestrial life, and as such an event neither to be feared nor to be -"

"There's just one problem, Dr. Robinson." A new voice cutting in from the far end of the table, quiet, a.s.sured. "May I have the floor a moment? Dr. Robinson? Dr. Lewis?"

Hearing her name, Elszabet looked up, startled, realizing she had been drifting again.

They were all looking at her.

"May I address this point, Dr. Lewis?" The voice from the far end again. It belonged to the man from San Diego, Elszabet realized, her counterpart, Leo Kresh, the head of the Nepenthe Center down there. A smallish man, about forty, balding, precise in movement and in speech. She stared at him but she had wandered too far from the discussion to know what to say.

Into her silence Dan Robinson said quickly, "Of course, Dr. Kresh, go ahead, please."

Kresh nodded. "That these images of other worlds might in some way be connected with Project Starprobe had also occurred to me, Dr. Robinson, and in fact I've done considerable investigation of that possibility. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to work out. As you correctly state, the unmanned Starprobe vehicle was launched in 2057, just a few years before the outbreak of the Dust War. However, I've been able to determine that even at the quite extraordinary velocities that Starprobe was capable of attaining at its peak of acceleration, it would not have reached the vicinity of Proxima Centauri, which is 4.2 light-years from Earth, until the year 2099. So you can see that there has not yet been quite enough time even for Starprobe's own signal, which of course is a narrow-band radio wave traveling at the speed of light, to have returned from Proxima, let alone for any hypothetical inhabitants of that system to have sent us any kind of signal of their own. And of course if the Proximans - if there are any - had shipped a Proximan equivalent of Starprobe in our direction, as you suggest, there's no likelihood at all that it will be here for decades more. Therefore I think we have to rule out the hypothesis that the s.p.a.ce dreams have an extraterrestrial origin, tempting though that notion may seem."

"Suppose," Robinson said, "that the Proximans have some way of sending a s.p.a.ceship here at speedsfaster than light?"

Gently Kresh said, "Pardon me, Dr. Robinson, but I'd have to call that an excessive multiplication of hypotheses. Not only are we required to postulate Proximans, but also you ask us to a.s.sume faster-than-light transit, which under the laws of physics as we currently understand them is simply not -"

"Hold on," Bill Waldstein said. "What are we talking about here? s.p.a.ceships to and from other stars? Faster-than-light travel? Elszabet, for G.o.d's sake, rule all this stuff out of order. It's bad enough that the situation we're coping with is fantastic in itself - can you imagine hundreds of thousands of people having identical bizarre dreams all over the West Coast, and maybe everywhere else too? - without dragging in all this imaginary speculation besides."

"In addition," said Naresh Patel, "it has been over two months since the first dreams were reported. Given what Dr. Kresh has told us about the time of Starprobe's arrival at this other star and the necessary time that must elapse before its radio signal can return to us, I believe it's clear that there is no connection between the dreams and whatever data the Starprobe satellite will eventually send back."

"What's more," Dante Corelli offered, "we're getting views of at least seven different solar systems in these dreams, right? Starprobe went to justone system, as I understand it. So even allowing for these problems of transmission time that Dr. Kresh's been pointing out, how can it be sending back so many different sorts of scenes? I think -"

"Point of order," Bill Waldstein shouted. "Elszabet, will youplease let us move on to something more rational? We've got people here from San Francisco and San Diego who want to tell us what's going on at their centers, and . . . Elszabet? Elszabet? Is there something the matter with you?"

She struggled to understand what he was telling her. Her mind was full of green fog.

Crystalline figures moved gracefully to and fro, introducing themselves to her, inviting her to incomprehensible social events, a cataclysm symphony, a four-valley splendor, a sensory retuning. Everyone will be there, dear Elszabet. Your poet will present his latest, you know. And there is hope of another green aurora, the second one this year, and then no more again for at least fifteen tonal cycles, so they say - "Elszabet? Elszabet?"

"I think I'd like to go to the four-valley splendor," she said. "And maybe the cataclysm symphony. But not the sensory returning, I think. Will that be all right, to skip the sensory returning"

"What's she talking about?"

She smiled. She looked from one to the other, Dan, Bill, Dante, Naresh, Dave Paolucci, Leo Kresh. Green light blazed upward from the center of the huge redwood table. It's all right, she wanted to say. I've gone out of my mind, that's all. But you don't need to worry about me. It's not unusual for people to go out of their minds these days.

"You aren't well, Elszabet?"

Dan Robinson. Standing beside her, resting his hand lightly on her shoulder.

"No," she said. "I'm really not very well at all. I don't think I have been all morning.

Would you excuse me, everyone? I'm terribly sorry but I think I should lie down. Would you excuse me? Thank you. Thank you. I'm terribly sorry. Please don't interrupt the meeting. But I think I should lie down."

5 FERGUSONsaid, "What did I tell you? There's nothing to it. You just slip away through the forest and keep on going east, and you'll hit civilization sooner or later."

"You have any idea where we are?" Alleluia asked.

"On our way to Ukiah."

"Ukiah. Where's that?"

"East of Mendo, maybe thirty miles from the coast. You forget? They pick it out of you?"

"I don't know much about this part of California," she said. "We're going to walk thirty miles, Ed?"

He looked at her. "You're a superwoman, right? What's the big deal about walking thirty miles? Little less than thirty, maybe. We do it in two days, tops. You can't handle that?"

"Not me. You. Are you in shape for that kind of hike?"

Ferguson laughed and rubbed his hand against the flawless skin of her upper arm.

"Don't worry about me, baby. I'm in terrific shape for a man my age. I'm in terrific shape, period. Anyway, I get tired, we can always stop a couple hours. n.o.body going to be coming after us here."

"You sure of that?"

"Sure I'm sure," he said. He grinned. "Imagine," he said. "No pick tomorrow morning.

No more head-scrambling. We'll go through a whole G.o.dd.a.m.n day remembering everything that happened to us the day before."

"And what we dreamed the night before too."

"What we dreamed, yeah." The grin, which had slowly been fading, turned into a frown.

"You dream last night? A s.p.a.ce dream?"

"I think so."

"You get them just about every night."

"Do I?" she asked.

"That's what you've been telling me every morning before pick. I've got it all down, right here on my little ring. A different planet every night, the nine suns, the green world, the one where the whole sky's full of stars. Last night it was the big blue star in the sky and the shining bubbles floating in the air."

"I don't remember," Alleluia said.

"Well, sometimes you do and sometimes you don't." "And you? You never get the dreams, do you?"

"Never once," he said, and felt the bitterness starting to rise. "Everybody gets them but me. I don't know. I'd like to see those places just once. I'd like to know what the h.e.l.l is going on in everybody's mind. I've got it on my ring that first thing in the morning I have to ask myself, Did you dream a s.p.a.ce dream? And I never have. Christ, I hate not feeling what other people feel."

"You ought to try being artificial for a while, then. See what it's like being really different."

"Yeah. Sure. Just what I need." Ferguson smiled. "Well, at least I won't get picked tomorrow. They won't stick their G.o.dd.a.m.n electronic scalpels into my head. Maybe two or three days away from those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and I'll start to dream, you think? What do you think, Allie?"

"The trouble with you," she said, "is that you want it too bad. You have to stop wanting it if you hope to get it. You see that, Ed?"

"You make it sound so simple."

"A lot of hard things are simple."

"Forget it," he said. "I can live without the G.o.dd.a.m.n dreams. I'm just glad to be away from that place."

"So am I," she said, and gave his forearm a squeeze that he supposed was meant to be joyful and affectionate. It sent such a jolt of pain through him that he wondered for an instant if she had broken his arm.

They were about three hours out of the Center now. It was late afternoon, still a couple of hours to go before dark. The air was still warm, though there was the first hint in it of the oncoming evening chill. They were in dense redwood forest, moist and soft underfoot even after the long months of summer drought. There were ground squirrels running around everywhere, and now and then some shy skittish little deer peered at them from behind one of the giant trees.

Getting away had been easy, just as Ferguson had expected. After lunch, during free- time, they had simply wandered off into the woods on the inland side of the Center.

Nothing unusual about that. Kept right on wandering, that was the unusual part.

Stopping in his favorite little s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g-glade to pick up the canvas bag he had stashed there the day before. He had filled the bag with bread, apples, some squeeze-cans of juice, and he had put a detailed memo about it on his recorder-ring, telling his post-pick self of the next day exactly where to find it. And now they were on their way. Christ, it felt good to be free! Out of the pokey at last. Well, the Center wasn't exactly like a prison - more like a strict boarding school, Ferguson thought - but he had never been much for boarding school either. Or anyplace else where people could tell him what he was supposed to do twelve, sixteen hours a day. He had a sort of plan. Get to Ukiah, first: that was a fair-sized town, his recorder said, thirty, forty thousand people. A downright metropolis these days, post-Dust War days, when kids were few and far between and the population was way down, off as much as eighty-five percent from twentieth-century peaks. Sometimes Ferguson tried to imagine the world with all those people in it, five or six million in L.A. alone, more than that in New York. They said sixteen million in Mexico City. Could you believe it? Wasn't anyone in Mexico City now, zero,nada, everybody scattering when the Nicas dusted the place. And maybe a million in L.A., if you counted in every town from Santa Barbara down to Newport Beach as being L.A. Well, so we get to Ukiah, he thought, find ourselves a motel, tidy up, regroup, and reorganize. Then phone Lacy and have her wire some money to me from San Fran. She'd be liquid enough to advance him something, he hoped. Christ knows she made a pile when she was working for me: must have hung on to enough to spare me a little. He wasn't carrying any, of course. There was no need for it at the Center, and they didn't encourage you to keep it on hand; when you had a weekend's external leave they simply set up a credit line for you at the place where you'd be staying and at the place where you'd be eating. They didn't want their inmates getting beyond reach.

He'd get beyond reach, all right. Couple days in Ukiah making arrangements, then off to Idaho - no visa needed to get into Idaho, right? - and from there, after maybe six weeks' residence to make it official, apply for entry into Oregon. They had some sort of republic in Oregon now, Oregon and maybe half of what had been Washington State, and once he was across the line there'd be no way of getting him back to California. A matter of sovereign independence, and the way Oregon felt about the Californios, they'd never extraditeanybody. So then with Oregon as his base he could start making some profitable use of the s.p.a.ce dreams. He wasn't exactly sure how just yet, probably some variation on the former Betelgeuse Five scam, guaranteed transmission to the newly developing other worlds, the seven planets so widely being exhibited in your nightly dreams. It would help some if he could see the dreamshimself, but that wasn't essential so long as he had Alleluia beside him. And Alleluia beside him at night, too, that tremendous panther body of hers every night - "Hey, what's the hurry?" he called to her. Suddenly she was striding along like a house on fire, leaving him far behind.

She turned and gave him a mischievous smile. "You having trouble keeping up, Ed?"

"Screw you," Ferguson said amiably. "We all know you're a superior life-form. You don't have to prove the G.o.dd.a.m.n point. Now slow down a little and let's hike it together, okay?"

"Right now I feel like moving fast," she told him. "Getting my heart pumping some."

"You get out of sight, you'll get lost altogether. You may be perfect but you don't know where you're heading, do you? Go on. You just charge off through the woods. Maybe I'll see you again, maybe not."

Her laughter came floating back to him. Feeling anger rising, Ferguson began to walk faster, keeping his eyes fixed on her. b.i.t.c.h, he thought. Challenging him like this. A real b.i.t.c.h. But you have to admit she's a magnificent b.i.t.c.h. He had never known a woman anything like her, and he had known a lot of women. So tall and supple, practically his own height. And beautiful: all that jet-black hair, those b.r.e.a.s.t.s, those legs. And strong: the long flat muscles rippling beneath her satiny skin, that aura she had of tremendous power just barely held in reserve. And strange: you could never predict what she would do. The way her mind worked, she seemed like a Martian sometimes. A woman from Betelgeuse Five. Ferguson wondered what sort of problems had landed her in mindpick. The first thing they told you at Nepenthe Center was that you weren't supposed to discuss your past with your fellow patients; the past was where your wounds were, they said, and you were supposed to let it all slough off under the pick. When you reintegrated in the final phase of the treatment, they told you, the useful part of your past would come back, the wounds would be forever gone; so it wasn't useful to cut the memory grooves any deeper by talking about where you were coming from. Ferguson had broken that rule, of course. He broke all the rules, just as a matter of habit. But Alleluia hadn't told him a thing about the disturbances that had brought her to the Center. She had gone into fits of crazy depression, maybe, the Gelbard stuff, and maybe even killed people with her bare hands to cheer herself up, for all he knew. Whatever it was, she kept it to herself. Maybe she didn't even know.

Maybe she had already sloughed all her memories off under the pick, he thought. A strange woman. But gorgeous. Gorgeous.

He was d.a.m.ned if he'd let her get this far ahead of him. She was almost out of sight up there. He started into a half-trot, breathing hard, breaking into a light sweat, stumbling a little on the soft loose forest duff. Ferguson was surprised at how short a time it took for him to get out of breath. Then he began to feel the beginning of some pain behind his breastbone, nothing too agonizing, just a sharp little pressure. No big deal. But a little on the scary side all the same.

h.e.l.l, he thought, huffing and puffing, you ought to be able to outrun agirl, right?

Wrong, he told himself. Don't be an a.s.shole. That was no girl, that was a superhuman artificial being, and she had a hundred-meter head start on him. Besides, he was fifty years old. Not exactly a boy any more. It was nutty to go chasing after her like this through the woods.

But he kept on all the same. His shirt was soaked now and his heart was pounding and there were sharp little pressures all up and down his chest, but he couldn't let himself be bested this way. "G.o.dd.a.m.n you, Allie, wait up for me!" he yelled, running even harder.

He couldn't even see her now: a close-set stand of enormous redwoods rose like a wall before him. Screw her. I'll just let her run away and get lost, he thought. I've got all the food, right? But still he didn't slow down. And then he caught his foot in some sort of gopher hole and went toppling heavily to the ground, and felt the ankle twist beneath him as he landed.

Pain blazed in his whole leg. He sat up, touching himself here and there. The ankle was throbbing. He tried carefully to stand and discovered that he couldn't: the leg wanted to buckle when he put the slightest weight on it. How was he going to get to Ukiah now?

He cupped his hand to his mouth and called to her: "Allie? Allie? Come on back, I hurt myself!" Five minutes, no sign of her. Ferguson ma.s.saged his ankle, hoping it would unsprain itself fast; but when he tried again to get to his feet it felt worse than before. His foot was beginning to swell up.

"Alleluia? G.o.d d.a.m.n you, Alleluia, where are you?"

"Easy, easy. I'm right here."

He looked up and saw her loping toward him like a gazelle, running in high splendid bounds. When she halted beside him she was not in the least winded: her breathing was as calm as if she had been sauntering.

"What happened to you?" she asked.

"Tripped. Sprained it. I can't walk, Allie!"