Freeze Frames
Katharine Kerr
www.bookviewcafe.com
Book View Café Edition
February 19, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61138-246-4
Copyright © 1995 Katharine Kerr
Dedication
For Susan Shwartz
Acknowledgements
A thousand thanks to Eleta Malewitz,
who came up with the title when I couldn’t think of one.
Table of Contents
Dr. Lucky
The Stargazer
Asylum
Resurrection
Messengers: ΑΓΓΕΛΟΙ
L’Envoi, Without the Roses
Appendix: Maggie and Her Descendants
Copyright & Credits
About the Author
About Book View Café
Sample Chapter: Polar City Blues
Dr. Lucky
MEPHISTO:
Ir wißt, wie wir in tiefverruchten Stunden,
Vernichtung sannen menschlichem Geschlecht...
Goethe, Faust, Part II
(You know, you who were with me in the darkest hour,
how we planned to destroy the whole human race...)
Prologue in Iowa
English oaks, imported to the prairie at great expense by some long-forgotten alumnus, edge the green lawn in the center of the campus. Since they were planted to memorialize students who died in the First World War, some morbid wag of the twenties named them Belleau Wood, and the joke has stuck, even though the students sitting under them now assume that the donor’s name was Mr. Belleau. Some of these young men, dressed in white shirts open at the neck and khaki-colored chinos, are destined to die in places with exotic names like Vietnam and Cambodia, but at the moment, in the early sixties, those countries lie far away from a small private college in the heartland of America. The oaks, grown to a respectable size, nod in a summer wind that makes the heat just bearable. Flies circle ham sandwiches and bottles of Coke; students wave them away with a slow hand and wonder why they bothered to sign up for summer school.
Dr. John Wagner is beginning to wonder the same thing. He has just left a faculty meeting, or perhaps it was a council of war, in which he and his fellows in the College of Sciences made hopeless noises about gaining a bigger share of the school budget for the autumn semester. Realizing that pharmaceutical chemistry, his own subject, falls very low on the administration’s list of priorities, well below agricultural science and certainly as far south as Hades compared to the football team, has ruined his day. Hell is in a way very much on his mind; he orders the faculty dress code to take up residence there as he pulls off his tie, crams it into the pocket of his tweed jacket, then takes the jacket off as well and slings it over one shoulder.
As he strides across the green, he can feel the sun pounding down on his bald spot. On the edge of the shade sit coeds, plaid skirts decorously tucked over knees, white socks pulled up high over ankles and calves, white blouses buttoned up to round collars. One girl wears a string of pearls. Blue jeans and black leather boots, miniskirts and tie-dyed tank tops are only distant rumors to these girls. As he looks at their gleaming helmets of sprayed hair, Wagner can summon not the barest trace of lust. He does wonder if all those things you read about “free love,” the supposed goings-on in places like New York and London and San Francisco, are true. He doubts it.
The faculty office building lies on the far side of Belleau Wood, three stories of fake Gothic, topped with a belltower, approached through a courtyard with an arched ambulatory. Inside, the warren of tiny rooms sports mullioned windows and diamond-paned glass. In spite of the thick stone walls—there is no air-conditioning—Wagner’s cubicle swelters. He moves a stack of books from the sill and opens the one window to lean out. Far down below he can see students ambling toward the shiny new dorms at the edge of campus. They seem to be laughing, and he hates them. As he remembers his own college years, back in the 1940s, it seems to him that he never laughed unless he was dutifully acknowledging a professor’s joke. The memory must be wrong. He hopes so.
Off among the shrubbery toward the faculty parking lot he notices an animal moving, heading toward the office building. Some student’s dog, he supposes, a big black animal, a poodle, maybe, trotting purposefully along, as if it’s escaped from a backyard somewhere and come hunting its master. For a moment Wagner watches it sniffing a hedge, then leaves the window.
He flops down onto the swivel chair with a puff of dust from the cracking leather cushions and wonders if he should put his feet up on his desk in a raffish gesture. If he tries, he’ll only dislodge and scatter heaps of books. Facing him like an enemy sits a pile of student exams, waiting for his grade. If he were a professor in some large college or university, such as Yale or Harvard, schools that he can only dream about, or even Caltech and Western Reserve, schools where he applied only to be turned down, he would have graduate students to grade these measly multiple choice quizzes and laboratory notebooks. As it is, he picks up a red pencil and scoots his chair to the desk.
Scattered on the pile by an indifferent secretary lies his mail, three advertisements and a letter from some college in California. The advertisements he tosses into the wastebasket, the letter he reads, skimming at first, then backing up to read more slowly, to savor, to doubt, to read again and confirm. Yes, a small college just outside of San Francisco, not a famous school, but certainly superior to this miserable hole where he teaches, is asking him, John Honus Wagner, to read a paper at a special conference in August, the theme of which is “Methodology in the Synthesis of Organic Compounds,” his actual specialty, his island in the vast sea of modern chemistry. How did they even get his name? A scrawled note on the back of the letter explains. An old student of his, his best student—Hell, his one and only good student ever—has just received his doctorate from the University of California, is doing the scut-work of organizing a conference like this, and has dared to broach his mentor’s name to the committee. Not only was Roger his one good student, but he’s grateful. Wagner’s eyes fill with tears, which he brushes away fast and hard.
The problem, of course, is money. The conference pays an honorarium, barely enough for a one-way ticket to San Francisco, if that. Not only is Wagner’s salary small, but a large chunk of it goes every month to his ex-wife. The college has made it quite clear that “advances” happen only in science, never in the Accounting Department.
“God damn it all to Hell!”
He’s screamed the words, not merely spoken them. At that precise moment, someone knocks on the door. Wagner swallows hard, reaches up to straighten the tie that’s no longer there, shoves the chair back, and stands, wondering why he’s standing.
“Who is it?”
“Nick Harrison. From Chem 10. I need to get you to sign something, sir.”
“Come on in.”
Although Wagner doesn’t remember the name, he does recognize the student who enters, a tall young man, rather than a boy, with blond hair cropped close to his skull and pale grey eyes. He wears his short-sleeved blue shirt and chinos with some authority—a G.I. Bill student, or so Wagner remembers. In one hand Nick carries an official-looking stack of forms.
“Sorry to bother you, sir, but I’ve got to leave summer school. I need to have you sign the drop slip for your class.”
“Sure.” He waves at the other chair beside the desk. “Sit down. I hope nothing’s wrong?”
“Well, yeah. Family emergency. In San Francisco.”
“That’s too bad. San Francisco, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s a long drive, and I’m hoping to get all this stuff finished up today, so I can hit the road tomorrow morning.”
Wagner merely nods, sitting down, searching for
his pen among the books and papers, but he feels his heart start to pound, feels his face turn hot as if blood is rising there. He looks up to find Nick staring at him. His eyes are such a pale grey that they seem almost colorless, and he stares without blinking for such a long time that Wagner rubs his own eyes in sympathy, at which point Nick does, finally, blink.
“Say, Professor? You okay?”
“Uh, yeah, what makes you ask?”
“You look flushed. Real hot in here, but well, I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I mean, not having a heart attack or something.”
“My dear young man! I am not old enough to worry about having a goddamn heart attack.”
“Sorry.” Nick shrinks back in his chair.
Wagner cannot find his pen. He begins lifting stacks of books, shoving stacks of papers, gives that up and begins opening drawers, finally looks up to find Nick holding out a ballpoint. The student’s smiling a little, but his pale eyes never blink. Wagner grabs the pen and begins riffling through the stack of forms. At the moment he hates this self-assured young man, all blond and muscled, who survived the Army or maybe even the Marines, who endured some rite of manhood, anyway, while he, John Honus Wagner, was declared 4-F by his local draft board for a large number of small reasons.
“Tell me something,” Wagner snaps. “Do you really have a family emergency, or are you just sick of summer school and want out?”
Nick blushes and squirms, looks away out the window fast. Wagner grins.
“Now listen here, I’m not sure I’m going to sign this, then. The regulations are pretty clear, you know. Once you’re past the second week of summer school, you’ve got to have a damn good reason to drop.”
“I’ve got one.” Nick looks back. “And it really is a family emergency, kind of. Just not the usual kind. I mean, my old man isn’t dead or dying, but this whole thing concerns him, yeah.”
“Your father, you mean?”
Nick grins, slouching back in his chair, and all at once Wagner senses a predatory edge in his unblinking stare, as if perhaps he’s used to knifing men who get in his way, who throw official reasons and official forms at his feet for stumbling blocks.
“Look,” Nick says at last. “I’ll try to explain. I’m really thinking about dropping out of school. It all seems so meaningless, you know? Like studying all this stuff, trying to get a liberal arts degree, taking courses like Chem 10, I mean, it just seems part of the—well, the absurdity.”
“You’ve been reading Sartre, haven’t you?”
Nick goggles.
“How’d you know?”
Wagner laughs, but he manages to make it sound kindly.
“Well, it’s kind of a fad, yeah,” Nick goes on. “But jeez louise, that stuff gets you. And so I signed up for summer school, just to—well, I don’t know. See if I could make myself believe in the usual things. And now I can’t, and I want out.”
“Yeah? But you want to leave the door open to come back, nice and legally?”
Nick smiles, suddenly rueful, with a shake of his head. He’d be a charming kid, Wagner thinks, if only he’d blink his goddamn eyes.
“Well, they say there’s all this stuff going on in San Francisco, and I kind of wanted to go look around, find myself maybe.”
“You’ve been reading Kerouac, too.”
“Yeah, ’fraid so. But that does make sense. Getting out in the real world, living life and experiencing everything it has to offer. I’ve never done that.”
“I thought you were in the service.”
“Fort Lawrence, Kansas.”
“Oh.”
“I’m a world lit major, and I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and jeez, I don’t have anything to say. I’m sick and tired of reading other people’s books and pawing over the past.”
“Ah, I see. And where does your father come into this?”
“Well, I made a kind of bargain with him. Well, more of a bet, actually, that I couldn’t do what I want to do even in San Francisco, even if I tried going there.”
“And then he thinks you’ll come back and settle down?”
“Something like that.” Nick leans forward, all earnestness.
“Haven’t you ever felt like this, Professor? Like if you stay here you’re going to suffocate? Just sort of dry up and blow away in one of the damn tornadoes? Sometimes when you were lecturing, I’d watch you and think, hell, I bet that here’s a guy who understands. You know? Who feels what I do, stuck here in this two-bit college.”
Wagner tries to remind himself that Nick is only working on him to wheedle a favor, that at this point he should come down firmly on the side of law and order and announce that he’s not signing a drop slip for such a ridiculous reason, but he cannot find words. His tongue seems stuck to his mouth by some enormous thirst.
“Haven’t you ever wanted to just break loose and go somewhere, hit the road, end up in a town like San Francisco?” Nick goes on. “They say all kinds of stuff is happening, out west.”
“Well, maybe once I would have.” Wagner finds his voice at last. “But I’m too old for that now. When you start pushing fifty, you start thinking about security, you know, things like tenure, a good pension plan.”
“Ah come on! Are you telling me that the only reason you’re staying here is because you feel old?”
“Look, pal, if you want me to sign that slip, you might try being a little less blunt.”
“Well, yeah, I’m sorry. But it just seems kind of sad, you know. There’s life out there, just waiting to be lived, like a bottle of wine on a shelf. You could just take it down and drink it, drink it right down and really live.”
“Huh! And then what? You wake up with a hangover?”
“Maybe. But wouldn’t it be worth it?”
“Would it? That’s the rub. You wouldn’t know until it was too late. But it’s all a moot point, anyway. I’m not young, and I never will be again.”
“Oh yeah? It could maybe be arranged.”
“What in hell are you talking about?”
“What in hell, indeed?”
Nick grins, leaning so far forward that he can rest his elbows on the desktop. His eyes seem swirls of mist, not eyes at all. Wagner suddenly remembers the black poodle.
“Just who are you?” Wagner whispers.
“Names don’t much matter, do they? I think you know. What if you were young again? Just what if?”
“Ah come on, even if you’re who I think you are, you can’t turn back Time.”
“Who’s talking about turning back Time? I’m talking about making you personally young.”
“Ridiculous!”
“Oh yeah? Try me.”
Nick rises, shoving back the chair, sweeping one hand toward the ceiling. When Wagner tries to stand, he reels, catching the edge of the desk with both hands to steady himself. The room spins in a golden cloud, slows, stops at last. He cannot quite remember what he’s doing here, standing behind some professor’s desk, wearing a pair of trousers from some dull suit and a white shirt, both too big for him. Without thinking he runs a hand through his sweaty hair, his thick hair, slightly curly, long enough to cover the tops of his ears. At that point he remembers.
“Jesus God!”
“Never say that name again!” Nick snaps. “I mean, hey, it’s pretty damn rude if nothing else.”
“Uh, yeah, sorry.” Wagner looks down and finds his pot belly gone, finds his hands strong, smooth, muscled again, finds also that he’s holding a pen. “Uh, hey? Where do I sign?”
The House on the Hill
At the turn of the century the house stood in some glory behind a wrought-iron fence that marks off half a city block. Once there were gardens, and stables, an ornamental fish pond and flowering trees, instead of the current weeds and windblown trash around a pile of lumber, a cracked tile basin rusty with polluted rain. In the midst of ruin rise three stories of elaborate wooden architecture, a couple of turrets, a widow’s walk, peaked roofs and bay windows, little porches and
scroll work, painted flat grey and peeling. In the windows hang cotton print bedspreads from India, or old sheets tie-dyed purple and red in bull’s-eyes and streaks. A wide veranda runs halfway around the ground floor, scattered with live dogs and the corpses of white wicker furniture. It leads away from the street to a massive set of double doors studded with art nouveau stained glass in streaky lavenders and greens, which piece together a wood nymph by a fountain, a satyr in a grove, chastely separated, each on their separate window.
It was once the embassy of some obscure Eastern European country, but the property has lived in the limbo of litigation since 1949. On one side the People’s Republic demands the full value in hard western currency while on the other the heirs of a long-dead archduke insist the house is theirs. To pay taxes a real estate agent leased the house out a long time ago to someone who no longer lives there, but the sublets endure in monthly frenzies of rent collection.
Lately this job has fallen to Nick Harrison, who starts up in the warren of cubicles under the roof (servants’ quarters once upon a time), where he extorts five dollars here and there from hookers, pill freaks, and one would-be poet. He then trots down the marble staircase to the slightly more prosperous college students and speed freaks, would-be musicians, and small-time dope dealers, who inhabit various portions of the ambassador’s old quarters and the once-official offices, waiting rooms, and parlors. Here among the mattresses scattered on the floor, the stereos blaring out the Beatles and Stones, he can collect twenties and tens from middle-class kids come to experience life.
Anything left over he makes up in the basement. Once it was a ballroom, and a vast sweep of chipped and pitted parquet floor remains, as does an actual stage where a local rock band, the Wizards, comes most evenings to practice. Off to one side lies a narrow kitchen, originally built to provide refreshments for the embassy balls, no doubt, with the sinks and stoves that Wagner needs for his lab work. LSD is remarkably easy to synthesize, if you don’t worry too much about quality, but Wagner’s found his calling at last in manufacturing the best, the purest, the most potent hallucinogens that the Haight-Ashbury has ever seen. His white lightning, purple mist, and the brand-new red thunder have earned him a lot of cold cash and a new name as well. Most people know him only as Dr. Lucky.