She shook her head. “I’ve had six physicals since we left Karachi: same thing—four new diets.” She shrugged. “Still I have headaches.”
Eric jerked to a stop, exhaled slowly. “You were in Karachi, too?”
“Why, yes; that was the third place we hit after Honolulu.”
He leaned toward her. “And Honolulu?”
She-frowned. “What is this, a cross-examination?” She waited. “Well—”
He swallowed, thought, How can one person have been in these cities the Syndrome hit and be so casual about it?
She tapped a foot. “Cat got your tongue?”
He thought, She’s so flippant about it.
He ticked off the towns on his fingers. “You were in Los Angeles, Honolulu, Karachi; you’ve hit the high spots of Syndrome contamination and—”
An animal cry, sharp, exclamatory, burst from her. “It got all of those places?”
He thought, How could anyone be alive and not know exactly where the Syndrome has been?
He asked, “Didn’t you know?”
She shook her head, a numb motion, eyes wide, staring. “But Pete said—” She stopped. “I’ve been so busy learning new numbers. We’re reviving the old time hot jazz.”
“How could you miss it? TV is full of it, the newstapes, the transgraphs.”
She shrugged. “I’ve just been so busy. And I don’t like to think about such things. Pete said—” She shook her head. “You know, this is the first time I’ve been out alone for a walk in over a month. Pete was asleep and—” Her expression softened. “That Pete; he must not have wanted me to worry.”
“If you say so, but—” He stopped. “Who’s Pete?”
“Haven’t you heard of Pete Serantis and the musikron?”
“What’s a musikron?”
She shook back a curl of dark hair. “Have your little joke, doctor.”
“No, seriously. What’s a musikron?”
She frowned. “You really don’t know what the musikron is?”
He shook his head.
She chuckled, a throaty sound, controlled. “Doctor, you talk about my not knowing about Karachi and Honolulu. Where have you been hiding your head? Variety has us at the top of the heap.”
He thought, “She’s serious!”
A little stiffly, he said, “Well, I’ve been quite busy with a research problem of my own. It deals with the Syndrome.”
“Oh.” She turned, looked at the gray waters of the bay, turned back. She twisted her hands together. “Are you sure about Honolulu?”
“Is your family there?”
She shook her head. “I have no family. Just friends.”
She looked up at him, eyes shining. “Did it get… everybody?”
He nodded, thought: She needs something to distract her attention.
He said, “Miss Lanai, could I ask a favor?” He plunged ahead, not waiting for an answer. “You’ve been three places where the Syndrome hit. Maybe there’s a clue in your patterns. Would you consent to undergoing a series of tests at my lab? They wouldn’t take long.”
“I couldn’t possibly; I have a show to do tonight. I just sneaked out for a few minutes by myself. I’m at the Gweduc Room. Pete may wake up and—” She focused on his pleading expression. “I’m sorry, doctor. Maybe some other time. You wouldn’t find anything important from me anyway.”
He shrugged, hesitated. “But I haven’t told you about my dream.”
“You tempt me, doctor. I’ve heard a lot of phony dream reports. I’d appreciate the McCoy for just once. Why don’t you walk me back to the Gweduc Room? It’s only a couple of blocks.”
“Okay.”
She took his arm.
“Half a loaf—”
He was a thin man with a twisted leg, a pinched, hating face. A cane rested against his knee. Around him wove a spiderweb maze of wires—musikron. On his head, a dome-shaped hood. A spy, unsuspected, he looked out through a woman’s eyes at a man who had identified himself as Dr. Eric Ladde. The thin man sneered, heard through the woman’s ears: “Half a loaf—”
On the bayside walk, Eric and Colleen matched steps.
“You never did tell me what a musikron is.”
Her laughter caused a passing couple to turn and stare. “O.K. But I still don’t understand. We’ve been on TV for a month.”
He thought, She thinks I’m a fuddy; probably am!
He said, “I don’t subscribe to the entertainment circuits. I’m just on the science and news networks.”
She shrugged. “Well, the musikron is something like a recording and playback machine; only the operator mixes in any new sounds he wants. He wears a little metal bowl on his head and just thinks about the sounds—the musikron plays them.” She stole a quick glance at him, looked ahead. “Everyone says it’s a fake; it really isn’t.”
Eric stopped, pulled her to a halt. “That’s fantastic. Why—” He paused, chuckled. “You know, you happen to be talking to one of the few experts in the world on this sort of thing. I have an encephalo-recorder in my basement lab that’s the last word in teleprobes… that’s what you’re trying to describe.” He smiled. “The psychiatrists of this town may think I’m a young upstart, but they send me their tough diagnostic cases.” He looked down at her. “So let’s just admit your Pete’s machine is artistic showmanship, shall we?”
“But it isn’t just showmanship. I’ve heard the records before they go into the machine and when they come out of it.”
Eric chuckled.
She frowned. “Oh, you’re so supercilious.”
Eric put a hand on her arm. “Please don’t be angry. It’s just that I know this field. You don’t want to admit that Pete has fooled you along with all the others.”
She spoke in a slow, controlled cadence: “Look… doctor… Pete… was… one… of… the… inventors… of… the… musikron… Pete… and… old… Dr… Amanti.” She squinted her eyes, looking up at him. “You may be a big wheel in this business, but I know what I’ve heard.”
“You said Pete worked on this musikron with a doctor. What did you say that doctor’s name was?”
“Oh, Dr. Carlos Amanti. His name’s on a little plate inside the musikron.”
Eric shook his head. “Impossible. Dr. Carlos Amanti is in an asylum.”
She nodded. “That’s right; Wailiku Hospital for the Insane. That’s where they worked on it.”
Eric’s expression was cautious, hesitant. “And you say when Pete thinks about the sounds, the machine produces them?”
“Certainly.”
“Strange I’d never heard about this musikron before.”
“Doctor, there are a lot of things you’ve never heard about.”
He wet his lips with his tongue. “Maybe you’re right.” He took her arm, set a rapid pace down the walkway. “I want to see this musikron.”
In Lawton, Oklahoma, long rows of prefabricated barracks swelter on a sunbaked flat. In each barracks building, little cubicles; in each cubicle, a hospital bed; on each hospital bed, a human being. Barracks XRO-29: a psychiatrist walks down the hall, behind him an orderly pushing a cart. On the cart, hypodermic needles, syringes, antiseptics, sedatives, test tubes. The psychiatrist shakes his head.
“Bafly, they certainly nailed this thing when they called it the Scramble Syndrome. Stick an egg-beater into every psychosis a person could have, mix ’em up, turn ’em all on.”
The orderly grunts, stares at the psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist looks back. “And we’re not making any progress on this thing. It’s like bailing out the ocean with a sieve.”
Down the hallway a man screams. Their footsteps quicken.
The Gweduc Room’s elevator dome arose ahead of Eric and Colleen, a half-melon inverted on the walkway. At the top of the dome a blue and red script-ring circled slowly, spelling out, “Colleen Lanai with Pete Serantis and the Musikron.”
On the walkway before the dome a thin man, using a cane to compensate for a limp,
paced back and forth. He looked up as Eric and Colleen approached.
“Pete,” she said.
The man limped toward them, his cane staccato on the paving.
“Pete, this is Dr. Ladde. He’s heard about Dr. Amanti and he wants to—”
Pete ignored Eric, stared fiercely at Colleen. “Don’t you know we have a show tonight? Where have you been?”
“But, it’s only a little after nine; I don’t—”
Eric interrupted. “I was a student of Dr. Amanti’s. I’m interested in your musikron. You see, I’ve been carrying on Dr. Amanti’s researches and—”
The thin man barked, “No time!” He took Colleen’s arm, pulled her toward the dome.
“Pete, please! What’s come over you?” She held back.
Pete stopped, put his face close to hers. “Do you like this business?”
She nodded mutely, eyes wide.
“Then let’s get to work!”
She looked back at Eric, shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sorry.”
Pete pulled her into the dome.
Eric stared after them. He thought, “He’s a decided compulsive type… very unstable. May not be as immune to the Syndrome as she apparently is.” He frowned, looked at his wristwatch, remembered his ten o’clock appointment. “Damn!” He turned, almost collided with a young man in busboy’s coveralls.
The young man puffed nervously at a cigarette, jerked it out of his mouth, leered. “Better find yourself another gal, Doc. That one’s taken.”
Eric looked into the young-old eyes, stared them down. “You work in there?”
The young man replaced the cigarette between thin lips, spoke around a puff of blue smoke. “Yeah.”
“When does it open?”
The young man pulled the cigarette from his mouth, flipped it over Eric’s shoulder into the bay. “We’re open now for breakfast. Floor show doesn’t start until seven tonight.”
“Is Miss Lanai in the floor show?”
The busboy looked up at the script-ring over the dome, smiled knowingly. “Doc, she is the floor show!”
Again Eric looked at his wrist watch, thought, I’m coming back here tonight. He turned toward the nearest unitube. “Thanks,” he said.
“You better get reservations if you’re coming back tonight,” said the busboy.
Eric stopped, looked back. He reached into his pocket, found a twenty-buck piece, flipped it to the busboy. The thin young man caught the coin out of the air, looked at it, said, “Thank you. What name, Doc?”
“Dr. Eric Ladde.”
The busboy pocketed the coin. “Righto, Doc. Floorside. I come on again at six. I’ll attend to you personally.”
Eric turned back to the unitube entrance again and left immediately.
Under the smog-filtered Los Angeles sun, a brown-dry city.
Mobile Laboratory 31 ground to a stop before Our Lady of Mercy Hospital, churning up a swirl of dried palm fronds in the gutter. The overworked turbo-motor sighed to a stop, grating. The Japanese psychologist emerged on one side, the Swedish doctor on the other. Their shoulders sagged.
The psychologist asked, “Ole, how long since you’ve had a good night’s sleep?”
The doctor shook his head. “I can’t remember, Yoshi; not since I left Frisco, I guess.”
From the caged rear of the truck, wild, high-pitched laughter, a sigh, laughter.
The doctor stumbled on the steps to the hospital sidewalk. He stopped, turned. “Yoshi—”
“Sure, Ole. I’ll get some fresh orderlies to take care of this one.” To himself he added, “If there are any fresh orderlies.”
Inside the hospital, cool air pressed down the hallway. The Swedish doctor stopped a man with a clipboard. “What’s the latest count?”
The man scratched his forehead with a corner of the clipboard. “Two and a half million last I heard, doctor. They haven’t found a sane one yet.”
The Gweduc Room pointed a plastine finger under Elliott Bay. Unseen by the patrons, a cage compressed a high density of sea life over the transparent ceiling. Illumabeams traversed the water, treating the watchers to visions of a yellow salmon, a mauve perch, a pink octopus, a blue jellyfish. At one end of the room, synthetic mother-of-pearl had been formed into a giant open gweduc shell—the stage. Colored spotlights splashed the backdrop with ribbons of flame, blue shadows.
Eric went down the elevator, emerged in an atmosphere disturbingly reminiscent of his nightmare. All it lacked was the singer. A waiter led him, threading a way through the dim haze of perfumed cigarette smoke, between tables ringed by men in formal black, women in gold lamé, luminous synthetics. An aquamarine glow shimmered from the small round table tops—the only lights in the Gweduc Room other than spotlights on the stage and illumabeams in the dark water overhead. A susurration of many voices hung on the air. Aromas of alcohol, tobacco, perfumes, exotic seafoods layered the room, mingled with a perspirant undertone.
The table nestled in the second row, crowded on all sides. The waiter extricated a chair; Eric sat down.
“Something to drink, sir?”
“Bombay Ale.”
The waiter turned, merged into the gloom.
Eric tried to move his chair into a comfortable position, found it was wedged immovably between two chairs behind him, A figure materialized out of the gloom across from him; he recognized the busboy.
“Best I could get you, Doc.”
“This is excellent.” Eric smiled, fished a twenty-buck piece from his pocket, pressed it into the other’s hand.
“Anything I can do for you, Doc?”
“Would you tell Miss Lanai I’m here?”
“I’ll try, Doc; but that Pete character has been watching her like a piece of prize property all afternoon. Not that I wouldn’t do the same thing myself, you understand.”
White teeth flashed in the smoke-layered shadows. The busboy turned, weaved his way back through the tables. The murmuring undercurrent of voices in the room damped out. Eric turned toward the stage. A portly man in ebony and chalk-striped coveralls bent over the microphone.
“Here’s what you’ve been waiting for,” he said. He gestured with his left hand. Spotlights erased a shadow, revealing Colleen Lanai, her hands clasped in front of her. An old-fashioned gown of electric blue to match her eyes sheathed the full curves.
“Colleen Lanai!”
Applause washed over the room, subsided. The portly man gestured with his right hand. Other spotlights flared, revealing Pete Serantis in black coveralls, leaning on his cane.
“Pete Serantis and—”
He waited for a lesser frenzy of clapping to subside,
“…The Musikron!”
A terminal spotlight illuminated a large metallic box behind Pete. The thin man limped around the box, ducked, and disappeared inside. Colleen took the microphone from the announcer, who bowed and stepped off the stage.
Eric became aware of a pressing mood of urgency in the room. He thought, “For a brief instant we forget our fears, forget the Syndrome, everything except the music and this instant.”
Colleen held the microphone intimately close to her mouth.
“We have some more real oldies for you tonight,” she said. An electric pressure of personality pulsed out from her. “Two of these songs we’ve never presented before. First, a trio—‘Terrible Blues’ with the musikron giving you a basic recording by Clarence Williams and the Red Onion Jazz Babies, Pete Serantis adding an entirely new effect; next, ‘Wild Man Blues’ and the trumpet is pure Louis Armstrong; last, ‘Them’s Graveyard Words,’ an old Bessie Smith special.” She bowed almost imperceptibly.
Music appeared in the room, not definable as to direction. It filled the senses. Colleen began to sing, seemingly without effort. She played her voice like a horn, soaring with the music, ebbing with it, caressing the air with it.
Eric stared, frozen, with all the rest of the audience.
She finished the first song. The noise of applause deafened him. He
felt pain in his hands, looked down to find himself beating his palms together. He stopped, shook his head, took four deep breaths. Colleen picked up the thread of a new melody. Eric narrowed his eyes, staring at the stage. Impulsively, he put his hands to his ears and felt panic swell as the music remained undiminished. He closed his eyes, caught his breath as he continued to see Colleen, blurred at first, shifting, then in a steady image from a place nearer and to the left.
A wavering threnody of emotions accompanied the vision. Eric put his hands before his eyes. The image remained. He opened his eyes. The image again blurred, shifted to normal. He searched to one side of Colleen for the position from which he had been seeing her. He decided it could only be from inside the musikron and at the instant of decision discerned the outline of a mirror panel in the face of the metallic box.
“Through a one-way glass,” he thought. “Through Pete’s eyes.”
He sat, thinking, while Colleen finished her third number. Pete emerged from the musikron to share the applause. Colleen blew a kiss to the audience.
“We’ll be back in a little while.”
She stepped down from the stage, followed by Pete; darkness absorbed them. Waiters moved along the tables. A drink was placed on Eric’s table. He put money in the tray. A blue shadow appeared across from him, slipped into the chair.
“Tommy told me you were here… the busboy.” She leaned across the table. “You mustn’t let Pete see you. He’s in a rage, a real pet. I’ve never seen anybody that angry.”
Eric leaned toward her, caught a delicate exhalation of sandalwood perfume. It dizzied him. “I want to talk to you,” he said. “Can you meet me after the show?”
“I guess I can trust you,” she said. She hesitated, smiling faintly. “You’re the professional type.” Another pause. “And I think I need professional advice.” She slipped out of the chair, stood up. “I have to get back before he suspects I didn’t go to the powder room. I’ll meet you near the freight elevator upstairs.”