Elevator doors slid open with a hiss.
Burdeaux carried him inside, elbowed a button marked “P.”
Dasein felt his mouth go dry as the elevator doors closed. He stared up at a cream ceiling, a milky oblong of light, thinking: “They didn’t hesitate to sacrifice Jenny. Why would they have a second thought about Burdeaux? What if the elevator’s rigged to crash?
A faint humming sounded. Dasein felt the elevator lift. Presently, the doors opened and Burdeaux carried him out. There was a glimpse of a cream-walled entrance foyer, a mahogany door labeled “Isolation” and they were inside.
It was a long room with three beds, windows opening onto a black tar roof. Burdeaux deposited Dasein on the nearest bed, stepped back. “Kitchen’s in there,” he said, pointing to a swinging door at the end of the room. “Bathroom’s through that door there.” This was a door opposite the foot of Dasein’s bed. There were two more doors to the right of this one. “Other doors are a closet and a lab. Is this what you wanted, Doctor?”
Dasein met a measuring stare in Burdeaux’s eyes, said: “It’ll have to do.” He managed a rueful smile, explained the eating arrangements.
“Canned food, sir?” Burdeaux asked.
“I’m imposing on you, I know,” Dasein said. “But you were … like me … once. I think you sympathise with me … unconsciously. I’m counting on that to …” Dasein managed a weak shrug.
“Is this what Doctor Larry wants me to do?”
“Yes.”
“I just pick cans from the shelves … at random?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, it sounds crazy, sir … but I’ll do it.” He left the room, muttering.
Dasein managed to crawl under the blankets, lay for a moment regaining his strength. He could see a line of treetops beyond the roof—tall evergreens—a cloudless blue sky. There was a sense of quiet about the room. Dasein took a deep breath. Was this place really safe? A Santarogan had picked it. But the Santarogan had been off balance with personal doubts.
For the first time in days, Dasein felt he might relax. A profound lassitude filled him.
What is this unnatural weakness? he wondered.
It was far more than shock reaction or a result of his burns. This was like an injury to the soul, something that involved the entire being. It was a central command to all his muscles, a compulsion of inactivity.
Dasein closed his eyes.
In the red darkness behind his eyelids Dasein felt himself to be shattered, his ego huddled in a fetal crouch, terrified. One must not move, he thought. To move was to invite a disaster more terrible than death.
An uncontrollable shuddering shook his legs and hips, set his teeth chattering. He fought himself to stillness, opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling.
It’s a Jaspers reaction, he thought.
There was a smell of it in the room. The aroma gnawed at his senses. He sniffed, turned toward a metal stand beside the bed, a partly-opened drawer. Dasein slid the drawer all the way out to a stop, rolled onto his side to peer at the space he’d exposed.
Empty.
But there’d been a Jaspers something in the drawer—and that recently.
What?
Dasein swept his gaze around the room. Isolation suite, Piaget had said. Isolation of what? From what? For what?
He swallowed, sank back on the pillow.
The deliciously terrifying lassitude gripped him. Dasein sensed the green waters of unconsciousness ready to enfold him. By a desperate effort of will, he forced his eyes to remain open.
Somewhere, a cowering, fetal something moaned.
Faceless god chuckled.
The entrance door opened.
Dasein held himself rigidly unmoving, afraid if he moved his head to one side his face might sink beneath the upsurging unconsciousness, that he might drown in …
Piaget came into his field of vision, peering down at him. The doctor thumbed Dasein’s left eyelid up, studied the eye.
“Damned if you aren’t still fighting it,” he said.
“Fighting what?” Dasein whispered.
“I was pretty sure it’d knock you out if you used that much energy at this stage,” Piaget said. “You’re going to have to eat before long, you know.”
Dasein was aware then of the pain—a demanding hollow within him. He held onto the pain. It helped fight off the enfolding green waves.
“Tell you what,” Piaget said. He moved from Dasein’s range of vision. There came a scraping, a grunt. “I’ll just sit here and keep watch on you until Win gets back with something you’ll stuff into that crazy face of yours. I won’t lay a hand on you and I won’t let anyone else touch you. Your bandages can wait. More important for you to rest—sleep if you can. Stop fighting it.”
Sleep! Gods, how the lassitude beckoned.
Fighting what?
He tried to frame the question once more, couldn’t find the energy. It took all of his effort merely to cling to a tiny glowing core of awareness that stared up at a cream-colored ceiling.
“What you’re fighting,” Piaget said in a conversational tone, “is the climb out of the morass. Mud clings to one. This is what leads me to suspect your theory may have a germ of truth in it—that some stain of violence still clings to us, reaching us on the blind side, as it were.”
Piaget’s voice was a hypnotic drone. Phrases threaded their way in and out of Dasein’s awareness.
“ … experiment in domestication …” “ … removed from ex-stasis, from a fixed condition …” “ … must reimprint the sense of identity …” “ … nothing new: mankind’s always in some sort of trouble …” “ … religious experience of a sort—creating a new order of theobotanists …” “ … don’t shrink from life or from awareness of life …” “ … seek a society that changes smoothly, flowingly as the collective need requires …”
One of the faceless gods produced a thundering whisper in Dasein’s skull: “This is my commandment given unto you: A poor man cannot afford principles and a rich man doesn’t need them.”
Dasein lay suspended in a hammock of silence.
Fear of movement dominated him.
He sensed a world-presence somewhere beneath him. But he lay stranded here above. Something beckoned. Familiar. He felt the familiar world and was repelled. The place seethed with disguises that tried to conceal a rubble of pretensions, devices, broken masks. Still, it beckoned. It was a place in which he could fit, shaped to him. He sensed himself reaching toward it with a feeling of exuberant self-gratification, drew back. The rubble. It was everywhere, a blanket over life, a creamy ennui—soothing, cajoling, saccharine.
Still, it beckoned.
The lure was inexhaustible, a brilliant bag of pyrotechnics, a palette flooded with gross colors.
It was all a trick.
He sensed this—all a trick, a mass of signal clichés and canned reflexes.
It was a hateful world.
Which world? he asked himself. Was it Santaroga … or the outside?
Something grabbed Dasein’s shoulder.
He screamed.
Dasein awoke to find himself moaning, mumbling. It took a moment to place himself. Where were the faceless gods?
Piaget leaned over him, a hand on Dasein’s shoulder.
“You were having a nightmare,” Piaget said. He took his hand away. “Win’s back with the food—such as it is.”
Dasein’s stomach knotted in pain.
Burdeaux stood at his right next to the adjoining bed. A box piled with canned food rested on the next bed.
“Bring me a can opener and a spoon,” Dasein said.
“Just tell me what you want and I’ll open it,” Burdeaux said.
“I’ll do it,” Dasein said. He raised himself on his elbows, Movement set his arms to throbbing, but he felt stronger—as though he had tapped a strength of desperation.
“Humor him,” Piaget said as Burdeaux hesitated.
Burdeaux shrugged, went out the do
or across from the bed.
Dasein threw back the blankets, swung his feet out. He motioned Piaget back, sat up. His feet touched a cold floor. He took a deep breath, lurched across to the adjoining bed. His knees felt stronger, but Dasein sensed the shallowness of his reserves.
Burdeaux reappeared, handed Dasein a twist-handle can opener.
Dasein sat down beside the box, grabbed a fat green can out of it, not even looking at the label. He worked the opener around the can, took a proffered spoon from Burdeaux, lifted back the lid.
Beans.
An odor of Jaspers clamored at Dasein from the open can. He looked at the label: “Packed by the Jaspers Cooperative.” There was a permit number, a date of a year ago and the admonition: “Not for sale in interstate commerce. Exposed Dec. ’64.”
Dasein stared at the can. Jaspers? It couldn’t be. The stuff didn’t ship. It couldn’t be preserved out of …
“Something wrong?” Piaget asked.
Dasein studied the can: shiny, a glistening label.
“Beans with meat sauce and beef,” read the yellow letters.
Dasein ignored the lure of the aroma from the can, looked in the box. He tried to remember whether the can had given off the characteristic hiss of a vacuum seal breaking as it had been opened—couldn’t remember.
“What’s wrong?” Piaget insisted.
“Can’t be anything wrong,” Burdeaux said. “That’s all private stock.”
Dasein looked up from the box. All the cans he could see bore the Co-op’s label. Private stock?
“Here,” Piaget said. He took can and spoon from Dasein’s hands, tasted a bite of beans, smiled. He returned the can and spoon to Dasein, who took them automatically.
“Nothing wrong there,” Piaget said.
“Better not be,” Burdeaux said. “It came from Pete Maja’s store, right off the private stock shelf.”
“It’s Jaspers,” Dasein rasped.
“Of course it is,” Piaget said. “Canned right here for local consumption. Stored here to preserve its strength. Won’t keep long after it’s opened, though, so you’d better start eating. Got maybe five, ten minutes.” He chuckled. “Be thankful you’re here. If you were outside and opened that can, wouldn’t last more’n a few seconds.”
“Why?”
“Hostile environment,” Piaget said. “Go ahead and eat. You saw me take some. Didn’t hurt me.”
Dasein tested a bit of the sauce on his tongue. A soothing sensation spread across his tongue, down his throat. They were delicious. He spooned a full bite into his mouth, gulped it down.
The Jaspers went thump in his stomach.
Dasein turned, wide-eyed toward Burdeaux, met a look of wonder, dark brown eyes like African charms with butter-yellow flecks in them. The can drew Dasein’s attention. He peered into it.
Empty.
Dasein experienced a sensation of strange recall—like the fast rewind on a tape recorder, a screech of memory: his hand in a piston movement spooning the contents of the can into his mouth. Blurred gulpings.
He recognized the thump now. It had been a thump of awareness. He no longer was hungry.
My body did it, Dasein thought. A sense of wonder enfolded him. My body did it.
Piaget took the can and spoon from Dasein’s unresisting fingers. Burdeaux helped Dasein back into bed, pulled the blankets up, straightened them.
My body did it, Dasein thought.
There’d been a trigger to action—knowledge that the Jaspers effect was fading … and consciousness had blanked out.
“There,” Piaget said.
“What about his bandages?” Burdeaux asked.
Piaget examined the bandage on Dasein’s cheek, bent close to sniff, drew back. “Perhaps this evening,” he said.
“You’ve trapped me, haven’t you?” Dasein asked. He stared up at Piaget.
“There he goes again,” Burdeaux said.
“Win,” Piaget said, “I know you have personal matters to take care of. Why don’t you tend to them now and leave me with Gilbert? You can come back around six if you would.”
Burdeaux said: “I could call Willa and have her …”
“No need to bother your daughter,” Piaget said. “Run along and …”
“But what if …”
“There’s no danger,” Piaget said.
“If you say so,” Burdeaux said. He moved toward the foyer door, paused there a moment to study Dasein, then went out.
“What didn’t you want Win to hear?” Dasein asked.
“There he goes again,” Piaget said, echoing Burdeaux.
“Something must’ve …”
“There’s nothing Win couldn’t hear!”
“Yet you sent him to watch over me … because he was special,” Dasein said. He took a deep breath, feeling his senses clear, his mind come alert. “Win was … safe for me.”
“Win has his own life to live and you’re interfering,” Piaget said. “He …”
“Why was Win safe?”
“It’s your feeling, not mine,” Piaget said. “Win saved you from falling. You’ve shown a definite empathy …”
“He came from outside,” Dasein said. “He was like me … once.”
“Many of us came from outside,” Piaget said.
“You, too?”
“No, but …”
“How does the trap really work?” Dasein asked.
“There is no trap!”
“What does the Jaspers do to one?” Dasein asked.
“Ask yourself that question.”
“Technically … doctor?”
“Technically?”
“What does the Jaspers do?”
“Oh. Among other things, it speeds up catalysis of the chemical transmitters in the nervous system—5 hydroxytryptamine and serotonin.”
“Changes in the Golgi cells?”
“Absolutely not. Its effect is to break down blockage systems, to open the mind’s image function and consciousness formulation processes. You feel as though you had a better … an improved memory. Not true, of course, except in effect. Merely a side effect of the speed with which …”
“Image function,” Dasein said. “What if the person isn’t capable of dealing with all his memories? There are extremely disagreeable, shameful … dangerously traumatic memories in some …”
“We have our failures.”
“Dangerous failures?”
“Sometimes.”
Dasein closed his mouth, an instinctive reaction. He drew in a deep breath through his nostrils. The odor of Jaspers assailed his senses. He looked toward the box of cans on the adjacent bed.
Jaspers. Consciousness fuel. Dangerous substance. Drug of ill omen. Speculative fantasies flitted through Dasein’s mind. He turned, surprised a mooning look on Piaget’s face.
“You can’t get away from it here in the valley, can you?” Dasein asked.
“Who’d want to?”
“You’re hoping I’ll stay, perhaps help you with your failures.”
“There’s certainly work to be done.”
Anger seized Dasein. “How can I think?” he demanded. “I can’t get away from the smell of …”
“Easy,” Piaget murmured. “Take it easy, now. You’ll get so you don’t even notice it.”
Every society has its own essential chemistry, Dasein thought. Its own aroma, a thing of profound importance, but least apparent to its own members.
Santaroga had tried to kill him, Dasein knew. He wondered now if it could have been because he had a different smell. He stared at the box on the bed. Impossible! It couldn’t be anything that close to the surface.
Piaget moved around to the box, tore a small, curling strip of paper from it, touched the paper to his tongue. “This box has been down in storage,” he said. “It’s paper, organic matter. Anything organic becomes impregnated with Jaspers after a certain exposure.” He tossed the paper into the box.
“Will I be like that box?” Dasein asked. He felt he h
ad a ghost at his heels, an essence he couldn’t elude. The lurking presence stirred in his mind. “Will I …”
“Put such thoughts out of your mind,” Piaget said.
“Will I be one of the failures?” Dasein asked.
“I said stop that!”
“Why should I?”
Dasein sat up, the strength of fear and anger in him, his mind crowded by suppositions, each one worse than its predecessor. He felt more exposed and vulnerable than a child running from a whipping.
With an abrupt shock of memory, Dasein fell back to the pillow. Why did I choose this moment to remember that? he asked himself. A painful incident from his childhood lay there, exposed to awareness. He remembered the pain of the switch on his back.
“You’re not the failure type,” Piaget said.
Dasein stared accusingly at the odorous box.
Jaspers!
“You’re the kind who can go very high,” Piaget said. “Why do you really think you’re here? Just because of that silly market report? Or because of Jenny? Ah, no. Nothing that isolated or simple. Santaroga calls out to some people. They come.”
Dasein looked sidelong at him.
“I came so you people could get the chance to kill me,” Dasein said.
“We don’t want to kill you!”
“One moment you suspect I may be right, the next you’re denying it.”
Piaget sighed.
“I have a suggestion,” Dasein said.
“Anything.”
“You won’t like it,” Dasein said.
Piaget glared at him. “What’s on your mind?”
“You’ll be afraid to do it.”
“I’m not …”
“It’s something like a clinical test,” Dasein said. “My guess is you’ll try not to do it. You’ll look for excuses, anything to get out of it or to discontinue it. You’ll try to misunderstand me. You’ll try to break away from …”
“For the love of heaven! What’s on your mind?”
“You may succeed.”
“Succeed in what?”
“Not doing what I suggest.”
“Don’t try to crowd me into a corner, Gilbert.”
“Thus it starts,” Dasein said. He held up a hand as Piaget made as though to speak. “I want you to let me hypnotize you.”