VII
It had begun when the girl led him through the conference room door.Naturally one had misgivings; naturally one didn't speak up. But thevault-like door far downstairs was terrifying when it yawned before youand even more so when it closed behind you.
"What is this place?" he demanded at last. "Who are you?"
She said: "Psychology lab."
It produced on him the same effect that "alchemy section" or "Divisionof astrology" would have on a well-informed young man in 1950. Herepeated flatly: "Psychology lab. If you don't want to tell me, verywell. I volunteered without strings." Which should remind her that hewas a sort of hero and should be treated with a certain amount ofdignity and that she could save her corny jokes.
"I meant it," she said, fiddling busily with the locks of yet anothervault-like door. "I'm a psychologist. I'm also by the way, LeeFalcaro--since you asked."
"The old man--Edward Falcaro's line?" he asked.
"Simon pure. He's my father's brother. Father's down in Miami, handlingthe tracks and gaming in general."
The second big door opened on a brain-gray room whose air had acuriously dead feel to it. "Sit down," she said, indicating a veryunorthodox chair. He did, and found that the chair was the mostcomfortable piece of furniture he had ever known. Its contact with hisbody was so complete that it pressed nowhere, it poked nowhere. The girlstudied dials in its back nevertheless and muttered something aboutadjusting it. He protested.
"Nonsense," she said decisively. She sat down herself in an ordinaryseat. Charles shifted uneasily in his chair to find that it moved withhim. Still no pressure, still no poking.
"You're wondering," she began, "about the word 'psychology'. It has abad history and people have given it up as a bad job. It's true thatthere isn't pressure nowadays to study the human mind. People get along.In general what they want they get, without crippling effort. In youruncle Frank Taylor's language, the Syndic is an appropriately-structuredorganization of high morale and wide public acceptance. In my languagethe Syndic is a father-image which does a good job of fathering. In goodtimes, people aren't introspective.
"There is, literally, no reason why my line of the family should havekept up a tradition of experimental psychology. Way, way back, oldAmadeo Falcaro often consulted Professor Oscar Sternweiss of theColumbia University psychology faculty--he wasn't as much of a dashingimprovisor as the history books make him out to be. Eventually one ofhis daughters married one of Sternweiss' sons and inherited theSternweiss notebooks and library and apparatus. It became an irrationalcustom to keep it alive. When each academic school of psychology managedto prove that every other school of psychology was dead wrong andpsychology collapsed as a science, the family tradition was unaffected;it stood outside the wrangling.
"Now, you're wondering what this has to do with trying to slip you intothe Government."
"I am," Charles said fervently. If she'd been a doll outside the Syndic,he would minutes ago have protested that all this was foolish and walkedout. Since she was not only in the Syndic, but in the Falcaro line, hehad no choice except to hear her babble and _then_ walk out. It was allrot, psychology. Id, oversoul, mind-vectors, counseling,psychosomatics--rot from sick-minded old men. Everybody knew--
"The Government, we know, uses deinhibiting drugs as a first screeningof its recruits. As an infallible second screening, they use aphysiological lie-detector based on the fact that telling a lie causestensions in the liar's body. We shall get around this by slipping you inas a young man who hates the Syndic for some valid reason--"
"Confound it, you were just telling me that they can't be fooled!"
"We won't fool them. You'll _be_ a young man who hates the Syndic. We'lltear down your present personality a gray cell at a time. We'll pump youfull of Seconal every day for a quarter of a year.... We'll obliterateyour personality under a new one. We'll bury Charles Orsino under amountain of suggestions, compulsions and obsessions shoveled at yousixteen hours a day while you're too groggy to resist. Naturally thesupplanting personality will be neurotic, but that works in with themission."
He struggled with a metaphysical concept, for the first time in hislife. "But--but--how will I know I'm _me_?"
"We think we can put a trigger on it. When you take the Government oathof allegiance, you should bounce back."
He did not fail to note a little twin groove between her brows thatappeared when she said _think_ and _should_. He knew that in a sense hewas nearer death now than when Halloran's bullet had been intercepted.
"Are you staying with it?" she asked simply.
Various factors entered into it. _A life for the Syndic_, as in thechildren's history books. That one didn't loom very large. But multiplyit by _it sounds like more fun than hot-rod polo_, and that by _this isgoing to raise my stock sky-high with the family_ and you had something.Somehow, under Lee Falcaro's interested gaze, he neglected to divide itby _if it works_.
"I'm staying with it," he said.
She grinned. "It won't be too hard," she said. "In the old days therewould have been voting record, social security numbers, militaryservice, addresses they could check on--hundreds of things. Now aboutall we have to fit you with is a name and a subjective life."
It began that spring day and went on into late fall.
The ringing bell.
The flashing light.
The wobbling pendulum.
You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman ofBuffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic....
Mom fried pork sausages in the morning, you loved the smell ofpumpernickel from the bakery in Vesey Street.
Mr. Watsisname the English teacher with the mustache wanted you to go tocollege--
_Nay, ye can not, though ye had Argus eyes, In abbeyes they haue so many suttyll spyes; For ones in the yere they have secret vvsytacyons, And yf ony prynce reforme...._
--but the stockyard job was closer, they needed breakdown men--
You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are--
The ringing bell.
The flashing light.
The wobbling pendulum.
And the pork sausages and the teacher with the mustache and poems youloved and
_page 24, paragraph 3, maximum speed on a live-cattle walkway is threemiles per hour: older walkways hold this speed with reduction gearscoupled to a standard 18-inch ehrenhafter unit. Standard practice in newconstruction calls for holding speed by direct drive from aspecially-wound ehrenhafter. This places a special obligation inbreakdown maintenance men, who must distinguish between the two types,carry two sets of wiring diagrams and a certain number ofmutually-uninterchangeable parts, though good design principles holdthese to a minimum. The main difference in the winding of a standard18-incher and a lowspeed ehrenhafter rotor--_
Of course things are better now, Max Wyman, you owe a great debt to JimHogan, Father of the Buffalo Syndic, who fought for your freedom in thegreat old days, and to his descendants who are tirelessly working foryour freedom and happiness.
And bow-happiness is a girl named Inge Klohbel now that you're almost aman.
You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman ofBuffalo Syndic Territory.
And Inge Klohbel is why you put away the crazy dream of scholarship, forher lips and hair and eyes and legs mean more to you than anything, morethan
_Later phonologic changes include palatal mutation; i.e., before_ cht_and_ hs _the diphthongs_ eo, io, _which resulted from breaking, became_ie (i, y) _as in_ cneoht, chieht, _and_ seox (_x equalling_ hs), siex,six, syx....
the crazy dream of scholarship, what kind of a way is that to repay theMob and
The ringing bell.
The flashing light.
The wobbling pendulum.
repay the Syndic and young Mike Hogan all over the neighborhood suddenlyand Inge says he did stop and say hello but of course he was just beingpolite.
so you hit the manuals hard and one da
y you go out on a breakdown calland none of the older men could figure out why the pump was on the blink;a roaring, chewing monster of a pump it was, sitting there like a deadhusk and the cattlefeed backed up four miles to a storage tank in thesuburbs and the steers in the yards bawling with hunger, and you tracedthe dead wire, you out with the spot-welder, a zip of blue flame and thepump began to chew again and you got the afternoon off.
* * * * *
And there they were.
_Lee Falcaro: (Bending over the 'muttering, twitching carcass)Adrenalin. Brighter picture and louder sound._
_Assistant: (Opening a pinch cock in the tube that enters the arm,increasing video contrast, increasing audio): He's weakening._
_Lee Falcaro: (In a whisper) I know. I know. But this is IT._
_Assistant: (Inaudibly) You cold-blooded bitch._
You are Max Wyman, you are Max Wyman,
and you don't know what to do about the Syndic that betrayed you, aboutthe girl who betrayed you with the living representative of the Syndic,about the dream of scholarship that lies in ruins, the love that lies inruins after how many promises and vows, the faith of twenty years thatlies in ruins after how many declarations.
The ringing bell.
The flashing light.
The wobbling pendulum.
And a double whiskey with a beer chaser.
_Lee Falcaro: The alcohol. (It drips from a sterile graduate, tricklesthrough the rubber tubing and into the arm of the mumbling, sweatingcarcass. The molecules mingle with the molecules of serum: In secondsthey are washed against the cell-walls of the forebrain. The cell-wallstheir structure as the alcohol molecules bumble against them; thelattices of jelly that wall in the cytoplasm and nuclear jelly becomethinner than they were. Streams of electrons that had coursed infamiliar paths through chains of neurones find easier paths through thepoison-thinned cell-walls. A "Memory" or an "Idea" or a "Hope" or a"Value" that was a configuration of neurones linked by electron streamsvanishes when the electron streams find an easier way to flow a New"Memories," "Ideas," "Hopes" and "Values" that are configurations ofneurones linked by electron streams are born.)_
Love and loyalty die, but not as if they had never been. Their ghostsremain, Max Wyman and you are haunted by them. They hound you fromBuffalo to Erie, but there is no oblivion deep enough in the Mex joints,or in Tampa tequila or Pittsburgh zubrovka or New York gin.
You tell incurious people who came to the place on the corner for a shotand some talk that you're the best breakdown man that ever came out ofErie; you tell them women are no God-damn good, you tell them theSyndic--here you get sly and look around with drunken caution, loweringyour voice--you tell them the Syndic's no God-damned good, and youdrunkenly recite poetry until they move away, puzzled and annoyed.
_Lee Falcaro: (Passing a weary hand across her forehead) well, he's hadit. Disconnect the tubes, give him a 48-hour stretch in bed and then gethim on the street pointed towards Riveredge._
_Assistant: Does the apparatus go into dead storage?_
_Lee Falcaro: (Grimacing uncontrollably) No. Unfortunately, no._
_Assistant: (Inaudibly, as she plucks needle-tipped tubes from thecarcass' elbows) who's the next sucker?_