by Ellen Datlow
“Soon,” Malpass said, smiling. “Today, tomorrow. They’re going to put you on IV for a while this morning. This evening, they want you to try eating again.”
“I can’t,” Weybridge said at once. “No food.” He was sick with hunger; he could not endure the thought of food. “I can’t.”
“The head nurse will look after you,” Malpass went on, blithe as a kindergarten teacher. “We’re going to take Stone off for this evening, and Cleeve will stay with you. He wants a chance to talk to you, to study your reactions.”
“Cleeve?” Weybridge repeated.
“He saw you yesterday,” Malpass reminded him sympathetically, his face creasing into a mask of good-hearted concern. “You remember speaking with Cleeve, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Weybridge said, ready to weep with vexation. “I haven’t forgotten. It’s the other things that are gone.”
“Well, possibly,” Malpass allowed. “You don’t seem to recall coming here. Or have you?”
“I …” Had there been an ambulance? A plane? He was pretty sure he had been in a plane, but was it coming here, or had there been a plane earlier, before he had done—whatever it was he had done? Had he flown then? He was certain that he could recall looking down from a great height—that was something. He tried to pursue the image without success.
“Don’t work so hard, you only make it more difficult,” Malpass admonished him. “You don’t need that extra stress right now. If you get frustrated, you won’t be able to think clearly about your treatment and getting better.”
“I don’t think clearly in any case, frustrated or not,” Weybridge said with great bitterness.
“We’re trying to do something about that, aren’t we?” Malpass said, smiling once again. “You’re in the best hands, you’re getting the finest care. In time, it will come back. You can be sure of that.”
“Can I? And what if it doesn’t?” Weybridge demanded.
“David, David, you mustn’t think this way. You’ll straighten it all out, one way or another,” Malpass said, moving away from Weybridge. “I’ll drop in later, to see how you’re doing. Don’t let yourself get depressed, if you can help it. We’re all pulling for you.” With a wave, he was gone, and Weybridge longed for a door he could close, to keep them all out.
There was a new nurse that afternoon, a woman in her mid-thirties, not too attractive but not too plain, who regarded him with curiosity. She took his temperature, blood pressure, and pulse, then offered to give him a sponge bath.
“I’ll take a shower later,” he lied. He did not like the feeling of water on his skin, though why this should be, he was unable to say. He knew he was a fastidious person and the smell of his unwashed skin was faintly repulsive.
“It might be better if you let me do this for you,” she said unflappably. “As long as you’re hooked up to that IV, you should really keep your arm out of water. It won’t take long. And I can give you a massage afterward.” She sounded efficient and impersonal, but Weybridge could not bear the thought of her touching him.
“No thanks,” he said, breathing a little faster. What was making him panic?
“Let me give it a try. Dr. Cleeve suggested that we give it a try. What do you think? Can we do your feet? If that’s not too bad, we’ll try the legs. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”
Both of them knew it was, and so he nodded, feeling sweat on his body. “Go slow,” he warned her, dreading what she would do. “If I…”
She paid no attention to him. “I realize that you’re not used to having a woman bathe you, but after all, your mother did, and this isn’t much different, is it?” She had gone into the bathroom while speaking and was running water into a large, square, stainless-steel bowl. “I’ll make it warm but not hot. And I’ll use the unscented soap. I’ve got a real sponge, by the way, and you’ll like it. Think about what it can be like with a big, soft sponge and warm water.”
The very mention of it made him queasy, but he swallowed hard against the sensation. “Fine,” he panted.
The nurse continued to get the water ready for him. “You might not think that you’ll like it at first, but you will. I’ve done work with other … troubled patients and in this case, you’re easy to deal with. You don’t make any unreasonable demands or behave badly.” She was coming back to him now, carrying the pan of soapy water. “It won’t be so hard. I promise.” She flipped back his covers, nodding at his scrawny legs. “Feet first, okay?”
He did not trust himself to answer her; he gestured his resignation.
“Left foot first. That’s like marching, isn’t it?” She laughed as she reached out, taking his ankle in her hand. “The water is warm, just as I said it would be.” She lifted the sponge—it was a real sponge, not one of the plastic ones—and dribbled the water over his foot.
Weybridge shrieked as if he had been scalded, and jerked away from her. “No!”
“What’s wrong?” she asked, remaining calm.
“I … I can’t take it. I don’t know why, but I can’t.” He felt his heart pounding against his ribs as he gasped for air. “I can’t,” he repeated.
“It’s just water, Mr. Weybridge,” the nurse pointed out. “With a little soap in it.”
“I know,” he said, trying to sound as reasonable as possible. “But I can’t.”
“The way you can’t eat, either?” she asked, curious and concerned. “What is it about water? Or food, for that matter?”
“I wish I knew,” he sighed, feeling his heartbeat return to a steady, barely discerned thumping.
“Can’t you figure it out?” She moved the pan of bath water aside. “Can you tell me anything about it, Mr. Weybridge?”
He shook his head. “I wish I could. I wish I could tell someone what it was. I might be able to get rid of it if I knew what it was.” His eyes filled with tears and he turned away from her in shame.
“Why would food and water do this to you?” she mused, not addressing him directly, yet encouraging him.
“There was … something that happened. I don’t… remember, but it’s there. I know it’s there.” He brought his hands to his face so that he would not have to let her see his expression. He had a quick vision—perhaps not quite a vision, but an image—of a man with a large knife peeling the skin off someone’s—his?—foot, grinning at the screams and maddened profanities his victim hurled at him. Weybridge’s skin crawled, and after a short time, he pulled his foot out of the nurse’s hands. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. It’s not you. I just can’t.”
“But…” she began, then nodded. “All right, Mr. Weybridge. Maybe we can take care of it another time. It would be sensible to tend to this, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” he said, relieved that he had postponed the ordeal for a little while.
“What’s the matter, though? Can you tell me?” Her expression was curious, without the morbid fascination he had seen in the eyes of Malpass and Cleeve.
“I wish I could. I wish I knew what was happening to me. I wish I… I wish it were over, all over.” He clasped his hands together as if in desperate prayer. “I’ve tried and tried and tried to figure it out. I have what are probably memories of doing something terrible, something so ghastly that I don’t want to think about it, ever. But I don’t know what it was, really, or if it ever really happened, or if it did, it happened to me. There are times I’m sure it was someone else and that I’ve merely … eavesdropped on it. And other times, I know I did it, whatever it is, and … there are only bits and pieces left in my mind, but they’re enough.” It was strangely comforting to say these things to her. “I’ve heard that murderers want to confess, most of them. I’m willing to confess anything, just to know for sure what happened, and maybe, why.”
The nurse looked at him, not critically but with deep compassion. “They’re speculating on what’s real and what isn’t: the doctors and the … others here. Some of them think you’ve blocked out your trauma, and others believe that you’re the victim of an
induced psychosis. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. It’s driving me crazy, not knowing.” He said this quite calmly, and for that reason, if no other, was all the more convincing.
“Do you want to talk about it—I mean, do you want me to stick around for a while and try to sort out what went on when you were—” She stopped herself suddenly and her face flushed.
“Are you under orders?” Weybridge asked. “Are you doing this because they told you to?”
“Partly,” she said after a moment. “I shouldn’t tell you anything, but… they’re all using you, and it troubles me. I want to think that you’re doing your best to get to the bottom of your… your lapses. I don’t like the way that Malpass keeps glad-handing you, or the way Cleeve treats you like a lab animal.” She had taken hold of the thin cotton spread and now was twisting the fabric, almost unconsciously.
“Are they doing that?” Weybridge asked, not really surprised to learn it.
“They are,” she said.
Weybridge nodded slowly, wondering if this kind nurse was just another ploy on Malpass’ or Cleeve’s part to try to delve into his missing past. He wavered between resentment and hope, and finally said, “Which of you is supposed to be Rasputin and which is supposed to be the saint? That’s the usual way, isn’t it? One of you convinces the poor slob you’re interrogating that you’re on his side and the other one is the bad guy, and by pretending to be the guy’s friend, you get him to open up.” He slammed his fists down onto the bed, secretly horrified at how little strength he had. “Well, I wish I could open up, to any of you. I wish I could say everything, but I can’t. Don’t you understand that, any of you? I can’t. I don’t remember. “There were only those repugnant, terrifying flashes that came into his mind, never for very long, never with any explanation, but always there, and always genuine, and always leaving him so enervated and repelled that he wanted to be sick, and undoubtedly would have been, had he anything left in his stomach to give up. “God, I don’t even know for certain that we’re all on the same side.”
“Of course we are, David,” the nurse protested.
“You’d say that, no matter what,” Weybridge muttered. “You’d claim to be my friend, you’d make me want to confide in you, and all the time it would be a setup, and you’d be bleeding me dry, getting ready to put me on the dust heap when you’re through with me. Or maybe you want to turn me, or maybe I turned, and you’re with my old side, trying to find out how much I revealed to the others. Or maybe you think I was turned, and you’re trying to find out.”
“What makes you think you were active in espionage?” the nurse said to him. “You’re talking like someone who had been an operative. Were you?”
“How the hell do I know?” Weybridge shot back. “Everyone here acts as if I was some kind of spy or intelligence agent or something like that. I’ve been assuming that I was.”
“Suppose you weren’t?” She stared at him. “Suppose it was something else entirely.”
“Like what?” Weybridge demanded.
The door opened and Malpass stepped into the room. “Hello, David. How’s it going?”
The nurse gave Malpass a quick, guilty look. “I was trying to give Mr. Weybridge a massage,” she said.
“I see,” Malpass said with sinister cordiality. “What kind of luck are you having?”
“It seems to bother him so …” She got off the bed and smoothed the covers over his feet.
“Well.” Malpass shook his head. “Tomorrow might be better. There are several things we’re going to try to get done this evening, and it would be better if you had a little nap first, David.” He motioned to the nurse to leave and watched her until she was out of the room. “Did she bother you, David?”
“She was nice to talk to,” Weybridge said with a neutral tone, suddenly anxious to keep the nurse out of trouble. Whatever she was, she was the only person he had met who had been genuinely—or appeared to be genuinely—interested in him as a person.
“That’s good to know. It’s fine that you’re talking to someone,” Malpass said, smiling more broadly than before.
“You’ll make sure she doesn’t get in trouble for talking to me, won’t you?”
Malpass’ eyebrows rose. “Why, David, what makes you think that she’d be in trouble for a thing like that?”
Weybridge frowned. “I don’t know. You’re all so … secretive, and … odd about what you want out of me.”
“David, David,” Malpass said, shaking his head. “You’re letting your imagination run away with you. Why would we want to do such a thing to you? You’re sounding like you regard us as your jailers, not as your doctors. We want you to improve. No one wants that more than we do. But can’t you see—your attitude is making everyone’s job more difficult, including your own. You’re letting your dreams and fears take over, and that causes all sorts of problems for us. If I could find a way to convince you that you’re creating chimeras…”
“You’d what?” Weybridge asked when Malpass did not go on. Malpass made a dismissing gesture. “I’d be delighted, for one thing. We all would be.” He cocked his head to the side. “You believe me, don’t you?” Weybridge shrugged. “Should I?”
“Of course you should,” Malpass assured him. “God, David, you’d think that you were being held in prison, the way you’re responding. That’s not the case at all. You know it’s not.”
“Do I?”
“Well, think about it, man,” Malpass said expansively. “You’re being taken care of as thoroughly as we’re able. We want you to get better, to get well and be independent. I think everyone here is pulling for you, and … well, David they are all very concerned for you. Everyone hopes that you’ll be over this … problem soon.” He gave Weybridge his most sincere look. “You’re a very special case, and we all want to see you get well, entirely well.”
“Un-huh,” Weybridge said, looking away from Malpass. “And what will happen to me when I get well? Where will I go?”
“Back home, I would guess,” Malpass said, trying to give this assertion an enthusiastic ring.
“Back home,” Weybridge echoed. Where was that? What was his home like? “Where do … did I live?”
“You mean, you don’t remember?” Malpass asked, apparently shocked by this question.
“Not really. I wouldn’t be asking if I did,” he said testily. “And don’t coddle me with your answers. That won’t help me at all.” He folded his arms, taking care not to press on the IV needle taped just below his elbow.
“Well, you live in a small city about… oh, eight hundred miles from here. It’s on a river. The countryside is rolling hills. The city has a very large textile industry, and most of the agricultural land in the immediate area is devoted to sheep ranching. There’s also a good-sized university. You were an assistant professor there for four years. Do you remember any of this?” Malpass asked. “You’re frowning.”
Weybridge tried to recall such a place and found nothing in his mind that had anything to do with a small city near a river, or a university. “What did I teach?”
“Physics” was Malpass’ swift answer. “Astrophysics. You were lured into the private sector to help develop hardware for space exploration. You were considered to be very good at your work.”
“Then, how in hell did I end up here?” Weybridge demanded, his voice shrill with desperation.
“That’s what we’d all like to know,” Malpass said, doing his best to sound comforting. “Your … affliction is a real challenge to us all.”
“When did I become an intelligence agent, if I was teaching and then doing space research in industry? What was the name of the university where I taught? What city did I live in? What company did I go to work for? Who was my boss?”
“Whoah there, David,” Malpass said, reaching out and placing his thick hand on Weybridge’s shoulder. “One thing at a time. First, the Old Man has decided that, for the time being, we’re not going to give you too
many names. It would be distracting, and you might use the information to create … false memories for yourself based on the names instead of your recollections. You can see the sense in that, surely.”
“I suppose so,” Weybridge said sullenly. “But what the fuck does that leave me?”
“In time, we hope it will restore your memories. We want that to happen, all of us.” He gripped a little tighter, giving Weybridge’s shoulder a comradely shake, doing his best to buck his charge up. “When you can name your university, the head of your department, then we’ll know we’re getting somewhere.”
“Why did I become an agent? Or did I?” He had not intended to ask this aloud, but the words were out before he could stop them. “Is this some kind of ruse?”
“Of course not,” Malpass declared.
“You’d say that whether it was or not,” Weybridge sighed. “And there’s not any way I can prove the contrary.” He lowered his head. “The bodies. Where were they? Whose were they?”
“What bodies, David?” Malpass asked, becoming even more solicitous.
“The ones I see in my dreams. The ones with … pieces missing. There are some in cells and some in … trenches, I guess. It’s… not very clear.” He felt the sweat on his body, and smelled his fear.
“Can you tell me more about them?” Malpass urged. “What do you remember?”
Hands on the ground, just hands, with palms mutilated; a torso with the striations of ropes still crossing the chest; a child’s body, three days dead and bloated; scraps of skin the color of clay sticking to rusty chains; a man on a wet stone floor, his back and buttocks crosshatched with blood-crusted weals; a woman, hideously mutilated and abused, lying on her side, legs pulled up against her chest, waiting for death: the impressions fled as quickly as they came. “Not very much,” Weybridge answered, blinking as if to banish what he had seen.
“Tell me,” Malpass insisted. “You’ve got to tell me, David. The Old Man has been asking about your ordeal, and if I can give him something—anything—he might decide to …” He did not go on.
“To what?” Weybridge asked. “Or can’t you tell me that, either?”