(Perhaps the process is a metaphor for Entrance and that most basic of entries denies any other. Or it may only be a repressed homosexuality of which I am aware. The power of certain urges! The rage! The need! Messengers, even the least of them, are complex people: do not hasten to understand me.
(Also, I have a low threshold for exercise. Also I have never been able, during my few moments of sexual attempt, to avoid scatological images, clownish fantasies, dwarfs scampering in mire or seizures of deflation.)
The tour did not surprise me. I was not disconcerted, I was prepared for all of it. The only thing that I learned was that all of them — patients and doctors, nurses and attendants treated us like orderlies. Perhaps they thought we were orderlies. This they had not readied us for in the Institute. They spoke only of the unusual status of the Messenger and the special and privileged position he occupied in the War on Death.
The Institute prepared us for very little, outside of the technological questions. The rhetoric was poor: “Dedication is the first obligation of the Messenger, respect his reward, paraprofessionalism his outcome. Full professionals then work together in unified and sanctified accord under this benevolence of technology in an atmosphere of probity.” The religion was puerile: “Purgation of the body and the blood, the holy lamb, the divine spirit. Cast your lance against doom like a prophet of old.” The sanctions were dull: “Remember this, gentlemen, we are soldiers and must give no quarter. We are in the front line of the battle.”
(I do not mean to down it entirely. Believe it or not, I came late to cynicism, despair in the early years being only the opposite coin of belief. The rhetoric was effective, they taught machinery well, the two came together and kept the Messengers in line. Whatever we expected of the job when we moved in, we knew this, for they had told us: we would be treated with a dignity upon which our skills were incumbent. They had their reasons. I can see them now.)
Nonetheless. Orderlies. We were treated like orderlies. In fact, at odd moments, it was possible for one to think that one was an orderly; a certain kind of grinning shamble seemed to overtake the walk, a certain vacancy around the eyes. The Downside stupor: seeing everything, registering everything, understanding nothing, rising only through small humiliations and grief to rage. One could well have been an orderly, of course, had it not been for the Institute. This was kept in mind.
Part of the patient problem was that we were introduced in exactly that way. Messengers and their function are not, after all, particularly appealing and it suits the public relations and policies of the Institute to make things as aseptic as possible. One does not go in (at the price they are paying) to have cancer burned out; one goes in for “a little job,” something made you “a little tired,” and one rejoins the world joyfully, having acceded to cosmetic change. This is the thrust of the Institute’s public relations; a stay with the Institute is a happy stay; cancer is a happy disease. So, then, one met the patients very much out of role: This is your helper, Mr. Jones, your personal-needs technician, or whatever lie the effusive Miss Greenwood had in mind at that time. The fact that this grinning, genial, nicely miniaturized little helper would shortly go crawling inchwise into their guts was something to come by only peripherally, after the relationship had been established. Even then there was little interest: the thing about the patients was that they were perfectly willing to function as if the little job, the little problem, took care of itself and attending the Institute were essentially a social obligation … like an obligatory party.
(A certain dislike for patients seems to have filtered through. Let me make it clear then that I bear no grudge; the possession of money or status has never struck me as a basis for hatred of itself. The patients are manipulated; they come from the only group who can afford the Institute, they do the necessary for the Institute. One must look nearer or deeper to get into the matter of culpability.)
Reinforcement on the employee end to be sure. Rule seven: a Messenger may never divulge to a patient the nature of his responsibilities. A certain modesty of demeanor is recommended should there be inquiries. (Rarely are there inquiries: who cares?) A Messenger is technology’s servant; it is not his right to call upon himself particular reverence. Humility is the source of strength.
Policy and procedure; procedure and policy. All of it carefully conditioned. Even now the manuals fall quickly into the mind’s eye: regulation and ordnance, containment and meaning ruled neatly on the lined paper, the printing very large for the functional illiterates among us.
Little were we prepared, however, for being orderlies.
It was something else; the one thing, perhaps, that we (or at least faithful correspondent) allowed ourselves to believe and that was what we would be: benign priests of reduction, striding through the wards to the awed gasps of doctors and nurses, nurses and attendants, performing our green and terrible tasks in an oozing isolation of ease, under rich beams of fluorescence to occasional gasps and whimpers of applause. (Like a tennis match, perhaps.) It was the Hulm Projector which made us go; still, even the Projector’s Tools were entitled to a little common respect. We had struggled years to learn to play our motions against the body’s cave; we had practiced in a hundred corpses so that we could take on the husks of the World’s Best; weren’t we entitled to applause?
Gentlemen, the question is rhetorical: do not answer. Neither peer through the cracks in these doors in an attempt to see; Leslie has shrouded himself in smoke and haze, towels stuffed in all crevices. There is no way that you can get at me unless you break the door or I let you in and I am not ready, not quite for either, thank you very much. How my little fingers tremble on these notes! How my eyes bulge, my brow emits its antique and chiseled beadlets of sweat! Time, gentlemen, time! Everything will come to its conclusion.
I will even tell you why I came to kill. Presently, presently.
Correspondent’s visions were incorrect. Things did not work out in that way. Disillusion is the condiment of the reflective life: nevertheless, I suffered. Bedpans were the lot of the tired Messenger, bedpans and strange prosthetic devices. This enamel was poor enough reward for four years of study but there were also changes of clothing to be made, rollings over and regurgitation, pattings in the night (postoperatives become nauseous from the recollected need to expel us), heave and retch, claw and moan, pat and wonder, the small activities of the postmetastatic patient being conducted in the smells and tightness of their rooms which for all the highly vaunted decor of the Institute still had a twentieth-century cast. Amorphousness and sleek panels of doom, overlaid on the emptiness. In the dark they would grasp at us to whisper horrid confidences. “I’m afraid,” old or oldish people would whisper, bending their arms to crook’s edge, staring from luminous eyes, the pall of cancer bringing strange knowledge to their faces, “terribly afraid, you see; I don’t think that it can work out. I just don’t see it.”
“The process is infallible. Just relax. It’s like a toothache, as antiquated as diabetes. Be reasonable. Be calm.”
“But the pain,” they would murmur, “still, the pain — ” and I would not have the heart to advise them that the pain was mostly illusory, encouraged by the preoperative drugs administered by the Institute so that their gratitude at its vanquishment would be that much more profound, the process through which they had been that much more dolorous. Instead of telling them the truth (Messengers never tell the truth) I would assure them that it would work out, everything would work out; no problems at all. It was only a question of machinery and technique, calm and patience. The days had, I would say, already shaped themselves into a pattern that would see them strut from the ward, easy and freed … but still the Institute counseled a certain amount of fear in lieu of credit agencies and while I could deal with the men, most of them, the women defied me. I could not deal with feminine emotions: no neuter can. And then there were younger ones too; even some children of the rich whom I found particularly trying, and then there were the semi-informed who had picked u
p knowledge on the side … and these were the ones who suspected the true function of the Messengers, and they were apt to be the worst of all because when you came in the night (always the night) to do the Process, one might find them sitting at terrible ease, drugs discarded in a washbowl, peering through ominous eyes as the Projector was repaired. These were the ones the nurses had to condition with needles and it was difficult, difficult.
Illuminate if you will: a scene. A patient. A Process. “Boy,” he said to me, “boy, I’m really sweating. You’d better clean this stuff up, I feel like I’m sitting somewhere in a pool.” A middle-aged man, verging toward senility since his cancer is deep into the liver and lungs; I understand that he is the founder of the largest manufactory of masks in the nation. He provides masks for all rituals in the major Arenas. Still remaining then is the founder’s Sense of Command.
“I’ve already done that,” I say, reading. (Journals of a Nihilist: A Romance.) ‘’I’ve cleaned you three times today. Already. You’ve got to rest now.” I think I’ll kill you tonight, I decide.
One transmits the full picture: the book is poised flapping in my hand, an unopened magazine for good measure on my little knee; I am sweating quietly myself in the strange heat of the room, neatly drenching my attendant’s whites. Not five hours from now I am to go inside and remove it from him, a glowing filament which stretches from here to there, localized by X-ray, painted and gleaming for me. A nauseating operation: many capillaries to be by-passed. Preoperative and pained, he is restless. ‘’I’m not comfortable,” he says, “you’ve got to show some consideration and care. You’re paid for that. Clean me up.”
You will be the one I kill; I have waited too long, I think. “It’s been done. Time and again. Why don’t you try to rest now?” The request can only move him the wrong way, of course. A slight edginess wavers into my tone; I am entitled to apprehension. The Process is safe, very safe (the Projector has, after all, never lost a Messenger and it has had thousands of opportunities by now), but it is taxing, very much so. Hours after reduction, one still feels a sense of compression in the joints, liquid unease, a feeling of disassembly. Also, there is the question of archetypes to be posed: this is not respectful work we are doing. Perhaps the body needs to become cancerous and we have made it the other way; by preserving against devastation we make things more difficult in the Other World.
Still: one must stay with the patient through the end of the conventional shift, apprehensions or not. One is obliged to maintain the full responsibilities of the Messenger. This is policy. The patient must be soothed, relaxed, must have utter confidence in one. Only the Messenger may be the patient’s attendant; only he can train him to his insights. (It also cuts the overhead.)
‘’You don’t understand,” I say. “I can’t be in the service of your every whim. I’m tired.”
“I don’t care if you’re tired, boy,” the patient says as if he were ordering a consignment of greens, “you’ve got to make me comfortable. What am I paying for if not my care?”
Oh, how one would like to pity him now! He is after all a potential murderee. Pity has ravaged frame, pity his fear; one senses that in health he would again be wistful, gentle, attracted to picture books and small children, but the illness and its syndrome have made him cantankerous, have thrown upon him fully the aspect of the senile fool he would, due to prolonged life, become. It is hard to maintain tolerance in the face of this understanding; I could kill him now in the sheets for joy. “You’re my orderly,” he says, “and it’s my right.”
I stand. It is not easy and the book flaps uncomfortably floorward but nevertheless it is done. A pity in light of all this impressive effort that my height can hardly be calculated to close the gap. “Listen,” I say, “you can’t order me around like that. I’m not an orderly, I am a Messenger.” (Knowing I will kill him should have been enough. Why I lost my temper I cannot say. Perhaps it is balancing action.)
He shrugs and says, “I know all about that part.”
“In not five hours, maybe six, I am going to crawl inside, slither in your gut like a fish, and take the matter out. Can’t you show a little respect? What do you think is going on here anyway?”
“’That’s disgusting,” he says. ‘’You made me sweat all over. You’re never supposed to tell me what you’re doing. What are you, anyway?”
“Come on now,” I say, picking the magazine off the floor and tossing it toward a corner of the room. (It is one of our trade journals, full of glistening equipment and helpful hints to the voyager, written by advertising copywriters and largely involved with two-toning Projectors.) “I can’t take this much longer. There are limits to everything. I can’t clean you up; I can barely clean you out.”
‘’You’re frightening me,” he says, rearing in bed, and I think of his little liver quivering, the cancer already knocking it down to one fifth of its normal size, the accretion of acids, the lava of amino; he is only making my job that much more difficult.
“Lie down, you ass,” I scream, in another mood, “don’t you understand that you’ll make it impossible by infiltrating your gut that way?” I pummel pillows, slap sheets at his side, and begin to talk to him in a high-pitched but comforting tone, taking another line entirely. I have, after all, been a fool: isn’t murder enough for me? I will make his alleyways impassable; I will never get the lance in. He must be calm, calm, for me to murder; I snatch alcohol from the bedstand and begin to rub, pummel, converse, his flesh like slate under my hands, his heart puffing and ticking in the distance.
“You frightened me,” he says. “I didn’t mean to say those things but you did frighten me.”
“Forget it,” I say, “the stakes are too large. Just be calm.” An orderly’s whine creeps into the assassin’s tone: is it possible that one can become what they say?
I apologize, skulk to the relief room to urinate, light glittering before me, light shuddering and receding, the filaments of his gut weaving their way past my stricken consciousness and toward some deeper center. Push, pull, pummel, knead. And murder him that night. Why? Well, why not?
My father sent me one letter during training, the only letter I ever got from him, the only letter he ever wrote: the sistem wurx, he said, its all question engles is all i should known it a longa time ago. I filed it a away. Three months later he contracted cancer. I should known it a longa time ago.
Now they are pounding at the door. Finally. Their voices rasp insistent in the hallway: it would be interesting to know what they are saying. I have toward this the kind of clinical interest that toward the very end I was able to sustain toward murder. But only toward the end.
Eventually they will become forceful, try metal and hooks, but long before that all of this will have been finished, all of it placed inside the drawer with the sock and I will await them with the dull, glazed assassin’s smile, eyes narrowed, arms folded, a hint of arch in one brow, all quizzicality and compunction as they come to extract their due.
I have formulated what I will say to them; the first words, that is, before they begin to ask their foolish, hammering questions. “Gentlemen,” I will say to them, “gentlemen, please listen to me and you will understand. I wanted to change lives. I wanted to change the way in which people regarded their situation. I wanted to prepare for large deeds, terrible shifts in circumstance, a different kind of person.
“And found only that it was all a lie and that ripeness, ripeness, gentlemen, is all.”
VI
THE PROCESS: “But,” a voice says, somewhere in the distance, “but.” (I think that I have externalized my father.) “But you still haven’t made yourself clear. For one thing you haven’t made it known what it’s like, and secondly, the motives are still shrouded. Who can care about this?”
One hastens to answer. Correspondent hastens to answer. The point is elegant, meaningful, well taken, clear. A word then about the Process. A word about how it works. Keep on pounding, you sons of bitches, you’ll never get me alive. I a
m going to finish this.
The Projector. You stand before the Projector. It is cold in the dark, cold and damp; one stands shuddering, wet in the crevices, wet to the bone of nakedness, only the huddle of the patient deep into anesthetic omnipotence hints the possibility of connection. Catalepsy moves from the trembling pores. In this night the noises of the hospital overwhelm. Tick of generator, wailing scream down the hall, patter of night nurses tossing scatology at one another. The singing of electricity, power in the coils. It is possible at this moment to conceive that one is no longer in a hospital at all, nor is this a patient. One is standing instead, perhaps, in one’s own room; one is eight or nine years old, alert toward the dark and attuned to that very sense of possibility which seems to stream through the windows. The gasping of the patient is now only the sound of one’s own dear parents fornicating in the hall, forcing fluid from one to the other in that slick dark transfer which we are told is love … and then one touches the Projector. The Projector, at least, is there, and it brings one back to some sense of origins, destiny, the fishlike twitches between.
One touches the Projector, the slick, deadly surfaces of Hulm’s obsession, and comes to know then that it is a different quality of experience here. It is not the same as being eight or nine in the darkness. Here, one does not refract possibility but history. One had known this before, many times, of course. But each is a new onset. The Projector knows no history.
The Very Best of Barry N Malzberg Page 42