By Any Other Name

by Spider Robinson

  Nerves stretched wire-tight, he shook with racking sobs. He dug his knuckles into his eyes, but could not banish the haunting palpebral vision of Annie beside him on her bed, naked and vulnerable, cringing under his wrath (his baby planted now in her belly). He ground the heels of his hands against his ears, but could not banish the sound of her tears as she begged him for emotional support (“You said you were going to divorce her. Mack, I need you with me on this—it’s our baby.”) He beat at his skull with his clenched fists, but he could not deny the memory of his decision to “borrow” enough money from his company to leave town, to go underground, and leave the whole impossible tangle of his life behind.

  And above all, he could not shut out the voice of the blond kid with the incongruous hat, could not seal the holes that soft voice blasted through McGinny’s carefully-wrought fortress of rationalization. When the mind refuses to face truth, it very often knows what it is doing: a high truth-level is only tolerable to saints and sinners who, loving themselves, have learned how to forgive themselves. But McGinny no longer had any choice.

  For the kid never attacked in any overt way, never quite gave him a justification for his helpless rage. He just…asked questions, and McGinny could not keep the answers from leaping unbidden to his mind.

  Nor could he forget them now. The jailer’s soft voice, hideously amplified, seemed to fill the cell, as it had for days now.

  “Well, I don’t know, Mr. McGinny. You say that security and prestige were your goals, but doesn’t it seem like you already had them both? And yet you weren’t satisfied…”

  “So then you’re saying sex is a kind of like power trip for you, aren’t you?”

  “Well, why didn’t your father divorce her then? I would have.”

  “Then Annie’s probably having a pretty rough time of it now?”

  “But isn’t that just a fancy way of saying…?”

  “But you just said…”

  “But didn’t you just…?”

  “But I thought…”

  “But…”

  McGinny burst from the chair with an animal howl and swept the desk clean of paper with clawed hands, swinging his arms wide and scattering sheets in all directions. “I’ll kill you,” he shrieked, and tore at his hair.

  He lurched around the cell, kicking and punching at the unyielding fixtures, slamming his shoulder into the wall with whimpered oaths. He beat on the surface of the quadio, snapping off both controls, and the machine roared into life. Shorted somewhere within, it picked its own tape, at peak volume. The selection was old, stereophonic, activating the rear speakers only—it balanced perfectly. The ear-splitting voice of Leon Russell plaintively asked:

  Are we really happy

  with this lonely

  game we play?

  Searching for

  words to say

  Searching but not finding

  understanding anyway

  We’re lost

  in this masquerade.

  McGinny staggered, his hands over his ears. He could not shut out the song. He lay down on his back and smashed at the quadio with his bare heels, and it went dead with one last shriek.

  As he lay panting on the floor, his ears still ringing, he opened his eyes to see the kid watching him from the door window.

  McGinny began to sweat profusely. He struggled to his feet and looked wildly around the room. Rubber silverware, paper sheets, no razor, GO AWAY, KID!

  “Say, did I hear noise just now? Kinda late to play the quadio, isn’t it, Mr. McGinny? Oh, I bet I know. You got to missing Alice and the kids, didn’t you, Mr. McGinny?

  “Hey, Mr. McGinny! What are you…hey!

  “Oh, holy shit.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  The kid’s face pressed closer.

  The drug came on very slowly at first.

  For what seemed like hours, Barbara felt only a gradual numbing of her extremities, a slow falling-off of communication with the nerves and muscles of her limbs. She and Solomon gazed deep into each other’s eyes, motionless in lotus. She yearned to let her gaze travel downward over his body, but she maintained eye contact tenaciously, as though afraid of opening a circuit that was being built between them.

  Very suddenly she was blind. Almost immediately, all tactile sensation vanished from her body. Adrift in crackling black, she could no longer see or touch anything in any direction. Although she had learned enough from friends and media reports to be expecting this, it still took her by surprise. She yelped.

  As from a great distance, she heard Solomon’s voice reassuring her, needlessly explaining that they were only experiencing a repression of distractions, that it was only a drug which would wear off, the standard litany of calming things that are said to one who might be freaking out. The truly extraordinary thing was that the voice changed as it spoke from stereo to monaural, converging inside her skull, as though she had switched from speakers to headphones.

  “It’s okay, Sol, I’m all right,” she assured him, and then realized that she had not spoken aloud. She tried to and could not.

  They drifted for a while in silence, then. And as they drifted, sparkling darkness everywhere, each became aware of a growing presence, for which no words or symbols existed, which their minds could not grasp but only see/feel/taste. Barbara concentrated as hard as she could on the complex abstract which was Solomon Orechal’s identity in her mind; received no familiar echo.

  Of course, she thought, of course he sees himself differently than I do. She waited patiently for her mind to construct a suitable analogy for the identity-waves she was beginning to receive, and wondered what he was seeing. Soon I’ll know.

  The darkness coalesced, lightened perceptibly. An image began to take form, seen simultaneously from all angles.

  It was a smooth iridium sphere.

  It gleamed before her in the swirling dark, self-contained and apparently impenetrable. Her heart began to beat faster, a bass drum miles below her.

  As she watched, spellbound, she saw the polished surface of the sphere begin to discolor, to tarnish. Portions of its surface began to bubble and flake away, as though the metallic sphere were immersed in a clear acid that was slowly oxidizing it away. A high, sharp whining became audible, a sound of reluctant disintegration.

  The image disturbed and frightened Barbara. She sensed an uncontrollable power latent in the sphere, ready to burst it asunder when it was sufficiently weakened. Girlfriends had tried to tell her of their experiences with Truth, but the closest Barbara had heard to this was a woman who said she initially perceived her partner as a man in full medieval armor, visor down. Unsettled, Barbara found that she was employing a pressure she could not define, in a manner she could not describe, against the sphere she could not understand.

  Whatever it is, she screamed silently, let it end now. It’s been too long already.

  Time stood still, and she slipped into a new plane of understanding, intuition refined into knowledge. She perceived all at once that the walls of the sphere drew strength in some way from the marijuana Solomon had smoked—and that he had known they would.

  He lied, came the thought.

  And at that, the sphere crumbled like a sugar Easter egg in a glass of boiling water.

  Parts of that explosion of data she forgot as soon as she perceived them. Parts of it she would carry with her to the end of her days. Some things simply could not be forced into words, some translated as paragraphs, some as single words or impressions coded only to subvocalized grunts or wordless cries. Alone in the darkness that crackled and roared she recoiled, struggling to reduce the enormous input to something comprehensible, pursued by howling fragmentary echoes of forgotten thoughts and memories.

  …thinks he’s so smart, I’ll break his…nobody knows but me…so alone like this, I…don’t look…things on so I could squint in the mirror and see what a lady looked like in her…don’t look in…I didn’t mean to…won’t let me, just bec…it wasn’t cheating exactly, it was…don’
t I…so pretty, I wonder what her…don’t…how could she do this to me after all we…holy shit, it squirted all over my…If only I…don’t look insi…what’s he doing to Mother?…don’t l…I…

  Shaken to her roots, she reeled but held on, too terrified to let go. There was something beneath, something hidden, something that made alarms go off all over her subconscious. And as well as something hidden, there was something missing, and she knew intuitively that they were connected. What’s missing? she screamed toward the place where she had once supposed God to be. What is wrong? The onslaught continued, keeping her off-balance.

  Gawd you give a pain in the ass Janice, you real…think I got away with it this ti…got to get a B this term or Old Karkhead’ll…don’t loo…God the Father Almighty Who…she suspects…other kids get a bike so why can’t…don’t look insi…n’t you understand I’ve got to be the master in my own…why you…don’t look…seen a…sunset…like…that before…hairy black spider that…so alone and they…don’t look inside…DON’T LOOK INSIDE!

  Inside! With a sinking feeling of terror and despair Barbara yanked her attention from the chaotic distracting turmoil that the sphere had held, and turned it inward. She found only the confusion of her own thoughts.

  She was alone inside her skull.

  Where was Solomon? Why was he not probing her consciousness, as deep within her identity as she was in his?

  Frantic now, she reached back out to the welter of tangled thoughts and forgotten memories emanating from her lover, and…swept at it, in a manner impossible to describe. The roar of swarming images died as though she had struck a suppressor switch, and she saw several things very clearly.

  She saw that Solomon had palmed most of his share of the drug.

  She saw his consciousness, trembling, crouched, incoherent with terror.

  She saw at last that which he had sought most to hide: that the feeling he professed to have for her was nonexistent, a cover for his real motivations.

  She saw his true reason for clinging to her: a paralyzing fear of being, in history’s most crowded era, intolerably alone.

  She saw that her man had never confronted her identity as an individual, never allowed himself to perceive her as a person, as anything but a palliative for hideous loneliness. Nor anyone else in his life.

  She saw that he was afraid to confront her identity, to accept the guilt he knew he bore for using another human being as a tool, a teddy-bear, a living fetish with which to ward off demons of solitude.

  She saw the indifference with which he regarded her own hopes and needs and fears, saw the relentless guilt which made him despise himself for it.

  She saw the desperation in which he had sought to hide the truth from them both by reducing his dosage of yage and distorting both their synaptic responses with pot.

  Comprehension and compassion washed over her as a single wave, a wave of pity and love for this tormented man to whom she had given her heart, and she cried out in her mind: it’s all right, Sol, it’s ALL RIGHT! Don’t be afraid, please. I love you.

  Undrugged, he heard her not.

  She saw swimming to the surface of his mind a surreal cartoon figure of herself, choked with revulsion, recoiling from the selfishness of his love, face contorted with bitter rejection. No! she screamed silently, but she knew that he could not hear, knew she could not make him hear, and knew with astonished horror that he was snapping, could no longer bear the crushing pain of the guilt he could not forget; and she realized with a nauseating certainty what he was going to do.

  The throbbing undercurrent of fragmented voices swelled to a shuddering roar in her skull, and now each of those voices was only a throaty growl.

  She screamed once, and then many times.

  The hissing of the torch reverberated in the bare corridor with an acoustic sibilance that was unpleasant if you listened to it. Jerry and Vito had learned not to listen to it.

  “Ain’t had this thing out of the shop in so long, I feel like I oughta take it for a walk,” Jerry said, adjusting the oxy mix.

  “Yeah,” grunted Vito from behind his opaque mask.

  “Naw, we sure don’t have to do this very often.”

  Vito grunted again.

  “Wonder what made him do it. You know? Whole place like that to hisself, nobody to tell him when to go to work, when to go to sleep. Just lie around all day and think about fems, that’s what I’d do.”

  “So get busted,” Vito grumbled.

  “Hey, bro. What’s with you? You got a bellyache or something?”

  “Gimme the willies, that bird.”

  “Him? He ain’t givin’ nobody nothin’.”

  Vito grunted a third time, and Jerry shook his head, returning to his cutting. Welfare check’s due tonight, he thought suddenly, and smiled behind the polarized mask that shielded his eyes from the arc of the torch.

  Noises came from the distance, approaching. Hastily, Vito stubbed out a Gold and tucked the roach in his shirt pocket.

  The warden came into view around the corner, followed by two long-haired guards. He swept past Vito and Jerry without a word, ignoring the torch, and peered into the window of the cell door.

  “Mmmmm,” he said. “Yes.”

  The two guards shifted their weight restlessly.

  “All right,” said the balding official. “All right. Obviously it’s a suicide.”

  “Obviously,” murmured one of the guards, a blond, mustached youth. The warden glared at him irritably.

  “Why wasn’t I notified at once?”

  “You were, sir,” the guard said evenly. “Union regs say you only have to check ’em twice on night shift unless otherwise ordered. That’s how I found him an hour ago. It was already too late to help him.”

  “Oh, very well, very well,” the warden grumbled. “Carry on, you two.” He went away, trailing the two guards. The blond one was smiling faintly.

  Jerry and Vito looked at each other, shrugged. Jerry realigned the still-snarling torch against the door, and Vito relit his joint.

  “Sure is a good thing this old torch leaks so bad, or he’d have smelled that and taken your ass,” Jerry grinned. Vito passed him the joint; he slid it behind his mask and toked quickly, before the smoke could accumulate and lace his eyes. After a time he left off tracing a nearly complete, foot-and-a-half circle in the plasteel door, and paused. Giggling, he began to inscribe eyes and a broadly smiling mouth within the circle. Vito watched and smoked silently.

  Again echoes sounded distantly. “Jesus,” said Jerry. Vito glared at him and swallowed the joint. Hastily, Jerry completed the circle and began hammering at the disc he had cut, frantic to unseat it before his artwork was seen.

  He was barely in time; even as the plug fell into the cell with a crash, two fat men came into view at the end of the corridor. One wore black and one wore gray. Both wore the same expression.

  Jerry and Vito scrambled to their feet and backed away from the door, striving to look straight. The fat men came near simultaneously, entirely ignoring the two workers.

  The one in gray reached gingerly through the new hole in the cell door, pulled toward himself with a gloved hand. They both entered, walked a few paces inside, stopped.

  “Not much either of us can do here, is there, Doctor?”

  “It seems not, Father.”

  “Well, then…”

  “Yes.”

  They emerged, began to walk away.

  “Hey,” Jerry yelped.

  The physician turned. “Yes?”

  “Wh…what do we do with…?”

  The fat gray man paused, thought for a moment. “Unlock the infirmary and put him in there somewhere. I’ll have a vehicle sent.” He and the priest left, talking about chess.

  Jerry looked at Vito, who gave him a very black look. He knelt and extinguished the torch, and silence fell in the corridor.

  They went inside.

  “Jeez,” Vito breathed softly. It sounded like a prayer.

  The two-
inch-thick plug was lying just inside the doorway, its imbecile smile upside down. Beyond it lay McGinny, on his back, a feral and bloody grin on his face. His wrists had been chewed open.

  “Jeez,” Vito said again, and began putting on his gloves.

  Solomon Orechal sat in his chair and surveyed the room which was to be his home for the next twenty-to-life-depending. With a disgusted sigh he picked his J-45 from the bed, hit a G, tuned, hit an E, tuned, hit an E again. Satisfied, he modulated through D back into G, added a seventh.

  “This time next year,” he sang, and stopped.

  After a while he sang “Pack Up Your Sorrows,” and that was all right, but when he had finished he found himself wondering who he could give all his sorrows to, so he went right into Lightning’s “Prison Blues,” and managed to get off on that.

  But before long, inevitably, he was playing the song he used to close every set, the one he hadn’t wanted to play here, now. He was halfway into James Taylor’s “Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” when he saw the face at the cell window, blond mustache under a blue uniform hat. He leaped from the chair, tossing his pride-and-joy heedlessly toward the bed, and sprang to the window.

  “HEY OUT THERE, can you hear me?” he shouted.

  “Hey, man, be measured,” came a soft voice, electronically muffled. “I can hear you heavy.”

  “Wow, listen,” Solomon babbled, “you work here, man? Or what? Hey listen, you want to hear a song? You got a minute?”

  “Sure, bro, sure. Take it easy.”

  Solomon ran back to the bed, picked up his axe and threw the strap over his head. He began frantically patting his pockets for a flat-pick, discovered he held one in his hand.

  “What are you in for?” the blond guard asked quietly.

  “Huh? Me? Oh, uh…rape,” Solomon said, gripping the pick. “…and murder,” he added, and looked down, hitting a very intricate chord.

  The blond jailer’s eyes lit up, and he tugged at his mustache.

  “IF THIS GOES ON—”

  TRUE MINDS

  Locating her was no trouble at all. He tried the first bar that he came to, and as he cleared the door the noise told him that he had found her.