by Ryder Stacy
Rockson mournfully watched it disappear. He felt that throwing out the food was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life. But he knew he couldn’t dwell on it, or his hunger would weaken him in more ways than one.
He visualized himself as sated and full: happy Rockson, patting his belly, letting out with a resonant belch. He hoped he was right about there not being any cameras in the cell.
Rockson kept track of time according to the meals he was sent. After the first meal, no more food had appeared at his spontaneous thought. Instead, a tray materialized at regular intervals. Like the first time, he imagined himself eating the food with immense enjoyment, while he shoved it down the plumbing.
He estimated that the equivalent of two days had passed, during which he had neither seen another human being nor heard a human voice.
On the second day, while Rockson was lying on his cot trying not to think of food, the door to his cell opened and a tall, robed man entered. He introduced himself: “I’m Bishop Pohsib. How are you, my son?” he said, smiling down at Rockson. “I heard you are a fan of mine, sneaked into mass to see me.”
Rockson restrained himself from jumping up. By now the authorities would expect a dull, submissive man pumped full of drugs and subliminal programming.
He slowly got to his feet. The cot vanished into the wall. “I’m so happy to see you,” Rockson said in a slightly dreamy voice. “I’m comfortable, and the food is delicious.”
The bishop beamed. “Good. I knew you would be well cared for.” His face darkened to a scowl. “The police report on you is not good, Theodore. Dangerous. Free thought. Running from authority. These crimes normally carry heavy punishment.”
Rockson didn’t have to work to look worried. The bishop went on, “But I told the Chessman I thought your illness was temporary, that you would recover quickly with the proper treatment. Your citizen record has been unblemished your whole life.”
“I apologize for my mistakes,” said Rockson humbly. “I was under evil influence.”
“Apparently so. You responded well to treatment.” The robed man smiled again. “Watch me on TV from now on, okay?”
Rockson noted that he was armed with a large gun, tucked into a belt in the folds of his robe. It would be so easy to wrest it away from him . . .
It was also a dangerous thought. He summoned up the protective shield of the KA force. If they thought he was “cured,” he could get out handily enough.
“Bishop,” Rockson began in a plaintive tone with his head slightly bowed, “I miss my wife and family, and my job. I even miss my dog. Can I go home now?”
The man looked pleased. “That’s why I’m here, my son. Your family misses you, too. Your wife, Kim, is here, waiting to take you home. The Chessman will allow your release as soon as I report you are cured.”
Rockson fell on his knees and grasped the fleshy hand of the bishop. “I am, Your Holiness, I swear I am! I want nothing more than to be a good citizen!” He stifled the gag of disgust that rose in his throat.
“Splendid. Our society needs productive men like you, Theodore Rockman. I will tell the guards you are ready to rejoin the Chessman’s happy pawns.”
With a beatific smile on his face, Rockson let the bishop escort him out of the cell and into the embrace of clingy little Kim, who warbled and trilled with happiness to be reunited with him. Rockson hoped the hypno-music was loud enough to drown out the rumbling of his empty, hunger-pained stomach.
Outside in the brilliant sunlight, Rockson discovered it was morning rush hour. Kim shoved a briefcase and a garment bag at him.
“Hurry,” she urged him. “You have just enough time to make it to the office. You can change there. And I put eight dollars, and your lunch, and your wallet in your briefcase.”
Rockson stared stupidly at the briefcase and garment bag and then at Kim. “Work?”
“Yes, you’re expected back on the job—today. You have to make up for lost time. Hurry! You know it’s a sin to be late!”
“But how will I get there?”
“The bus, silly,” said Kim impatiently, pointing at one passing by, loaded with dazed-looking commuters. “The one you always take! Come home early—let’s make love again!”
She propelled him to the bus stop and waited until he had jammed himself onto the next crowded vehicle. As the bus lurched away from the curb, he caught a glimpse of Kim waving after him.
Shit, he thought. For all my effort, I’m back to square one! He shrugged. For now, the thing to do was go back to work and pretend he was a mindless office worker. He looked about him. The passengers on the bus all wore the same glazed expression. He peeked through the bodies to look out the window. The pedestrians were stamped with the same vacant bliss.
In the bus and out on the sidewalks, the hypno-music swelled and swirled, subtly reminding everyone of their total obeisance to the Chessman.
As if led by some invisible force, he got off at the appropriate stop and went into the glass skyscraper that housed his office. He rode up the elevator with a dozen glassy-eyed workers, and changed in the twentieth-floor men’s room.
Rockson carefully opened the door of his office, intending to slink in as unnoticed as possible—and was greeted by shrieks from his co-workers.
“Hooray! Welcome back, Teddy! Again!” cried Rona, stepping up and throwing her arms around his neck. She was wearing a skin-tight red dress that matched her flaming hair. The dress and the way she rubbed against him left none of her full figure to his imagination.
Rona squealed with delight while the co-workers hopped and jumped behind her. “Teddy’s back! Teddy’s back!” they chanted. “Hooray for Teddy!”
Rockson was speechless. But he noticed that behind the glee was a scrutiny, a watchfulness, in the eyes of his co-workers. They were still the Chessman’s pawns, and they had been directed, he suspected, to be alert for warning signs of . . . nonconformity.
“Did you have a good rest?” asked Rona, wiggling against him.
“Rest? Oh, yes,” said Rockson, extricating himself from her grasp. He screwed himself up for his act. “Thank you all for such a wonderful welcome. But we must get to work. It is a sin to be unproductive!” He nearly choked on the words.
“Praise the Chessman for Teddy’s recovery!” someone shouted. Others picked it up. “Yes praise the Chessman! Praise the Chessman!”
Rockson walked into his private office. A walnut desk, oiled and shined, was piled with neat stacks of paper awaiting his attention. Rona and the others followed him, clustering in the doorway. There was a sudden tension in the air while everyone watched and waited for him to start work. This was, after all, the second time Teddy had been in a scrape with the police.
Shit, thought Rockson, what was it that I do here?
He paused and smiled, hoping everyone would go back to whatever accounting people did. They didn’t. They were practically holding their breath in unison.
Rockson set his garment bag and briefcase down on the sofa and walked to the desk. He sat down in the big brown leather chair. He slapped the arms. He looked up at Rona; she was beaming at him, but there was an odd, steely look in her eyes.
He took a paper off the top of one of the stacks. It was filled with rows and columns of numerals. He picked up a number-three pencil and started making scribbles on the papers.
Was he doomed to stay in this bizarre city, stuck in time a hundred years earlier than his world, until the nuclear war? The world Rockson came from—the world he called reality—was admittedly savage. But this world was worse. At least, in his world, no one controlled his mind—he was free of that ultimate invasion.
Rockson felt a flash of homesickness. He wanted desperately to get away from these mind-controlled robots with their horrible muzik, their thought police . . . He longed for the strontium clouds and the black pits of nuclear-mutated waste. Yes, he would even prefer Streltsy and his KGB thugs over the Chessman and his mind-controlled minions.
He stared abse
ntly at the columns of numerals, wondering how much longer he could keep up his charade.
“Is everything all right, Teddy?” asked Rona anxiously.
Then, in a deep corner of his mind, Rockson felt the power of the Glowers. His KA energy reached out to him, protecting him, guiding him. Suddenly he knew what to say. Words tumbled from his lips like automatic speech.
“Rona,” he blurted, “where’s my coffee? You know I always like it waiting for me. And what have you done with my number-two pencils? You know I start the day with three sharp number-twos laid right here.” He stabbed his finger to a place on his desk, not having the vaguest idea what a number-two pencil was.
A collective sigh of relief rose from Rona and the co-workers. Teddy Rockman had passed their little test. He was cured of deviant behavior at last!
“I’m so sorry, Teddy,” cooed Rona. “I was so excited about your coming back that I must have forgotten!” She bustled off, her voluptuous hips swaying beneath the tight fabric of her red satin dress.
Rockson leveled a serious gaze at the rest of the office workers. “We’re wasting the Chessman’s time,” he admonished them. To his relief, the spell upon them was indeed broken, and they hurried back to their own jobs.
He swiveled his chair around to the tinted-glass windows, to look out upon the shining city sparkling in the desert sun. In his direct line of sight was the white ultramodern sliver called City Hall Tower. It soared two hundred feet into the air.
Inside it somewhere was Chessman. Rock knew that he stood no chance of escaping this crazy world until he broke the mind-controlling grip of the Chessman. Surely the Chessman had devised the Veil, the force field around the city. And it had to be shut down. And Rockson had to see who was behind that mask he always wore. And why the Chessman’s voice was so familiar.
Thirteen
Rockson somehow managed to get through the day at the office without making revealing slips in behavior or words. The effort created enormous strain; he felt drenched in sweat by the time he escaped to board the bus to go home.
Avoiding drinking the coffee and eating the lunch Kim had prepared proved to be the trickiest acts of all. Rockson watered a spike-leafed palm by the window with the coffee, wishing it happy dreams. He sneaked the lunch into the men’s room and flushed it down the john.
On his way home, he was surrounded by thousands of people with the unending glassy-eyed, pacified look. No one was ever out of sight of an armed rookie. Some of the police stood on corners while others strolled the sidewalks. Some sat in glass-walled cages perched high over the streets, where they could keep an eye on traffic and any irregular or sudden movements. With their mirrored glasses and visors, it was difficult to tell what they really were looking at—which no doubt added greatly to their effectiveness, Rockson thought.
He also noticed that the citizens neither acknowledged the police nor seemed afraid of them. The police were simply there, an accepted part of daily life.
“Teddy, darling!” bubbled Kim as he entered his apartment in the middle of the block on Southeast Tenth Street. She hugged him and kissed him primly on the cheek. “I’ve fixed your favorite dinner—meatloaf!”
He wasn’t sure what meatloaf was, but at the thought of food, Rockson’s stomach clamored to be fed. He was at a point where he was almost ready to cave in and eat the tranquilized food. He must have grimaced unconsciously, for Kim’s happy expression changed to one of anxiety.
“What’s the matter, dear—aren’t you hungry? You love my meatloaf.”
Rockson slipped out of her embrace and loosened his tie. This uniform that men wore to work was constricting and uncomfortable. “Uh, as a matter of fact, I, uh, had a big lunch.”
Kim’s eyes widened. “Big lunch? But, Teddy, I didn’t pack that much. You never like big lunches.”
“Well, er, everyone in the office wanted to celebrate, and . . .”
“I see,” said Kim, nodding knowingly. “So they brought in food and you had a banquet.”
“Yes,” said Rockson uncertainly, hoping that was the right answer.
Apparently it wasn’t. “How did you get permission?” Kim asked.
“Permission?”
“Why, Teddy, you know you can’t hold a celebration without authorization from the Chessman.” She gave him a steely look.
Rockson shrugged. “Then, obviously, someone got it.”
“But how would they know in advance that you would be back to work today? It takes time to get an authorization, and it’s only good for twenty-four hours. Even I didn’t know you were getting out until this morning.”
Rockson was saved from Kim’s interrogation by the entrance of his two children, who came running into the apartment pell-mell.
“Daddy, Daddy!” they shrieked, jumping up and down around him. “Daddy, will you come out and play with us?”
Kim shooed Teddy junior and Barbara away. “Daddy just got home from work and is tired. Go clean up for dinner.”
“What’s for dinner, Mom?” asked Teddy junior.
“Meatloaf, darling.”
“Yay!” The children streaked off toward the TV.
Rockson thought, I can’t take any more of this. I’ve got to get out of here—this place is nuts!
After dinner, both the little blond devils went to their rooms.
Then she and Rockson settled down to spend the evening glued to the fake Spanish Oak console Motorola, watching dramas about virtuous people overcoming evil—the evil being in the form of degenerate homeless men preying on saintly kids—or sitcoms about couples buying their first condominium apartments and discovering their interesting neighbors.
After several of these programs—at which point Rockson was ready to run screaming from the house—Bishop Pohsib took over the airwaves and launched into an evangelical sermon about “playing by the rules of life.”
Kim, a beatific look upon her face, turned to Rockson and purred, “I suppose, Teddy, we really ought to have another child. The Chessman says three is minimum, and four is ideal.”
Rockson felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. “Perhaps so, sweetie,” he mumbled. The “sweetie” came out awkwardly. Kim had already reproached him for not being liberal with her favorite nickname.
Despite her suggestion for enlarging the family, Rockson easily managed to avoid having sex with her, or even kissing her in any passionate way. Not that he would have minded—not in the least. He was still red-blooded in that department. But he was afraid that the release of sexual energy might jeopardize his thin margin of control with the KA force, which kept his mind clear.
So, he had pleaded fatigue, and she didn’t seem to be upset. In fact, much to his confusion, she seemed almost relieved, and curled up into a tight ball on her side of the bed, with her back to him. She was asleep in minutes. She was not like the real Kim at all—his Kim, back in Century City.
Rockson couldn’t get to sleep, and had to keep his empty stomach in constant check. One audible rumble, and he feared Kim would leap out of bed and run to the kitchen to fix him a cold meatloaf sandwich.
Skippy, the family dog, grumbled and sighed in sleep at the foot of the bed. A red oaf of a thing—and not any breed that Rockson recognize—Skippy had treated him disdainfully all evening, much to Kim’s consternation. Rock knew animals had a powerful sixth sense, and he hoped Skippy would not betray him.
Rockson stared into the darkness, one arm crooked behind his head. He felt helpless, stuck in this time-warp rut, like a slave chained by the neck to a milling wheel. He couldn’t take it another minute. He would have to act now, while no one suspected him of free will, before he committed an error that would send him back to “detention and rehabilitation.” There would be no more chances from the Chessman.
Rockson slowly rose up in the bed and shifted his legs out from under the covers. The mattress creaked at the redistribution of his weight. The dog moaned and changed position. Rock put his feet on the floor and carefully stood up, try
ing not to awaken Kim.
He was so dizzy that even the slow movement made him violently dizzy. He swayed and flung out his hand in an effort to recover his balance. He hit the ceramic table-lamp by the side of the bed. It tipped over into the wall. The dog sprang to his feet with a growl.
Kim sat bolt upright with a gasp. Then she exhaled in relief. “Oh, Teddy, it’s you. I thought a homeless had broken in . . .” She threw off the covers. The bedroom was not completely dark, and Rockson could make out her features. She had an efficient look he did not like.
“What’s the matter, darling sweetie pie?” Kim said. Before Rockson could answer, she went on, “You’re hungry, I’ll bet. Come, I’ll make you a meatloaf sandwich.” She started to climb out of bed, but Rockson protested.
“No! I mean, don’t please. I’m not hungry—really.”
“How could you not be hungry, dearie? You didn’t eat or drink a thing all evening. It’s not like you. You always have a big glass of Tranqua-milk before going to sleep. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine, ah, sweetie. Just couldn’t drop off, I guess.”
Kim got up, her sexy white nightgown flowing after her. The real Kim would have loved such a sheer, seductive piece of clothing. She could have been Venus herself.
She switched on the lamp on her side of the bed. “You wait right there. I’ll get you a nice big glass of Tranqua-milk. You see, Teddy, you shouldn’t try to break habits, especially ones that are good for you.”
Rockson could tell that further protest would be futile. The “little woman,” as she liked to call herself, was as determined as the most unruly ’brid when she had her mind set on something. He’d learned that lesson in a hurry.
Humming, Kim floated out of the bedroom. Rockson heard her rummaging through the refrigerator in the kitchen down the hall. He sat down on the edge of the bed with a sigh. The dog licked his hands. It was the first sign of friendliness the animal had shown. Or was it commiseration?