Watson, Ian - Novel 10

by Deathhunter (v1. 1)

  “And Alice Huron. But you already know all about her.” Marta nudged him slyly in the ribs.

  (‘Nudge me again.’)

  “Oh, I told you I hadn’t met her,” he lied.

  ‘Mark Barnes,’ he thought. How could any relationships or connections possibly be hidden from him if they were just the furniture of his mind?

  “And Dr Claudio Menotti — he’s our euthanaser.”

  The reason was that so much of his own mind was hidden from itself. He remembered all the switches and mazes which he had dreamt about feverishly on that first night of sleeping rough.

  ‘They’re all my people. That’s why I imagined for a ridiculous few moments that I might really be a priest — in pastoral charge of them. I haven’t been able to get to know them properly, that’s all.’

  When one of these furniture-people died: was a reflection of a soul able to lose its way in a reflection of the crystal fog? Was that possible? Was Jim perhaps only a reflection — as in Weinberger’s mirrors? A self-aware reflection?

  ‘No, no, no again!’

  After scanning the sky speculatively for rain clouds, the Mayor of Egremont rose to speak.

  Marta was all ears, but Jim looked round. Time to locate Weinberger! Yes, there sat Nathan on the turf, two rows behind. Jim’s past and future partner directed a wildly furtive glance at him as he realized that he was being scrutinised. He looked like a cat caught mauling a baby bird in a back yard. Satisfied, Jim faced front again.

  And he felt consumed by a sudden absurd warmth for the whole assembly: for Marta who might or might not go to bed with him, for Weinberger who would be his partner, for tubby Claudio Menotti whom he barely knew, even for Alice Huron seated like a ramrod at the moment but soon to bow briefly in tears. And even for Noel Resnick, up on his feet now to speak — or more exactly, up on one foot at a time.

  However they acted, they were all intimately part of him; and he must love them all, whatever they did. In so doing, somehow he must save them — in order to save himself.

  Yet already he had no hope of saving Norman Harper from one individual in the audience . . .

  Resnick sat down, to quiet applause.

  And now Norman Harper was on his feet. He looked such a kindly person. ‘What a shame I never got to know him. He probably doesn’t think his poetry’s all that hot.

  ‘His poetry — or is it mine?’

  The poet closed his eyes, and recited.

  “The embryo bird must partly die If its wings are to emerge, to fly.

  The caterpillar dies, as well,

  To become the butterfly, so swell . . .”

  ‘I’m responsible for all my creations. Or rather, recreations . . . However cussedly or sweetly they behave. Because I’m responsible for myself. But am I sure of that? No, I can’t be absolutely sure. I have to take it on trust. I have to live out this imitation second life much more cunningly, and kindly, and excellently. Till I can work out how to free myself . . .’

  “There is no Enemy, no Thief:

  A dangerous, and a false belief!

  Many times in life we die

  So that our new mind-wings can fly . .

  ‘No! The real Norman Harper wrote those lines, not I!

  ‘He wrote them once; and once he recited them.

  ‘But now is twice.’

  Jim waited for the murder to take place.

  And while he waited for the inevitable event, he reached out and squeezed Marta’s hand. She regarded him with wonder. Then she smiled and squeezed his hand in turn.

  “We shall be as we were before.

  The day is over, perfect day ...”

  Now it was all beginning.

  THIRTY

  Noel Resnick, Master of the House of Life in Montegro, whistled perfunctorily as he strode along the corridor towards Special Treatment. When he felt worried he usually whistled a few notes.

  Really, we ought to change that name, he thought. ‘Special Treatment’, indeed! It smacked of, well, Nazi euthanasia practices. Whereas the only death that was on offer in that room was the death of a psychosis. New life, purged of madness, was what it promised.

  Obviously Todhunter had been malevolently impressed by the present name. That might account for a lot of things. The insane were experts at skewing the whole consensus world along some wild axis at right angles to reality. One should never offer them such misleading hints as were conveyed by ‘Special Treatment’.

  ‘Oh, we should have thought of that!’

  Yet Todhunter’s case was unique. Because of his earlier professional connection with the House of Life he had internalised many elements of the therapy situation in his own fantasy role-playing. Now he held a mirror up to the House which was as distorting as in any funfair crazy house.

  ‘And now it seems we can’t get him out of the mirror . . .’

  Yes, the name must go. How about ‘Psychoscope Therapy’ instead? Not really. Too frighteningly technical, with overtones of ‘psychosis’ . . . ‘Scope Therapy*? Neat and snappy. Better still: ‘Life Game Therapy’. Yes, that was it! It sounded playful and enhancing. At the next staff seminar he would recommend the title be adopted.

  Why had Alice Huron asked him to meet her in the S.T. room? Resnick had only just himself heard about the emergency — if it could be called an ‘emergency’, when the whole point was that Todhunter hadn't emerged. On the phone she had sounded conspiratorial, the possessor of secret knowledge.

  Resnick shook his head. No, that was the Todhunter version of Alice. The real Alice was no devious schemer.

  ‘Mustn’t get the two mixed up.’

  It was all too easy to. The Todhunter therapy, with its grotesque extrapolations upon their own lives, exerted a considerable fascination. That was why Alice had pressed to meet him in the S.T. room rather than simply calling by his office; right now it was the centre of gravity of their lives.

  Could the massive distortions invented by Todhunter actually influence the House staff to behave out of character, mesmerised by their fantasy roles? Resnick feared so. ‘Beware.’

  He whistled a few more tuneless notes. At least he hadn’t started stuttering!

  Arriving, he unlocked the outer door of the S.T. room. As he

  stepped inside, the door swung shut behind him, automatically locking itself. He hesitated behind the inner glass door, peering through as a scheming Resnick would have done . . .

  As usual, Todhunter was lying comatose on the insulated air-cushion bed attached to drips and catheters and vital signs monitors, and wired up through his skullcap to the vacuum-sealed transducer crystals of the psychoscope.

  Marta Bettijohn sat with earphones on, watching the three circular holo stages whereon, in miniature, three-dimensional ghost events of apparently solid substance were enacted. Number one was Todhunter’s own viewpoint on the life game — yes, life game, Resnick reminded himself. Number two was a detached observer viewpoint with the holographic homunculus of Todhunter always at the center. (Resnick noted the lawn outside the House of Life, crowded with visitors . . . for a second time. Several people were up on a platform; he knew who they would be, without looking.) Number three was the ‘associations’ holo, aswirl with imagery: faces were constantly projected, and buildings and nudes and razors, ruins of churches, orgies, red bat-like creatures, steaming plates of food, lounging red angels sipping whisky, giant moths, stampeding horses. Occasionally scrolls of text ran through the holo, like subtitles on a movie. Computer discs spun behind Marta, recording all three levels of the action.

  Norman Harper was squatting beside his psychoscope, tapping it in a puzzled way while still keeping one grim eye on the holo scenes.

  Dr Weinberger, Todhunter’s therapy guide, was listening to the audio channels too, while he watched.

  Pneumatic young med-tech Sally Costello was busy with the vital signs readouts. Alice hadn’t yet arrived.

  Resnick entered.

  “Hullo, everybody. Let’s have the bad news.’’r />
  Norman Harper pulled a face.

  “Bad news for me. I’m about to be murdered again.”

  “And what’s the bad news about Father Todhunter?”

  “As I told you on the phone, he’s recycling. He’s going through it all again. But this time he knows that he’s going through a repeat. We can pick that up on the subvocals. And we can’t pull him out.” “Maybe he needs to go through it all again, if he didn’t clear himself on the initial run?”

  “ ‘Run’ is the word for it. Right off into the hills.” Weinberger had taken off his earphones by now.

  “Yes, the whole thing got progressively more unstable as we expected,” he said. “First the hints and innuendos, then outright hostility. Everything became a paranoid fix. That kind of worldview couldn’t hold together, because it wasn’t compatible with actuality. So he had to quit Montegro. I mean Egremont. Hell, which do I mean?”

  “I gather that I blew him up with dynamite,” said Resnick dolefully. “But at least he let me dismantle his crazy cage.”

  “Oh yes, then ran off with the heart of it! When all the suppressed violence and self-violence came to a head, Noel, he should have been cleared — purged. Just as I was, of my . . . cancer.” Weinberger looked slightly sick. “ That imagery was clear enough — in so far as it got dumped on my shoulders. The ‘struck by lightning, sight restored’ effect! But look here, he’s recycled himself through that damn crystal fog of his instead.”

  “Which may well be an image of this.” Norman Harper tapped the psychoscope, with its lab-grown crystals twinkling like great jewels. “Noel, I’m not in control of my own machine right now! It’s interacting with him as though they’re in symbiosis with each other. It's being operated by him, just as much as he’s being operated on by it.”

  “You could always switch the power off.”

  “No,” said Sally, from her seat at the readouts. “The shock, the trauma, could kill him. He’s in a very strange state. It’s as though he’s hardly here at all. Except for the fantasies — which are vigorous enough. He’s really possum.”

  “ ‘Possum’ is a condition defined by Todhunter, not by us!” “We may as well use the word. None of the other patients has reacted in quite this way.”

  “So far, we’ve only treated six people.”

  “And had six full cures,” Norman Harper said defensively. “I’m not criticising you, Norman. I’m not subtly attacking your psychoscope. Don’t think that for one moment! Let’s all please remember who we actually are. In my view there’s a strong risk of transference in this case: we could start modelling our behaviour on our behaviour in the holos. Do you see the risk? / can feel the attraction. The infection. It’s as though this masquerade reveals

  truths about ourselves, instead of being simply a fantasy.”

  “So that’s what you feel, is it?”

  “A barbed comment, Norman. Barbed.”

  Harper sighed. “Yes, you’re right, damn it. Doubly right. I wouldn’t have made a comment like that a few weeks ago.” “Equally fascinating is this wild death myth of his,” began Resnick, hoping to regain firmer ground.

  “Speaking of infections,” interrupted Weinberger, “I guess he did have the grace to cure me.”

  ‘Whereas I murdered him?’ Resnick rejected the thought hastily. “In here, he's in charge of you, Nathan,” he said calmly. “You aren’t in charge of him. He can afford to be generous. But for my sins, I'm in charge of him. I’m evil. And somewhere inside of himself he knows that Norman is the actual one responsible for his predicament — technologically, I mean. Norman made the life- game possible — the rewriting of the world.”

  Harper raised an eyebrow at the mention of writing. He had a very low opinion of the poetry that Todhunter had foisted on to him.

  “So he had me wipe Norman out?” Weinberger directed an apologetic glance towards Harper, who seemed to Resnick to flinch away. “And so I inherited the mantle of cage-maker, instead — in as much as the cage and everything it leads to is a reflection of this psychoscope of Norman’s. Do you know, our big mistake was letting Todhunter even partly into our confidence before we put him under. Instead of just springing it upon him. And we did that because of his rational bouts. Because he’d helped in the House. Because, because.”

  “Yes, we did make it complicated for ourselves,” agreed Resnick. He thought to himself, sternly, ‘Nathan is not criticising or attacking me. He is not.'

  “Getting involved in somebody else’s psychosis has to be complicated.”

  “That’s the point. We mustn’t let ourselves get so caught up in it! This is a House of Life, not a House of Death. This isn’t Egremont, it’s Montegro.”

  “Ah yes, it’s our very own House soap opera, isn’t it?” said a voice. “When will he go to bed with one of the ladies?”

  They had not heard Alice Huron push the glass door open. She stepped into the room now, clunking her chunky rings together by way of knocking.

  Marta Bettijohn flushed, for she had taken her earphones off in time to hear. Alice regarded Marta with kindly amusement. Alice had accepted all of Todhunter’s sexual innuendos about herself and Noel Resnick in good part, yet the man’s stymied longings for Marta could only be an occasion for friendly hilarity. They all suspected that buxom, jolly Marta was still a virgin, and they had all privately (and perhaps not so privately) been wondering what the emotional impact would be on Marta when Todhunter finally bedded her, in technicolour holo. Which he had not done, however. So far, all that had come of it had been his dream fantasy of an inflatable Rubens nude of Marta; this had been embarrassing enough for her.

  Standing tall, holding her chin high, Alice dominated the room. “I asked you to meet me down here, Noel, because, well...” “Because this is the centre of things?”

  “Yes, isn’t it just? I assumed Norman would be here.”

  “Oh, so you did know about the emergency?”

  Alice laughed. “That’s a line from the soap opera, Noel. It’s an ‘I know powerful secrets that you don’t know’ line.” She frowned. “What emergency? What do you mean?”

  Resnick indicated number two holo.

  “It seems that I blew him up with a bundle of dynamite. But he didn’t return from the fantasy. He’s stuck.” He explained what had happened.

  “Oh dear. Oh dear, dear.” She peered at the tiny dolls seated on the green baize lawn. “Well, I wanted this meeting —”

  ‘Oh, so it’s a meeting now? A meeting that you called?

  ‘BewareV Resnick reminded himself.

  “— because I’ve been reviewing some of the implications of Norman’s miraculous crystal transducers —”

  Sarcasm? Norman Harper stiffened visibly, then relaxed, no doubt reminding himself, too, of the difference between the actual and the psychotic.

  “— with the assistance of a very good physicist friend of mine up at the Neumann Centre.”

  Ah, so she had ‘friends’? Was the man in question a very good friend — or just a very good physicist? Such delicate ambiguity!

  Was the friend a man at all, or a woman? Resnick twitched his head, to try to shake some of the Todhunter mazes out of it.

  “Item, the synaptic switching choices in Todhunter’s head are being mirrored by the quantum electron shifts in these crystals which receive the brain signals and supply related output to the holo projectors via the computer.”

  Oh, she was at her most hoity-toity this afternoon!

  Wo, she isn’t!

  “If the process wasn’t conducted at the electron level,” said Norman reasonably, “we’d have no way of processing the huge volume of information through into visible and audible play-outs.”

  “Yes indeed, and one little feature which my friend has pointed out about projecting a macrocosm — a world-reality, which is what this is — by using electron quantum jumps dictated by mental choices within our own world-reality, is that it is reliably theorised by the bright boys at Neumann and elsewhere th
at we’re actually part of a multiple universe, a multiverse of infinitely many reality states — and, what’s more, that every single quantum event evokes a whole separate coherent universe where that event never took place, as well as one where it did.”

  Her index finger forked left, right, left, tracing out branches of alternatives.

  “So we might just have something more than a role-playing therapy machine here. In so far as every possible state of the universe is equally real, we might just have a simulator of this branching process on the large scale. A sampling device. A peephole, even.”

  “You surely aren’t suggesting that Todhunter’s world — this holo here — could be real? An alternative reality somewhere else?”

  “One where all sorts of different choices have been made — because mind is the real determining factor in the branching process, according to the Neumann boys — so that Todhunter really is a guide in a House of Death!”

  “Good heavens.” Norman Harper stared at the audience seated on the lawn waiting, while Mayor Barnes held forth, for Norman Harper — poet — to rise and bid farewell. Exactly as in the first run of Father Todhunter’s fantasy, before he had gained his wild proof of the nature of death. Only, this time Father Todhunter — the unfrocked priest, former helper in the House of Life who had enticed children to his den and unfrocked them as their initiation into a secret society of minions, which would one day combat his imaginary enemies — only this time, he knew all about death ... As well he should, having murdered one of his minions who was going to betray him. Which inevitably led to his own betrayal, and to the whole world turning against him. And the total snapping of his mind.

  “Language doesn’t describe this properly,” explained Alice. “It isn’t ‘somewhere’ else, you see. It’s off at a million right angles to here, whilst still being ‘here*. Only the maths can cope with transfinite dimensions. Through the psychoscope we might actually be in tune with one out of the myriad alternative states of existence — because ‘somewhere’ in transfinity this too must exist. Certainly it could exist.”