I don’t know how up-to-speed you are on Ian’s motives, but take it from me that the chap’s dearest wish is to reunite with his wife — silly of him, I know, but it takes all kinds.26 But the point I make is this: In Scenario Two, Penelope wasn’t trapped in the beforelife, she wouldn’t have to die in order for two sundered hearts to thump in unison once more, and she wasn’t doomed to lose all memory of Ian when passing through the Styx. On the contrary, she was already here, alive and presumably well, probably wondering what the dickens had happened to her absent husband. This idea would, for obvious reasons, appeal strongly to Ian’s essential nature and his own peculiar psychological whatnots.
It’s a rummy thing, when you think of it. As I’ve observed so often before, people have a dashed funny habit of buying into any story, no matter how fishy, that seems to edge them closer to what they want. I mean to say, if we present a typical chap with Story A, one that coincides with reason and experience, but also with Story B — a whopper of a fairy tale that carries the promise of love, fame, safety, Tonto, luxury, purses of gold, and what have you — why, Story B will take the biscuit every time. It never fails. Abandon reason, forget experience, dismiss the commonsensical weight of Story A, your average bimbo shoves this sensible stuff aside and casts his lot in favour of the unattainable, glittering prizes awaiting behind door number two. A silly bit of human nature, but there it is.
And so it was with Ian. Having been presented with this mindwipe story, he just sat there with that puzzled look of his, fixated on this fork — ah, there’s the word — this fork in the road, emitting a glassy stare and looking for all the world as though he was doing a bit of algebra or communing with an imaginary adviser. Understandable, it’s true. But even so, as noted a page or two ago, I was markedly disappointed by this dishraggy response to my well-told tale of derring-do. Having braved the nameless perils of venting systems and infirmaries to return with tales of mindwipes and conspiracies, I expected more by way of reaction than the aspect of dumbfoundedness which makes up Ian’s customary expression.
I approached the matter from a different angle.
“Ian, my good ass,” I said, helping myself to a plate of breakfast and decanting myself onto the Feynman bed, “I daresay you’ve missed the point. It’s gotten past you, old man. What I mean to say is that you can’t make out the trees for the forest, or rather the other way ’round. But what you’ve failed to perceive, bewildered roommate, is this: we have our quest!”
Tonto eh-whatted over a slice of toast and raised the southeast corner of one eyebrow half an inch, denoting confusion.
“Our quest,” I explained, in that helpful way of mine. “The one the Author has prepared. I was sure He’d spring it upon us any day now, and here it is: we’ve got to escape from this hospice, we’ve got to evade Ian’s pursuers, and we’ve got to solve the mystery of Ian’s past, perhaps revealing the truth to all and sundry. An absolute page-turner if you ask me,” I added, pausing briefly to do business with the shell of a hard-boiled egg. “It’s certain to please our public. I mean to say, here we are, four of the juiciest characters know to ancient or modern literature, about to embark on —”
“Four?” said Tonto, now fully arching an eyebrow and interrupting my soliloquy, if you can call it a soliloquy when it’s uttered across a plate of eggs to two companions. I stifled my resentment, as one tolerates interruptions from a woman of Tonto’s aspect and proportions.
“Four,” I repeated, marmalading a slice of toast. “I refer of course to you, me, Ian, and Zeus. Collectively we account for a full slate of the key dramatis personae, the archetypical whatnots of a cloak-and-daggerish mystery. Consider the roster. First, the dashing hero: Rhinnick Feynman. Second, the female lead and, I’d venture to say, hero’s possible love interest: Tonto Choudhury . . .” (at this point Tonto rolled her eyes seductively, while I pressed on reviewing the cast of characters, thereby playing hard-to-get) “. . . third, our damsel in distress — or whatever one calls a male in need of rescuing: Ian Brown. Fourth and final member, the hero’s strapping minion: Zeus.”
“But —” Tonto began, launching another one of her womanly interruptions. I shushed her with an imperious gesture.
“Zeus is key,” I said in a voice that brooked no objection. “He never leaves my side when I’m abroad. And even laying aside the fact that he was attacked by Ian’s pursuers and might accordingly prove a font of information, the likelihood of our mission bearing fruit, as the expression is, is markedly greater with an eight-hundred-pound gorilla by our side.”
“You mean a dog,” said Ian, emerging from his fog.
“Eh?” said I, momentarily derailed.
“I thought you’d said he was a dog,” said Ian, scratching the bean and still looking like a bloke who’d taken a blow to the melon, “not a gorilla.”
I pronged an exasperated egg. “Zeus merely thinks he was a dog, bewildered ass,” I said with the air of a man who wished he was eating his breakfast rather than connecting dots for baffled chumps. “The gorilla gag was merely a literary way of laying the facts before my public. What I mean to convey is this: this Zeus, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned, is a behemoth of the first order and a useful aide de camp when fists fly and pushes come to shoves. Every quest requires a bulging set of beefy biceps, and Zeus fits the bill amply.”
“Fine,” said Tonto, “fine, we’ll take Zeus. He’ll come in handy. But we’ll need —”
“Wait, what?” Ian blurted. He turned toward Tonto and, tossing aside his mask of muddled confusion, seemed suddenly to brim with zest and ginger. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “You’re going along with this quest business? That’s insane!
“No offence,” he added hastily, sidebarring in my direction.
“None taken!” I assured him. We Rhinnicks can brush aside whatever slings and arrows outrageous fortune flings our way.
“But Rhinnick’s story,” Ian continued, once again addressing his guide, “all that stuff that Peericks said — the mindwipe . . . it’s just . . . I mean you . . . what he heard . . . you can’t be . . . I mean . . .”
He dithered in this matter for the space of a few seconds, finally settling into a sort of sputtering noise that reminded one of an outboard motor.
“Ian,” said Tonto, falling into her compassionate routine and patting the poor blister’s hand, “I know this must seem strange to you, but what Rhinnick overheard — about the theft of your records, Peericks’s theory, about you being the victim of a mindwipe — it all fits the facts. It makes sense.”
I couldn’t subscribe to this. I mean to say, this Tonto — as radiant a beauty who ever goggled a man’s eyes — was suggesting that this mindwipe gag of Peericks’s made perfect sense, when perfect sense was precisely what it failed to make. Mindwipe forsooth! It was the loopiest bit of faulty reasoning I’d heard in several weeks — which is saying something, given my current address. No, this mindwipe business was, regardless of Tonto’s assessment of the matter, utter bunk. Or hogwash, if you prefer. But what was certain was this: disaster loomed, and it loomed for Ian Brown. Whatever the reason, it seemed clear to me that a host of nasty characters had it in for the poor buster, and were willing to waylay Zeuses and purloin files in order to do our little Ian a bit of harm. We had to extricate this Brown — if extricate is the word I’m thinking of — from the hospice postey-hastey, skipping like the high hills and kicking the dust of Detroit Mercy from our sandals as we fled. And we could find out why these blighters were after Ian while we were at it.
But we Rhinnicks, as you’ve no doubt noticed, are quick thinkers, and my keen, lightning intellect suddenly kicked into top gear and emitted a brilliant flash of genius. It was this: if by pretending to go along with the mindwipe gag I could secure Tonto’s aid in pushing the quest along, so be it. I can wear the mask and hide my feelings if it will work a bit of good for a pal in trouble. And this Tonto, I perceived, while wra
pped in the luminous exterior of a purely decorative model, was a dashed competent guide and a useful bird to have on hand in times of trouble. Our quest, I reasoned, would never get off the mark without her aid. The Author had, in His great wisdom, placed this highly capable female at my side to advance the plot, and she seemed perfectly suited to the task. Her eyes gleamed with raw intelligence, she knew the ins and outs of the DDH and its facilities, and she seemed (inexplicably, I thought) unrestrainedly committed to looking out for Ian’s interests. I could pretend to toe the mindwipe party-line, as it were, if by doing so I ensured that Tonto signed on the dotted line.
“But a mindwipe,” said Ian, swaying slightly where he sat, “I mean — it isn’t possible.”
“Technically it is,” I said, chiming in to assist. “A mindwipe, I mean. Common practice back in the day, or so I gather from Peericks’s books.”
Ian sputtered an interruption, but I pressed on.
“I often sneak into Peericks’s office for a bit of night-time reading — patient records, correspondence, assorted loony-doctor texts, and so forth. Fascinating stuff. As for these mindwipes,” I continued, “they were a fairly simple procedure. You took some blister who’d been having a bout of mental whatsit, or a criminal-type who couldn’t be swayed to give up the crowbar and take some form of civilized vocation, and you bunged him into the river. If you kept him in the depths for a good long while — perhaps employing cement overshoes or similar accessories — then the neural flows got down to business and reset his personality. A fresh start and a clean slate, if you take my meaning. Born again, as it were. Never worked properly, of course, tended to leave the bugger a bit befuddled with scattered memories of —”
“But my memories aren’t scattered,” Ian protested, cutting short my peroration, if peroration means what I think it does. “They’re clear. And I remember not living in Detroit. I lived in Canada. Nobody was immortal. People died. I remember funerals, obituaries, life insurance, estate lawyers — and I distinctly remember dying.”
“Now, Ian —” I ventured, but the fellow seemed intent on hogging the conversation.
“That sort of thing sticks with you,” he continued. “I can remember the train station, the sound of the train, my own last words — if I’d been living in Detroit all this time I’d —”
“Look,” said Tonto, renewing her hand-patting efforts, “Peericks seems to think your memories are so clear because they really are memories — most of them, anyway. They’re memories from your life before the wipe. You probably were married to a woman named Penelope, and you probably were hit by a train. You didn’t die, of course, but —”
“Then why can’t I remember Detroit? Why do I remember Canada? Funerals? Graveyards? Why do —”
“Who knows?” said I, waving a carefree slice of toast. “Perhaps whatever bounders took a stab at wiping your memory botched the job. Scattered a few toys in the attic. All that they’ve succeeded in doing, I’d venture, is scrambling up your brain. This might account for your personality,” I added, diplomatically.
He merely blinked — one of those owlish ones. I took this for agreement.
“It’s like I said,” I continued, “these mindwipe thingummies were a dashed tricky business. According to Peericks’s books they were about as unreliable as a Napoleon, and often didn’t work as they were intended. Perhaps that’s why they’re out of vogue.”
“Or maybe,” Tonto interjected, managing to look both pensive and alluring, “maybe the mindwipe worked exactly as intended. Maybe they — whoever they are — wanted you to emerge appearing delusional, or to have you show the symptoms of BD. They may have had a reason. Or maybe they needed you to forget something specific, something they could only be sure you’d forget if they erased all of your memories of Detroit. And if they can alter memory with that level of precision . . .”
She paused a moment and chewed her lower lip.
“Look,” she said, appearing to reach a decision, “I can’t answer these questions. And from what Rhinnick overheard it sounds like Peericks can’t, either. But he’s the expert, and if he thinks you’ve been wiped, he’s probably right.”
Ian protested. “But if Peericks is the expert —”
At this stage of the proceedings a wearying sort of tug-of-war ensued between my two companions, Ian protesting in every direction and Tonto providing such reassurance as she could. And here again we come to Ian’s dilemma — that fork in the road I mentioned earlier. In one direction it’s an afterlife in which no one but a select few could recall what came before, and in the other direction, a mindwipe. Door number one, a difficult role as one of the hapless few who know the truth of death-before-life. Door number two, a plausible scientific explanation and the hope of an imminent spousal reunion. The chap was torn. But as Tonto astutely pointed out: regardless of which door Ian chose, that door led out of the hospice.
“You aren’t safe here anymore,” she said, gravely. “Even with the enhanced security, whoever is after you was able to take out several guards, overpower Zeus, and steal your files without being caught. We have to get you out of here. We have to get you somewhere safe.”
I nodded the lemon. By staying put, Ian would remain in the line-of-fire, as it were, easy pickings for these Zeus-smiting and file-stealing intruders who had taken a frightful interest in our affairs. In the hospice, Ian was a fish in a barrel. At large, well, Ian wasn’t merely safer, but he’d also have a chance to solve the mystery of his past. Add this to the fact that Ian would never find this wife of his by lurking around hospice dormitories, and the case for our departure was iron-clad.
Ian weighed this for a space, and saw reason.
“Fine,” he said, slumping the shoulders. “Fine. We’ll leave the hospice.”
And thus the controversy ended.
This bone of contention settled, I finally rolled up the sleeves, rubbed the hands together, and set into the eggs and toast with a piranha-like fervour. I had, you may have noticed, missed my evening meal as well as breakfast while spelunking through the ducts all night. And I don’t know whether you’ve ever spent the night crawling through ventilation systems, but if you haven’t, let me tell you: it leaves you hungrier than a piranha who’s missed out on his monthly snorkeler. When I’d arrived back in the barracks, my companions had been tucking into the foodstuffs to an extent that their ribs now squeaked, and here was I feeling as though my innards had been spooned out. So now, with all outstanding arguments settled and plans in motion, I set about the task of showing this plate of eggs and toast how it felt to be a pagan thrown to the lions.
Thoroughly armed, as you are, with this intimate knowledge of the rumblings and hollow state of the Feynman tum, you’ll appreciate the despondency I felt when, just as I had gotten down to business with the rations, there came the sound of heavy footfalls approaching the door of the Feynman barracks, followed closely by said door bursting inward.
This bursting door revealed none other than Matron Bikerack fuming at every pore.
I could tell she was displeased. Not only had she practically blown my door off its hinges, but her biscuit-dough complexion, usually whitish-pink in colour, had taken on the hue of an angry beetroot.
I chafed at the intrusion. I mean to say, one is always happier when matrons are not grinding their teeth in one’s direction, but when such tantrums interrupt a highly necessary foray into the feed bin, one feels particularly put out. And this particular interruption was, of course, made all the worse by the identity of the intruder, for, as we have already established, this matron is one of those morale-sapping killjoys who counts any day as a loss when it doesn’t feature a chance to blot all merriment and sunshine out of the Feynman life.
As for why the matron carries on in this volatile, ammunition-dumpish manner, stalking the hospice halls and seeking whom she might devour, who can say? Perhaps it started out as irritable bowel syndrome and metast
asized, if metastasized is the word I’m thinking of. But whatever the cause of this oppressive, vexing, forceful, anti-frolic sentiment harboured in the matron’s bosom, it rendered her a force to be sedulously avoided.
Sedulous avoidance of this matron, though, was presently not within the realm of practical politics, as she stood right in my doorway, bosom heaving, directing a glass-shattering stare directly into the Feynman eyes.
I steeled myself for the worst.
“Rhinnick Feynman!” she boomed, as is her custom.
“Ho, Matron,” I riposted.
“Rhinnick Feynman!” she yowled again.
“Still here, aged Pusher of Pills.”
“You’ve been out of your room!” she bellowed. “You weren’t here when I brought your breakfast!”
Neither item was news to me. I mean to say, one is generally aware of where one isn’t, and I knew I hadn’t been in the barracks when the breakfast cart had made its daily rounds. Explaining this to the matron at this point in the conversation, however, seemed imprudent. So I confined myself to less contentious statements.
“Ah,” said I.
“Well, where the dickens have you been?” she boomed. And I don’t know about you, but it seemed to me that this last utterance ought to have ended with about three exclamation points and a question mark or two.
“Crawling around in ducts, eavesdropping on the administration, and plotting to extricate my roommate from the hospice,” I might have said had I wished to be perfectly honest. However, as things stood, perfectly honest was exactly what I did not wish to be. Thus it was that I simply waved a nonchalant forkful of egg so as to indicate composure, while saying “Why, nowhere special, I assure you. Was there something that you needed?”
Beforelife Page 15