by Bob Shaw
“Fine example of an habitual criminal who has never done any time,” Werry said. “Stan’s been mixed up in everything from statutory rape to aggravated assault, but there was always a technical] flaw in the police case against him. That or epidemic amnesia among the witnesses. He has a repair business over in Georgetown — washing machines, fridges, things like that — but he spends most of his time hanging around with Buck.”
“What does Morlacher get out of it?”
“Company, I guess. Buck’s got a real hair-trigger temper specially when he’s had a few belts, and he’s got a habit of delicately hinting at his displeasure by kicking people in the crotch. If you see anybody walling around Tripletree with bow legs it doesn’t mean they’re cowhands — they used to work for Buck, that’s all. Most folks find reasons to stay out of his way as much as they can, but Starr gets on pretty well with him.”
Hasson nodded, mildly intrigued by Werry’s steadfast practice of referring to everybody, even men he had reason to hate or despise, by their first names. He gave the impression of regarding all human failings, from the trivial to the most serious, with the same kind of careless tolerance, and it was a characteristic which Hasson found difficult to square with the profession of law enforcement. He sat quietly, coping with minor aches in his back and hip, until Werry brought the car to a halt outside a bar near the centre of Tripletree’s shopping area.
“Ben’s Holotronics is just round the corner,” Werry said. “You go off and get your cassettes and I’ll set up a couple of halfs.” He went into the brownish dimness of the bar, walking with the jaunty lightness of a boxer in peak condition. He gave no sign of having anything preying on his mind. Hasson watched him disappear and made his way along the block through fierce sprays of reflected sunlight. Shadows flitted across his path every few seconds as fliers drifted down from the sky and landed on the fiat roofs of buildings all around. It was the standard arrangement in modern cities, because CG fields broke up when any massive object, such as a wall, intersected their lines of force. That was the reason there were no aircraft powered by counter-gravity engines, and it was also the reason for modem public buildings having flat roofs or being surrounded by wide landing strips. Any flier who went too close to a wall found himself to be a flier no longer, but an ordinary mortal, fragile and afraid, hurtling towards the ground at an acceleration of close to a thousand centimetres per second squared. The same effect occurred when two CG fields interfered with each other, which was the reason for Air Police Sergeant Robert Hasson taking the big drop over the Birmingham Control Zone, the endless screaming drop which had almost…
Wrenching his thoughts back into the present, Hasson located the store where he had bought his television set and went inside. The owner, Ben, greeted him warily, but brightened up on learning that he had not returned with a complaint. It transpired that he had a good selection of six-hour programme cassettes and was able to supply Hasson with a number of complete runs of British comedy and musical shows, some of which had been recorded only the previous year.
Hasson, like an alcoholic contemplating a well-stocked cupboard, felt a comforting glow within himself as he left the store carrying a bulging plastic bag. He was now self-reliant, self-sufficient, equipped to live his own life. The evocative scent of dried hops and malt reached his nostrils and an impulse made him glance curiously into the window of the next store along the block. The proprietor, the oddly named Oliver Fan, had been an interesting and sympathetic character with an unusual line of sales talk. You are not at ease within yourself. That part was certainly true, Hasson mused. As a snap diagnosis it had been a hundred per cent accurate, but perhaps it was one of those all- purpose pieces of patter such as used by fake fortune-tellers, designed to make the general sound like the particular. Perhaps it applied equally well to everybody who ever strayed through Oliver’s door. Believe me, I can help. Would a charlatan say that? Would he not be inclined to use a more ambiguous form of words which would give him latitude for twisting and turning under legal scrutiny? Hasson hesitated for a long moment and then, filled with a curious timidity, went into the health food store.
“Good morning, Mr Haldane,” Oliver said from his position behind the glass counter. “It is good to see you again.”
Thank you.” Hasson looked uncertainly around the laden shelves, breathed the mixture of heady aromas and felt lost for words, as though he had come to ask for a love philtre. “I . … I wonder if…”
“Yes, I meant what I said — I can help you.” Oliver gave Hasson a knowing, compassionate smile as he slid off his stool and moved along the counter. He was small and middle aged — of exactly the same size, build and coloration as millions of other Asians- and yet he had an individuality which impressed Hasson as being as durable as the bedrock of China itself. His eyes, by contrast, were as homely, accessible and humorous as Laurel and Hardy or Mark Twain.
“That’s a fairly sweeping statement,” Hasson said, testing his ground,
“Is it? Then let’s put it to the test.” Oliver took a pair of iodine- tinted glasses from his breast pocket and put them on. “I already know you’ve been seriously hurt in a driving accident, and you probably know that I know, so we can take all that as given. There’s no question of my using special powers or being able to see your aura the way some of those alternative medicine freaks claim to do. But — simply by looking at the way you walk and stand — I can tell that your back is giving you considerable pain. I would say that you also smashed up your left knee in the accident but that it is fairly well on the mend and that it’s your back that’s causing all the trouble. Am I right?”
Hasson nodded, refusing to be impressed.
“So far so good — but there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? The physical injuries were bad, the spell in hospital was bad, the convalescence is long and painful and boring — but there was a time when you would have taken all that in your stride. Now you can’t. You feel you’re not the man you used to be. Am I right?”
“You’re bound to be right,” Hasson countered. “Is there any-. body the man he used to be? Are you?”
“Too general, eh? Too woolly? All right, you know your specific symptoms better than anybody, but I’ll go over some of them for you. There’s the depressions, the irrational fears, the inability to concentrate on simple things like reading, the poor memory, the pessimism about the future, the dozing like a lizard during the day followed by the inability to sleep properly at night unless you’ve had pills or booze. Am I right?”
“Well…”
“Is it difficult for you to meet strangers? Is it difficult for you to talk to me now?” Oliver took off his glasses as though to make confession easier, dismantling barriers.
Hasson wavered, tom between a cautious reserve and the urge to unburden himself to the stranger who seemed as though he could be more of a friend than any friend. “Supposing all those things were true, what could you do about it?”
Oliver appeared to relax a little. “The first thing to realise is that you and your body are a unity. You are one. There’s no such thing as a physical injury that doesn’t affect the mind, and there’s no such thing as a mental injury that doesn’t affect the body. If both aren’t right, both are wrong.”
Hasson felt a pang of disappointment — he had heard similar things from Dr Colebrook and a series of therapists, none of whom seemed to realise that he had lost the ability to deal in abstracts, that words which did not have a clear-cut, one-to-one correspondence with concrete realities were completely meaningless to him.
“What does it all boil down to?” he said. “You said you could help. What can you do to stop my mind feeling pains in my back?”
Oliver sighed and gave him a look of rueful apology. “I’m sorry, Mr Haldane — it looks as though I may have blown this one. I think I’ve let you down by saying the wrong things.”
“So there’s nothing you can do.”
“I can give you these.” Oliver took two cartons — o
ne small and inscribed with Chinese characters in gold on a red background, the other large and plain — from the shelves behind him and placed them on the glass counter.
This is what it had to come down to, Hasson thought, his disillusionment complete. Doctor Dobson’s Famous Herbal Remedy And Spleen Rejuvenator. “What are they?”
“Ginseng root and ordinary brewer’s yeast in powder form.” “I see.” Hasson paused, wondering if he should buy the products just to compensate Oliver for his time, then he shook his head and moved to the door. “Look, perhaps I’ll come back an other time. I’m keeping somebody waiting.” He opened the door and began to hurry out of the store.
“Mr Haldane!” Oliver’s voice was urgent, but again there was no hint of annoyance over the loss of a sale.
Hasson looked back at him. “Yes?”
“How are your mouth ulcers today?”
“They hurt,” Hasson replied, sensing with amazement that Oliver had deliberately and clinically taken some kind of action on his behalf, had chosen words that were tied to an objective reality for no reason other than his need to hear them. “How did you know?”
“I may go in for mystery and inscrutability, after all.” Oliver gave him a wry smile. “It seems to get the best results.”
Hasson closed the door and retraced his steps to the counter. “How did you know I have mouth ulcers?”
“Old Oriental trade secret, Mr Haldane. The important thing is — would you like to get rid of them?”
“What would I have to do?” Hasson said.
Oliver handed him the two cartons he had left on the counter. “Just forget all those things I said about the unity of mind and body. This stuff, especially the yeast, will cure your mouth ulcers in a couple of days, and of you keep on taking it as directed you’ll never be troubled that way again. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“It would be. How much do I owe you?”
“Try the stuff out first, make sure it works. You can call back and pay for it any time.”
“Thanks.” Hasson gazed thoughtfully at the storekeeper for a moment. “I really would like to know how you knew about the ulcers.”
Oliver sighed, amiably exasperated. “Hospitals never learn. Even in this age, they never learn. They flood patients” bodies with broad-spectrum antibiotics and wipe out the intestinal bacteria which produce B-vitamins. A common symptom of B-vitamin deficiency is the appearance of mouth disorders, like those painful little ulcers, so what did the hospitals do? Would you believe that some of them are still painting them with potassium permanganate? It’s completely ineffective, of course. They send people out looking like they’ve been swigging the blushful Hippocrene — you know, with purple-stained mouth -hardly able to eat, hardly able to digest what they do eat. Lacking in energy. Depressed. That’s another symptom of B-vitamin deficiency, you know, and I’m getting back on to the kind of patter which nearly made you walk out of here in the first place.”
“No, I’m interested.” Hasson spent a few more minutes talking to Oliver about the relationship between diet and health, impressed and oddly comforted by his evangelistic fervour, then began to think about Al Werry waiting alone in the bar. He put his new purchases into the plastic bag on top of the TV cassettes and left the store after promising Oliver he would return early in the following week. In the bar he found Werry sitting in a comer booth with two full beer glasses and several empties on the table in front of him.
“I like drinking at lunchtime,” Werry said. “It has four times the effect.” His voice was slightly blurred and it dawned on Hasson that he had been personally responsible for emptying the half-litre glasses in a remarkably short time.
“You save money that way.” Hasson drank from the glass which Werry pushed over to him. The lager it contained did not impress him as a beer, but he was grateful for its cleansing and tingling coolness. He eyed Werry over the rim of his glass, wondering what he wanted to talk about and hoping that no marked response would be required on his part. It seemed that every conversational exchange he had made since arriving in Tripletree had added to his burden of stresses, and it was a process which could not go on indefinitely, or even for much longer.
Werry took a long drink of beer and leaned forward with a solemn expression on his face. “Rob,” he said, his voice charged with sincerity, “I really envy you.”
“Is it my money or my looks?” Hasson parried, genuinely surprised.
“I’m not kidding, Rob. I envy you because you’re a human being.”
Hasson produced a lopsided smile. “And you aren’t?”
“That’s exactly it.” Werry was speaking with the utmost conviction, like a preacher trying to make a convert. “I’m not a human being.”
Hasson, although baffled, realized with a sinking feeling that his tête-à-tête with Werry was not going to be an easy run. “Al, you’d pass for a human being any day.”
“But that’s all I do — I pass for a human being.”
“Rhetorically speaking,” Hasson said, wishing that Werry would get on with making his point in a more direct manner.
Werry shook his head. “It might be rhetoric, and it might not. Is it right to regard yourself as human if you haven’t got any human feelings? Isn’t that what the word human means -having humanity?”
“I’m sorry, Al” Hasson decided to show some impatience. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. What’s the problem?”
Werry drank more beer, his eyes remaining fixed on Hasson’s, somehow transferring a weight of responsibility to him. “You saw what happened at my place this morning. Buck came walking in like he owned the place and started leaning on me in front of my kid — and I just stood there and took it. What would you have done, Rob? What would you have done if you’d been in my shoes?”
“It’s hard to say,” Hasson replied, toying with his glass.
“All right — would you have got mad at him?”
“I daresay I would.”
“That’s it, you see. I didn’t get mad — because there’s something wrong with me. I don’t feel anything. Sometimes I hear this little voice telling me I ought to get mad in a situation like that, but it doesn’t carry any weight with me. I’m not afraid of Buck, but I don’t care enough about anything to make it worth my while to stand up to him. Not even my own boy.”
Hasson felt totally inadequate to receive such a confidence. “I don’t think any of us are qualified to analyse ourselves the way you’re trying to do, Al.”
“There’s no analysis — I’m just reporting certain facts,” Werry said doggedly. “There’s something wrong with me, something about the way I’m put together, and it affects everything I do, big or small. Tell the truth, Rob — when we met at the rail station yesterday you didn’t know me from Adam, did you?”
“I haven’t got much of a memory,” Hasson said, feeling he had lost the thread of the discussion.
“It doesn’t matter how good your memory is — the point is that you know what it’s safe to forget. You know what you can let go. But I’m so busy trying to convince people I’m one of the boys that I remember everything that happens so that I can enthuse about it afterwards and tell everybody about the great times we had, but the truth is I never have any great times. I don’t really exist, Rob.”
Hasson began to feel embarrassed. “Listen, Al, do you think this is a…
“It’s true,” Werry cut in. “I don’t really exist. I go around in my uniform most of the time, because when I’m wearing it I can convince myself I’m the city reeve. I haven’t even got a sense of humour, Rob. I don’t know what’s funny and what isn’t. All I do is remember things that other people laugh at, and then when I hear them again I laugh too, but when I hear a joke the first time I’m not even sure if it is a joke.
“I can’t even argue with people, because as soon as I hear the other guy’s point of view that becomes my point of view, as well. Then when I run into somebody who starts telling me the opposite
I side with him right off.
“I don’t even …” Werry paused to drink more beer, again fixing Hasson with an intent, brooding stare. “I don’t even get much of a kick out of sex. I’ve read about the ecstasy of love, but I’ve never experienced it. When I’m on the lob and it’s right at the big moment … you know, when people are supposed to feel they’re knocking on the door of paradise … all I can think about is that I might have left the lights on in my car, or that my backside is cold. Things like that.”
Hasson felt a sudden heartless desire to laugh. He picked up his glass and studied the swarming of the tiny bubbles in the beer froth.
“That’s part of the reason Sybil walked out on me,” Werry continued. “We had arguments about the treatment for Theo’s eyes — she wanted to let the hospital cut the middle out of them, and I wouldn’t hear of it — but I think she got sick of living with somebody who was nobody. That’s why I get on okay with May. She’s another nobody. Her one ambition in life is to go around looking cute, and that’s all she does, so I know where I am with her.”
There was a longer pause, and Hasson knew that Werry had spoken his piece and that it was up to him to make some appropriate response. He glanced down at the plastic bag containing his dream cassettes and wished he could be locked in his bedroom in the parchment-coloured shade at drawn curtains, with the television set bestowing its sweet absolution. The unfairness of the situation-here was another person making impossible demands upon him — began to weigh heavily on his mind.