The Continuous Katherine Mortenhoe

by D. G. Compton

  ‘Not long ago such jobs were a regular part of the doctor’s day.’

  ‘They aren’t anymore.’

  ‘No. Well. And I’m not saying I could have done it any better. Anyway, Roddie can always bring out the Messiah bit later on.’

  I opened my eyes. After three minutes closed the pain was just beginning. ‘You’re very sure she’ll sign,’ I said.

  ‘They always do.’

  ‘We all know why.’ %

  ‘Can I help it how the world’s made?’ He kept it light, imitating his dear old grandfather. ‘Please, Roddie, do me a favor. No guilts, no great social conscience. You want I should give the lady to some other boy? Some boy who wouldn’t treat her right? Some boy without half your style? You want that?’

  I played the ball given. ‘You can’t,’ I said, laconiclike. ‘I’m the one with the eyes.’

  Mason was leaving the office. The microphone was on and he’d heard us and he could have come through the connecting door. But he’d preferred to keep his side of the mirror, and now he was leaving. Suddenly it infuriated me that he should try to keep himself apart.

  ‘Hey,’ I shouted. ‘If you think your bit stank, then how about mine?’ Pinning myself out so that anything he said or did was bound to hurt. If he went out without answering, that too would hurt.

  He turned, his hand on the doorknob. ‘I think you’ll help her,’ he said. ‘With any luck, so shall I. We can only do our best.’

  He managed not to sound priggish, and I may have blushed. Anyway, he was talking to a mirror.

  ‘I must go now. I have other patients.’

  He smiled at where he thought I was, and went.

  He was a nice man, and the room was empty without him. The nice room where nice doctors told nice patients nasty things. Vincent got up, stretched, wandered around behind me, did his best to fill in. I never want to give the impression that Vincent was — is — insensitive. But his considerable sensitivity, both artistic and personal, was entirely media-orientated. Mine I was still working at.

  ‘It’s too soon after the operation,’ he said. ‘You’re still unsettled. We should have waited.’

  ‘You don’t choose your terminals. They just come along. I’m grateful for the opportunity.’ I meant it. ‘I can’t think of a better chance to prove it’s all been worth it.’

  ‘We have faith in you, Roddie. Of course you know that.’ He scrunched my shoulder with his large thick fingers. ‘The man with the TV eyes — it feels good, huh?’

  I hadn’t decided how it felt. Instinctively I put my hand up to my head, to the plate under my scalp. The thin seams were just detectable beneath my hair.

  ‘It’s a great responsibility,’ I said.

  He waved that away for the formality it was. ‘And the sleep?’ he said. ‘It would drive me mad, you know. Never sleeping.’

  ‘You get used to it. I rest a lot. The drugs help. I’m never tired.’ That was a lie. I was permanently tired. ‘They say if anything gets me it’ll be the lack of dreams.’

  ‘You should sleep with your eyes open. I hear sentries do it all the time.’

  If he was going to teach me I refused to go on being brave. ‘It’s not quite the same,’ I said.

  He slapped me playfully. I was a member of his team. Either I gave him reassurance or he couldn’t afford to know.

  ‘I’ll buy you a drink, Roddie. The staff here have a bar down in the basement somewhere.’

  Mostly it felt marvelous. I was, after all, a reporter. I had suffered under the exigencies of camera and lighting crews all my professional life. The presence of a camera takes people in different ways — some people are good and some are bad, the best are careful and the worst are carefully uncareful. Scientists claim that the very act of observation alters in some subtle way the nature of the phenomenon being observed. When the phenomenon is people and the observer is the grasping lens of a camera the ways aren’t all that subtle. To be free of all that was marvelous.

  Also it felt important. I was important. I had been thought important enough for a fifteen-thousand-pound investment of company money. And a whole lot of insurance. With a three-year contract that would keep me in luxury the rest of my life. And a guaranteed renewal if I wanted it. Which I would.

  I was, after all, a reporter. Like Reuter, with his carrier pigeons. I was presented with the most staggering tool for truthful reportage the world had ever known. Of course I would renew. The price was high, but so were the satisfactions. Three years would see me just beginning. Not in terms of fame, for that would follow instantly on the first press release, but in terms of technique. In terms of (though I was shy of the word), in terms of artistry. The death of Katherine Mortenhoe, no matter how challenging, was only a start.

  Then again, it felt outrageous. I was a surgical monstrosity. A cyborg. I had been violated. I had offered myself willingly for obscene experimentation. I had given up myself, given up a right even to the ultimate privacy of my senses. I was a public man. What I saw, every voyeuristic hack by the receiving monitor would see. My tapes could be played back for the cheap delectation of office boys. My finest moments were common property. And those less fine. If I glanced down at my pecker while I pissed, that image too could be taken down and used in evidence against me. ‘The man was patently a libertine, m’lud. He squeezed his pecker sensuously while he pissed . . .’ And if I closed my eyes or stayed in complete darkness for any length of time, the implanted retinal micro-circuits would overload, and pain would force my consciousness into light again.

  That then was the price, and that the satisfaction. I was public property, and utterly alone. (For who could trust me with secrets, either of body or mind?) And I had within my head the possibility of greatness.

  Vincent brought me a beer, and a tomato juice for himself. He was going on, he said. I didn’t need to ask where.

  ~ * ~

  She nearly told the woman beside her on the travelator. ‘I’ve only got four weeks to live,’ she nearly said. The woman on the travelator would have replied, ‘Now that’s a funny thing, ‘cause so have I.’ And with so much in common, they’d have struck up a conversation.

  But the woman on the travelator was watching the advertisements, and Katherine didn’t care to interrupt her. So her secret went unshared all the way back to Computabook. Or Peregrine Publications, as they presented themselves to the public. (In promotional circles computers were a dirty word.)

  Peter was waiting for her. In one of his tizzies.

  ‘There’s been a flap on. Babs suddenly rang up spare capacity, love, so I had to send Queen’s Mate on down. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘I don’t think I know a book called Queen’s Mate.’

  ‘Of course you do. It was one of Barbara’s early tries at the Wentworth. You circled it so I knew it couldn’t be too bad.’

  She sat down at once at the teleprinter. ‘My dear boy, I’d circled it as a particularly crass example of what’s getting past the banality scanners these days.’ Her fingers twitched, ready to start typing a rerun. ‘How long’s it been going?’

  ‘Soon after you left. I’d say an hour at least.’

  She forgot what she was supposed to be doing, and put her fingers away. ‘I don’t expect it matters,’ she said.

  Peter stared at her. He discarded his tizzy, pulled up a chair, sat down beside her.

  ‘You’re my best my dearest Katie-Mo.’ He put a comforting hand on her arm. ‘And I’m a selfish pig. I should have asked you first of all what happened at the hospital.’

  ‘It wasn’t a hospital.’

  ‘The Medical Center, then. The place you’ve just been.’

  He was kind, and handsome, and a bit silly, and he loved her very much in his homosexual way, and it would have been so pleasant to tell him, to have another little cry, this time into his hanky, and then to go home early to her own dear Harry. Except that she couldn’t. A Celia Wentworth heroine would think things weren’t really real if they weren’t talk
ed about.

  ‘Happened, Peter? What do you think happened? I talked, and the doctor said ho and hum, and I came away. He thinks I’m a foolish old woman.’

  ‘Then why are you so upset?’

  She didn’t deny it. ‘I . . . don’t like being thought a foolish old woman.’

  ‘Pull the other one.’

  ‘I mean it.’

  ‘The other one’s got bells on.’

  She looked into his face, very close. He cared, and she couldn’t bear it. ‘I wonder why your sort likes to paw older women,’ she said.

  He still didn’t move. ‘Probably because we’re still a bit like children.’ He gave her arm a final squeeze, then got up. ‘But with a bit more tact.’

  He went softly to the door.

  ‘If you were to take some time off, Katie-Mo, I promise I wouldn’t let Babs do anything too terrible. I’m not really a very crass person.’

  For as long as he was there by the door she could only think how remarkably uncrass a person he was, and wish that she could find the words to say so. But as soon as he was gone she forgot him completely.

  She must be practical. She had only four weeks. She must resign at once from Peregrine. She had four weeks into which to pack the next fifty years of living. She must check the banality scanners in Barbara’s titling phase. Probably a whole-book scanning operation would be necessary. Fifty years of needs and satisfactions, of love and attainment, of power and sex. Fifty years of love — put that way it sounded ridiculous. And there was dignity. She must tell Harry. With only four weeks, perhaps dignity was all that mattered. Or didn’t matter at all. And she must tell Harry. Also her book. She must tell her book, her immortality. But first of all she must resign from Peregrine. And tell Harry. And put to bed at least one more Pargeter and Paladine and Wentworth. And tell Harry. And tell Harry.

  She buzzed Peter on the intercom. He answered at once.

  ‘Katie-Mo?’

  ‘Queen’s Mate cover picture?’

  ‘Barbara suggested the house in long-shot. From page seventy. Crown in foreground, lying on the grass.’

  ‘Simple composite?’

  ‘Both in stock, according to info, and not too recent. But I’ve rung down color changes, just in case.’

  ‘I’ll see a proof?’

  ‘Natch.’

  ‘Good . . . Keep you off sunsets and oil refineries and you’re a doll. Not crass at all.’

  She flicked the switch before he could answer. A doll? The only times she’d heard the word used like that was from her first, her American, stepmother. She was a ragbag of styles, none of them her own. The American stepmother had wanted to please. The successor, bringing a family of her own, had believed in children finding their own level. When her father had moved on, a new career, a new life, Katherine had stuck to that family briefly, like a burr. But her new father, unrecognizable in his new career and his new life, had asked for her and for the continuity he then couldn’t allow her to represent. So another style was added. Schools, universities, jobs, bosses . . . and now she was forty-four.

  For a moment, after she flicked the switch on the intercom, the screen lifted. She saw past it, to death. She saw herself dead. She saw the chemistry, the bundle of neurones, changed. But the concept was suddenly meaningless. Dead was dead. Utter. Incomprehensible. Dead was nowhere. Dead wasn’t coffins, mourners, crematories. Dead was an intolerable nowhere. Dead was the place, the no-place, she’d be at.

  She must tell Harry. She reached for the phone, dialed the flat, and listened to the ringing that wouldn’t be answered because Harry didn’t get back from work till three. The bell rang and rang, and Harry wouldn’t answer it because he didn’t get back from the office till three. She imagined the empty flat and the telephone ringing in it. The idea was comforting, and she left it ringing while she started drafting her official letter of resignation. Then she tore up the draft and cut the ringing, and decided she’d resign from nothing. And she’d tell nobody, not until — in Dr Mason’s words — not until her coordination fell below that level necessary for full manual dexterity.

  She looked at her hands. They were incredible. She bent her fingers, watching the creases at the joints. She folded her thumbs across her palms in the way monkeys couldn’t. She tried to guess what it would be like to lack full manual dexterity.

  Later she called Peter, and said she was going out for lunch.

  In the cafeteria she found herself making room for her tray on a table next to a man she vaguely recognized. They had done a course together on Randomization within a Multiple Choice Framework, and then he had gone on to specialize in Randomized Tonality. She’d seen his name on cassette sleeves, and later in connection with kinetics and some Compleat Man theory, and then for a long time nothing.

  ‘I know your face,’ he said.

  ‘Are you trying to pick me up?’ She got rid of the tray. ‘Or something?’

  ‘No, honestly — and anyway, why shouldn’t I?’

  She considered why he shouldn’t. ‘I have a husband,’ she said. Paused. ‘And four children.’

  ‘That’s some stability.’

  She bent her head over her plate. ‘I don’t like to joke about it. My family is very precious to me.’

  ‘Of course. I didn’t mean . . . You don’t look old enough to have four children.’

  ‘I’m thirty-eight.’

  ‘There you are, then. Are you sure I don’t know your face?’

  ‘Jonathan — he’s my oldest — he’ll soon be seventeen. We’re buying him a room in town.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘You have to plan. My husband’s in the trade.’ Chewing. ‘You have any family?’

  ‘One.’ He shifted his position. ‘I don’t see her that much.’

  ‘I only asked because my husband’s in the trade. He could’ve kept an eye open.’

  ‘Work here, do you?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘I said, do you work here?’

  ‘With four children?’

  ‘Some women do.’

  ‘I’m the old-fashioned type. We’ve got half a house. My husband being in the trade.’

  They ate. She watched her motherly, capable hands as they pushed the knife and fork.

  ‘How did you fiddle four kids?’ he said. ‘Or do you pay the tax?’

  ‘We pay the tax.’ She smiled at him. ‘And you, do you work here?’

  He mumbled a bit. ‘Crime,’ he said. ‘I’m in the crime division.’

  ‘You know, I think it’s wonderful how with these new computers you can just sit back, let them do all the work.’

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  ‘Blount. Mrs Harry Blount.’

  ‘I’m John Peel.’

  ‘Tantivy,’ she said.

  They laughed and shook hands across the plates.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said.

  ‘I majored in Folk Lore.’

  ‘The girl I thought you were was in Computers. And wrote a bit.’

  ‘Not me. I majored in Folk Lore.’ She could see she intrigued him.

  ‘If you’re not with Peregrine, how come you’re here?’

  She leaned toward him conspiratorially. ‘I sneak in when I’m up in town. I like to see all the famous people.’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘The folk heroes of tomorrow.’

  ‘I was forgetting.’

  ‘Forgetting what?’

  ‘You majored in Folk Lore.’

  He finished his food and looked at his watch. He wound it banged his wrist on the edge of the table, then referred to the clock on the cafeteria wall.

  ‘Damn thing,’ he said. ‘Look, when are you next in town?’

  ‘Most Wednesdays.’

  ‘But today’s Tuesday.’

  ‘Most Tuesdays, then.’

  ‘I just thought we might.’

  ‘Might what?’ „

  He stood up. ‘I’ll look out for you.’

  �
�Don’t depend on it. The children might come down with flu.’

  ‘What?’ The room was noisy.

  ‘The children might want to go to the zoo.’

  He stared at her. ‘I’ll look out for you,’ he said, not smiling, and went away between the crowded tables.

  John Peel was sad somehow, but nice. She wondered why she’d never seen John Peel in the cafeteria before. All those Tuesdays in the cafeteria.