“Oh Patrick,” It was a soft rebuke. She nuzzled his throat, nibbled it lightly, then moved back to his lips. “You scared me out of my wits,” she told him. “You were in some sort of trance.”
“Me?” He lay still, very still, for a long moment, then pushed her gently away and rolled to his side to stare soberly into her eyes. “Barb, where is the root octave of the Ninth Parallax?”
She shook her head dumbly.
“But you showed me the way. You stood at the gate. Until I found Octavia.”
“Who is Octavia?” she asked, the lips barely moving. Honor tossed back the covers and flopped his legs over the side of the bed. He sat up, held his head with his hands and squeezed the temples as though trying to bring pressure on something inside. “I don’t ... I was there, across the infinite . . . somewhere. She said ... I could see her ... at the root octave. And there she was. She knew me. I believe she was expecting me. There were others, too, but I didn’t see them.”
“Pat .. She curled against his back and encircled his waist with her arms. “I—’m frightened. Let’s not try that again.”
“No, it was ... beautiful! I can’t remember too much but it ... well I felt like I belonged there. Know what I mean? It was like coming home. I—Barb! We’ve got to go to Wenssler.”
“No, no,” she moaned, shaking her head against his back. “It’s crazy ... too dangerous. We don’t know what we’re . . . what we are playing with.”
“I don’t mean .. .” He pulled away from her and got to his feet. “I mean Wenssler’s body. I think I know how to help him.”
Barbara sat up and stared at him.
“Come on, get dressed.” He snatched up her bluejeans, glared at them, and tossed them across the room. “Not these. Get dressed for the city. We’re going to Bethesda.”
Barbara struggled off the bed and went quickly to the clothes closet. She felt no need to ask further questions, or to protest. Honor had taken over. This much was obvious. He had gone beyond her. She knew this.
From the bathroom doorway, he said, “Barb, the professor was slightly off base in his sex theory. You know, the idea that—”
“Yes, it’s more than sex, isn’t it,” she said in an incredibly soft voice.
“Damn right. Who was it that said, ‘To know is to love.' ”
“Yes, love,” Barbara whispered. “That’s the real power source, isn’t it.”
“Call it what you like—knowledge, love, truth. It’s all homogenized into the deeper dimensions of sex. I don’t know how, yet, but—”
“I remember now,” she said.
“What do you remember?”
“Enough.” She selected a simple frock and carried it to the dressing table, opened a lingerie drawer, and searched for matching accessories. “What did this Octavia look like?”
“She looked like something else,” Honor declared reverently.
Barbara silently nodded her head and stepped into blue frilly panties. Indeed, she remembered. She remembered an experience when she was ten. Her mother had come to her, in a dream. She was accompanied by “an angel.” The angel was indescribably beautiful. “We are watching you, dear, from beyond infinity,” her mother had told her. “When the time is right, we will show you the way. It will not be an obvious way, but it will be a way.”
Then the “angel” had smiled sweetly and added, “And it will be a woman’s way. So you must hurry and grow up.”
Indeed, Barbara remembered. The “angel’s”' name had been Octavia.
7: The Choice
The steamer was silently eating up the highway. They were on the Interstate Bypass, only minutes out of Bethesda. Barbara was curled up in the corner, legs on the seat, quietly thoughtful. There was a warm bond between them, there simply did not seem to be much to say to each other. Honor smiled and reached out for her foot, squeezed it, and held it in a gentle grasp. She sent him a warm surge of love-feeling; he knew it, accepted it, and silently returned it.
Things had certainly changed for Patrick Honor, this he also knew. The world would never be the same, nor would he, not after the experiences of this day. It was funny, he reasoned, how people—intelligent, educated people—could go on year after year, crashing around in total blindness without once realizing that they were blind. Everyone seemed to take the world at face value, even after they’d learned that the world actually had no face. The closer science had advanced into the heart of reality, the more obvious had it become that there was no reality which was perceptible by the human senses. Yet we continued on in our blind march, sneering in the face of the unknown, jeering at those who could not be content with superficial explanations.
Even now, Honor realized with a jolt, he could not be entirely sure of the “reality,” of his experiences. Any psychiatrist in the country would put it all down as delusions or hallucinations. How could Honor tell, for instance, Milt Clinton of his experiences of the morning? Wouldn’t Honor quickly find himself in a padded cell alongside Wenssler? Sure. Sure he would. And maybe even the psychiatrists would be right. Maybe it had all been some weird trick of the mind. Except that now Honor knew things. He did not know how he knew, of course. And how could he then know that he knew? He supposed that he would have to prove, to himself, that die knowledge was genuine.
He sent a probe into Barbara’s mind. Am I nuts?
She reached over, as though by impulse, and gripped his hand. “Of course not,” she said softly.
He gave her a sideways glance. “Of course not what?”
She giggled self-consciously and said, “Sorry, I thought you said something.”
“What did you think I’d said?”
She raised the hand to her lips and kissed it “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Whatever it was, though, I thought it was pretty wild.” She wriggled closer to him and lay an arm on his leg. “Were you wondering if I was feeling sorry? Or guilty?”
Honor grinned and patted her arm. “I love you, Barb,” he said quietly.
She shivered and lay her head on his shoulder. “I know. Isn’t it wonderful? I love you, too.”
Your body is wild!
“Patrrrick,” she purred and stretched an arm across his waist, scrunched closer, and flopped a leg over his.
He wasn’t nuts. It worked, dammit, he knew it worked. He gently moved her leg; it trembled beneath his touch. “You’re going to put us in a ditch,” he warned softly.
She kissed his ear and whispered, “After we bring Curt back, let’s go find some place to lose ourselves.”
“We’ll do just that,” he assured her. Then, “Barb...?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I feel your mind on mine.”
“Uh-huh. It’s nice, isn’t it.”
“Yeah. Uh, you’ve been kidding me. You know what I’m thinking, even as I think it. Don’t you?”
She kissed his ear again. “Some of it,” she admitted. “Not all. We have to be terribly honest and good, don’t we. If this keeps up, we’ll know each other as well as we know ourselves.”
“Which may not be saying much,” Honor replied kiddingly.
“Well . . . then . . . better than we know ourselves. I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Honor.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Starting right now. Your lovemaking is wild, wild, wild. I want some more, a whole lot more, and as soon as possible.”
He laughed lightly and encircled her with an arm, drawing her closer. “You can make book on that,” he told her. He sent her a picture image.
She shivered and rooted against him. “That isn’t even fair,” she gasped. “Not out here on this highway, in a speeding car. That’s sadistic.”
Honor laughed again and took his arm back. The marker for the Medical Center had just flashed by, signaling the turnoff at the next exit. “Well, let’s see what we can do about Wenssler,” he said. “Then we’ll see what can be done for that runaway libido.”
“Oh Patrick,” she protested, moving quickly away in
blushing embarrassment.
Incredibly, it was not quite 12 o’clock noon. Clinton awaited them beneath the clock at the reception center of the psychiatric section.
“What the hell is going on?” he barked at Honor,
then touched his hat and said to Barbara, “Morning, Miss Thompson.”
Barbara murmured greetings through Honor’s rejoinder. “If I told you, you wouldn’t believe what’s going on. Have you seen Wenssler yet?”
Clinton impatiently shook his head. “Just got here myself. Jack Wilkins woke up this morning with a raging fever, congested lungs, the whole bit. Doctors are worried as hell. That June 15th date is looking ominous as hell already. What the hell is going on? What’s wrong with Wenssler?”
They were moving quickly along a narrow passageway. Honor replied, “I don’t know, he just sort of came unglued. Right in front of my eyes. Barbara saw it, too. We thought if we could talk to the doctors . . . who’ve you been talking to, by the way.”
“Tollefsen,” Clinton snapped. “Chief Resident here at Psychiatrics. He says the man is catatonic.”
Honor nodded. “Looked that way to us, too. But we’ve been reconstructing the thing. There could be another answer.”
“If he’s catatonic, he’s clear out of his skull. That’s one of the worst forms of psychosis. They can’t even reach those birds. How the hell are we going to get anything out of him in that state, Pat?”
“I told you, Milt, we don’t think ...”
Clinton had halted the small party at a closed door. He pushed the door open, fixed his gaze on a young woman who was seated at a desk just inside, and said, “Clinton, White House. Dr. Tollefsen’s expecting us.”
“Yes sir.” The woman moved excitedly to her feet, nearly upsetting a typewriter in the process. “Dr. Tollefsen is with the patient. Follow me, please.” She hurried out the door and down the passageway. The trio followed close behind. The passageway took a sharp jog, then angled downward on a long decline, on to a landing, then down a steeper ramp.
“Where th’ hell are we headed?” Clinton muttered.
“Hades?”
“You’d probably think so if you had to live here,” Honor replied.
They came out in a wide hall. A nurses’ station all but filled it. Several uniformed men stood about behind the counter, drinking coffee from paper cups. The woman singled one out for her attention and announced, “These are the people from Washington, to see Dr. Tollefsen.” She turned to Clinton. “The nurse will see you the rest of the way,” she said.
The male nurse smiled at Barbara Thompson. “Maybe it would be better if you waited here,” he told her.
She shook her head and gripped Honor’s hand tightly.
“We’ll all go,” Honor said.
The nurse smiled again and walked away. They followed him along another passageway, past a pair of heavy swinging doors, through another short passage and to a locked, massive door.
“The tombs,” Clinton growled, as the nurse worked the lock.
“Heavy security,” the nurse explained in a flat rebuttal. He stepped aside to let them enter, then locked the door behind them, remaining on the outside. They were in a large, pleasant room. Piped music issued from a speaker over the door. Drapes hung over false windows. Light, rattan furniture was softly and colorfully covered.
Curt Wenssler sat in a chair near another door, hunched over, staring blankly at nothing. A tall man in a rumpled coat and baggy trousers stood alongside the professor’s chair. A burly nurse hovered close by. The tall man looked at the newcomers, said something in a low voice to the nurse, and approached the visitors. “I’m Tollefsen,” he said, sticking out a hand.
Clinton took the hand and introduced himself, then the others.
“This is a consultation room,” the doctor explained, smiling at Barbara. His gaze shifted to Clinton, sizing him up. “I figured I’d better get down here and look him over. Hadn’t had a chance to before your call. The examining resident’s diagnosis seems entirely valid, however. He seems to be in a very deep catatonic state.”
“I’d like to examine him,” Honor said quietly.
Piercing brown eyes swept him. Honor experienced strong hostility, though the Chief Resident’s demeanor was outwardly friendly, inquisitive. “Are you a physician? I had understood that you were in the intelligence service.”
“Your understanding is correct,” Honor replied. “I’d still like to examine him.” A smile twisted his lips. “I promise I won’t hurt him.”
Tollefsen shrugged and looked at Clinton. “If it’s all right with Mr. Clinton,” he said casually.
Honor stepped directly to the still figure in the chair. The others straggled over behind him. He dropped to one knee, took Wenssler’s hands in a steady pressure, and gazed into the blank eyes. He sent a quick probe into the mind, found nothing but chaos and pain, and immediately withdrew. Tollefsen had moved beside the chair and was staring down at Honor.
Honor raised his eyes to the doctor’s and said, “There is severe pain in there.”
Tollefsen smiled. His tone was condescendingly tolerant as he replied, “Believe me, there is no condition to produce pain. And if there were, the professor would not be aware of it. The mind of the psychotic is ... curiously impervious ... to pain.”
“He’s not a psychotic,” Honor declared flatly.
Tollefsen caught Clinton’s eye and grinned. “Believe me, Mr. Honor, there is no better word to define a mind in such disarray.”
Honor never believed a man who began each statement with “believe me”. He put his hands to Wenssler’s temples and held them there for a moment. “Wenssler,” he said loudly, “listen to me. Freedom is in the Ninth Inverse Parallax.”
“He can’t hear you, Honor,” Tollefsen said irritably.
He’s gone deaf, too?” Honor asked, in obvious disgust.
“Well, no, of course not, but believe me, he cannot hear you.”
“He hears me all right,” Honor declared. “He’s just trapped, he—”
“The consciousness has distintegrated,” Tollefsen argued. “In catatonia, the personality has gone into retreat. There is no—”
“That’s exactly what I said,” Honor shot back. “He’s trapped.” He sent in another cautious probe and came out wanting to scream. He put a hand to his forehead and rubbed vigorously. “Look for him between the thalamus and the limbic system.” He stared hard at the doctor. “Does that make any sense to you?”
Honor detected a flicker of emotion behind Tollefsen’s eyes. “Not really,” he replied quietly. “What do you mean by ‘look for him’?”
“He’s all scrunched down in the interchange. It’s the only place he can escape the pain. And that pain, doctor, is absolutely unbearable. You should experience it.”
“You sound as though you have.”
Honor evaded the challenge. “Find some way to get rid of that pain. He can’t come out until you do.”
“Perhaps you could tell me what produces the pain.”
“No, I can’t. Not right now. But I intend to find out.”
Tollefsen smiled and flicked a quick glance at Clinton. “How?”
“If I told you ‘how’, doctor, you’d have me in a straitjacket in two seconds flat.”
Tollefsen’s smile broadened. “Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea, at that,” he said musingly.
“Don’t try it,” Honor warned.
The doctor laughed. “No, I didn’t mean the straitjacket. I was thinking of your suggestion. If there is severely localized pain present . . We’ll do an EEG study. I don’t know where you got your idea, Honor, but it just might have some validity. But I don’t see ..He shook his head, frowning. “How could an entire personality withdraw into a few brain cells? I’m afraid I can’t...”
“You can’t buy it?” Honor said. “That’s because you need to revise your thinking regarding human consciousness. You would say that consciousness arises from the chemical interrelationships of
living cells which are massed in a complementing unity. That’s true only to a certain extent. Approach the thing from the reverse case, stop at about the midpoint, and pull the two ends toward you. Then think about Wenssler, stuck in there between the thalamus and the limbic system. He has no access to the cortex, you see. But he’s still there, for God’s sake. If he wasn’t there, that body would be dead.”
Tollefsen turned a helpless look to Milt Clinton. In a pained voice, he said, “I’ve tried to be tolerant, Mr. Clinton. But, after all, this is the National Medical Center. I’ll have to ask you to take your friend, and his quacky ideas, to hell out of here.”
Honor sighed with resignation and said, “Well, you think about what I said, quacky or not.” He turned back to Wenssler, again placed his hands on the temples, and repeated, “The Ninth Inverse Parallax, Professor. There’s your route to freedom. Figure it out.”
Tollefsen cried, “Mr. Honor, will you please—”
It was at that instant that Wenssler erupted. He came out of the chair with a gurgling scream, his hands at Honor’s throat, and the two of them crashed to the floor together. “Get the nines!” Wenssler yelled. “Hurry, hurry, the nines, bring them here!”
The male nurse had joined the fray, cursing and grunting and trying to pull Wenssler off of Honor. Honor had the professor’s thumbs, struggling only to lessen the pressure at his throat, and was hoarsely shouting, “The parallax, Curt, dammit, the parallax.”
Then the nurse had the professor in a double-nelson and was shoving him across the room. Tellefsen had the door open, waiting. He tossed an embittered, “I hope to hell you’re satisfied, Honor!” and followed the panting pair through the doorway.
Barbara dropped to both knees at Honor’s side. “Are you all right?” she inquired anxiously.
He assured her that he was and accepted a helping hand from his boss. “How come you suddenly know so damn much?” Clinton asked in an obviously miffed tone. “I’m so disgraced I could cry. Leon Tollefsen is the undisputed authority in this country on—”
Don Pendleton's Science Fiction Collection, 3 Books Box Set, (The Guns of Terra 10; The Godmakers; The Olympians) Page 21