“What happened to our passenger, sir?” Pearlman said, “that Juan fellow? I looked away for a moment and now he's gone. The two of them were standing on the highway, talking, and now there's just the one, the sandy haired one, and he's walking down the road by himself.”
They looked out the windows, the mystery heightening. “He’s escaped,” Simon said quietly. “He’s escaped the comic book world.”
“I'll go out and take a look, sir,” Shallcross said. He climbed down out of the aircar and walked to the highway and back again, shaking his head. “No sign of him, sir,” he said, climbing back aboard.
“All right,” Simon sighed, “We'll make one pass with the ship and then head on back to Denver.”
They buttoned up and Pearlman took the ship on a low, slow circle of the area. Juan Marie Albergest was nowhere in sight.
“Is the war over, sir?” Shallcross said. “If it is, then I’d like to stop off in Cleveland. I haven't seen my family in a long time.”
“Chicago for me, sir,” Pearlman said. “If the war's over, that is.”
“The war’s over, gentlemen,” Simon grinned, “and our first stop is Cleveland.”
Shallcross yahooed and Pearlman gave a thumbs-up. He banked the aircar into a long, gentle climb to the west, heading for Cleveland. Simon looked out the window at the slowly receding earth and wondered if he too, would ever escape.
44
“Mr. Albergest is back!” Tomas cried, and everyone rushed to the monitors.
“By God, you're right!” Thorstenssen bellowed, “power up that damn portal Amanda, I'm going after him!”
“He just seemed to appear, Professor,” Tomas explained, “walked right into the camera field, as if he just came in the door. There must have been a malfunction in the equipment and he's been sitting in the singularity for two hours.”
They watched Juan Marie walk over to the man on the floor and bend over him, feeling his pulse, pulling back an eyelid. The man stirred and moved his arms, the first real movement he’d made in over twelve hours. Juan Marie helped the man sit up, positioning him against the dresser for support. The man moved his arms and legs as if to restore circulation. They seemed to be talking, and the man on the floor smiled and shook his head in bewilderment.
“Portal ready,” Amanda said, and Thorstenssen wasted no time. He jumped in and in a few minutes he emerged in the bedroom.
“Who's this?” Simon said, startled to see a full-grown man suddenly materialize in the center of the bedroom.
Juan Marie looked up and said, “Jorgim! Good to see you, though I must say, both unexpected and unnecessary.”
“I was concerned for your safety, amigo,” he said. “You disappeared for a few hours.”
“Yes, and I shall tell you about it one day, during a long weekend in the mountains, perhaps. I certainly do not intend to tell the story while sober.”
Thorstenssen smiled and extended a hand. “Jorgim Thorstenssen,” he said.
Simon got to his feet and took it. “Simon Pure. Any idea what's going on here?”
Standing in the middle of the bedroom, they told him of portals and transparencies, of alternate universes and comic book worlds, and when they were finished they wished him luck and entered the portal and were gone. He sat on the bed for a while, opened a shade and found it near morning. Then he put the comic book back on the dresser and turned out the lights. He got in the rental car and drove to the airport.
Meanwhile, not many miles away, in a hospital in Columbus, a monitor beeped and the duty nurse hurried to the patient's room.
“Awake, are you?” the nurse smiled. “I’ll have to inform Dr. Kellerman immediately.”
“The dog is gone,” Ada Shallcross said weakly, her thin white hair framing a frail and peaceful face, a remark accepted without comment by the nurse, who assumed the old woman had been dreaming.
“And I saw my son,” Ada Shallcross said, smiling. “He was just here. He looks so grand in his uniform. He said he's come to take me home.” She smiled radiantly and closed her eyes for the last time.
45
Simon took the better part of a week to decide to talk to Dr. Posner. He had driven from the Shallcross house straight to the airport where he’d caught an early morning flight to Philadelphia. He was home by early afternoon, his mind in turmoil. He had very vivid memories of events occurring over many days, and yet he knew he had entered the Shallcross bedroom only yesterday evening.
He hadn’t spoken to Marykate about it, though she’d sensed something was disturbing him when he walked into the office very near quitting time.
“How was Cleveland?” she said brightly, but he only grunted and she returned to her work.
He expected the events of the comic book world to fade with time, but the memories, or dreams as he’d taken to thinking of them, did not recede. After several days he called Guyton-Brown.
“The old woman died a few days ago,” Guyton-Brown said. “I asked Dr. Kellerman to do a post-mortem brain scan, and the black spot was gone. I’ve seen the slides, and the dog is gone.”
“Very interesting,” Simon said.
He tried to tell the story of Tal Avenger to Posner, but he found he couldn’t tell it coherently. He began with the call from Guyton-Brown, and took it from there, but the events seemed not to proceed logically from that point. Dr. Posner had seen this sort of thing before, an inability to tell a story sequentially, and he patiently drew Simon out.
“This woman with a dog in her brain,” he said quietly. “You believed at first it was a FantasyLife production?”
“Yes.”
“And you do not now so believe?”
“I don't know what to believe. Everything that followed from it seemed so real.”
“Is it possible a FantasyLife production could have been done in such a manner as to draw you to a certain room in Cleveland where they were set up to send you on a drug induced or hypnosis induced fantasy adventure?”
“I suppose anything is possible, but I don't think so.”
“You do recall my warning you about the dangers of these fantasy adventures?”
“I do indeed. I’ve withdrawn from the FantasyLife program.”
“A wise precaution,” Dr. Posner agreed. “Now, the sequence, as I understand it, was essentially a parable, the triumph of good over evil. You were the good, a Tal Avenger, doing battle with an evil genius, a certain Dr. Kosh.”
“Who I thought was you,” Simon grinned.
Posner smiled. “And Marykate was there, and Eloise?”
“Yes, but with different names.”
“Did you make a choice between these two women, in the course of the adventure?”
“Yes, I chose Marianna, or Marykate.”
“And what do you think that means?”
“I don't know. I'm going to ask Marykate to marry me and see what happens.”
“And the people from another universe, the watchers?”
Simon shrugged. “I don't know. I suppose I needed someone to explain it all in logical terms.”
“So even a fantasy must be explained in logical terms?”
“Of course.”
“Have you any idea what the animal sequences mean?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well,” Posner said comfortably, “we can discuss that at a later time. The love sequence with a medusa in which you were covered with snakes is an appropriate subject for an entire session.”
“I suppose so,” Simon grinned again. “The adventure certainly had a number of Freudian aspects. The thing I puzzle about, though, is what happened to all those people? Did they just disappear when I left? If Marianna is Marykate, is there a Marianna still back there? For that matter, am I still back there, am I still Tal Avenger, striding the world, battling evil?”
“What do you think?”
“I don't know what to think. When I was there, it was all so real, as real to me as this is to you.”
“Is this real to you
?”
“Yes, as real as that was.”
“Good,” Posner said, standing, ending the interview. “Same time next week?”
After Simon had gone, Dr. Posner spent some minutes recording his thoughts of the interview. He rubbed his eyes, deep in thought. So far, the adventures themselves seemed quite typical. He was concerned, however, that his patient seemed to be retreating further and further into the unreal world of fantasy. The question “Am I still back there, am I still Tal Avenger,” was very revealing, since it was clear his patient wished very much that the answer be yes. Well, that was why his patient was seeing him, and the fact the patient was seeing him was in itself a good sign, for it meant he was aware something was amiss, and was trying to find out what it might be.
He went into his small private lavatory and washed his hands. He faced the mirror, comb in hand, and was startled to see an unfamiliar face staring out at him, a grinning face, completely bald, with shaved eye ridges and a prominent, hawk-like nose. The face stared at him, eyes locked together, until Posner looked away and then back. The strange face was gone, but Dr. Posner was visibly shaken, for he recalled the words of Dr. Pure, his vivid description of Dr. Kosh, and his statement that he had the very strong feeling Kosh was Posner. He turned out the lavatory light and returned to his office, staring out the window at a gray December day. He didn’t like this latest development. He might even have to call a colleague to take over the case.
“No,” he said before turning again to his work, “it is not good when the analyst enters his patient's fantasy.”
46
In his apartment, deep in the lonely night, Simon Pure stirred in his sleep. Something wasn’t right, but he was powerless to do anything about it. Drowsily, he felt himself begin the long slide into the welcome darkness. Unresisting, he heard the metronome begin its count. With a contented sigh, he let himself go, rejoicing in the encompassing dark, rejoicing in the pleasurable anticipation. He was Tal Avenger, and he was going home.
“Marianna,” he breathed aloud. “Marianna.”
At the Institute for Time History at the University of Sao Paulo, where the portal remained in place, monitoring the bedroom in 14LQ638, even though there had been no transparencies for a week, the door opened to Professor Thorstenssen's office and Amanda stuck her head in. “The transparencies are back,” she said.
Thorstenssen hurried to the control room. On the monitors the familiar tiny bedroom was once again superimposed by a colored transparency.
“Can you make it out?” Thorstenssen said quietly.
“It looks like a snow scene, Professor,” Tomas said. “There's a fence, and some trees. It looks kind of flat, like farmland.”
The transparency shimmered and disappeared, to be replaced by another.
The new panel showed a big black aircar sitting on the snow-covered field. A big white star was painted on its side, and inside the star the blue silhouette of a winged shoe, the Talaria of the god Mercury, patron of the swift, friend of the daring. The door of the aircar was open, and the figure of a woman stood by the figure of a man. The man was looking off into the distant trees. The words in the balloon above the female figure said, NO ONE HERE, SIMON.
The words in the man’s balloon said, HE’S HERE SOMEWHERE, MARIANNA, I CAN FEEL HIM!
Another story had begun.
CHRYSALIS
Copyright © 2011 by Walter Erickson
ISBN 1456491857
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, andany resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book was printed in the United States of America
For my wife, my children and my grandchildren, and especially for my niece Christine, for her invaluable assistance and advice.
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