The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  For nearly two days Weller had been waiting for something to happen, for some Monitor ax to fall. He hadn’t spoken to Owen Karel since Sara had transmitted his proposal and Karel hadn’t spoken to him. But their paths had crossed several times, and each time the Monitor representative had given him a cold, withering, lingering stare. Apparently whatever was going to happen wasn’t going to be decided at Karel’s level. Was it possible that they would really buck it up directly to Steinhardt? Could it end up being as easy as all that? Sara had been avoiding speaking to him too, as if she feared contamination, as if she were determined to put as much distance between her and whatever was going to come down as possible, so it didn’t seem very likely.

  When the other shoe was finally dropped, Weller was in the kitchen at the Transformation Center washing dishes. A hand tapped him on the shoulder from behind. “Jack Weller?” Weller turned and saw a big, gross bozo in T-shirt and jeans. “Yes … ?”

  “Come with me.”

  “I’ve still got a lot of dishes to finish. …”

  “You’re to come with me right now. It’s a life directive. ” Weller shrugged, dried his hands, and let himself be led to the fourth floor, to the very same room where he had had his life-analysis sessions with Gomez. And when the door was closed behind him, it was Gomez himself who sat behind the desk, scowling and somewhat harried-looking.

  “Sit your goddamn ass down, Weller.” As Weller sat down in front of the desk, Gomez slid a piece of paper across it at him. “What the fuck is this?” he demanded.

  “Just what it says,” Weller said coldly.

  Gomez snorted. “Just because you’re screwing Maria Steinhardt, you think you can get away with this shit. Is that it?”

  Weller blanched. “You know about that?”

  “That’s a pretty stupid question, isn’t it, Weller?” Gomez said. “Not up to your usual standard. Now what the hell is all this about?”

  Weller forced himself to be calm. “You tell me,” he said.

  Gomez leaned forward on his elbows and glared at Weller. “Stop jiving me,” he snarled.

  “I’m not jiving you,” Weller said. “I made a suggestion in my professional capacity, and here I am hauled in front of you. Why?”

  “Your professional capacity is to do as you’re told,” Gomez snapped. “Not to tell the Monitors their business.”

  Studying Gomez, Weller sensed that the Monitor was not entirely on top of this situation; something was rattling him, and Gomez didn’t like it. He decided to probe deeper. “Is that what John said?”

  Gomez laughed harshly. “You think that thing got to John?” he said contemptuously. “Karel passed it up the chain to Torrez, and Torrez kicked it down to me, and none too gently either.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Weller asked ingenuously.

  Gomez reached across the desk, snatched up the proposal, balled it up in his fist, and tossed it over his shoulder onto the floor. “That’s what I’m telling you, Weller,” he said. “If it were up to me, I’d declare you a regressive right now and be done with you. You’ve gone too far.”

  Weller realized that Gomez had given himself away. He leered across the desk at the Monitor. “But it’s not up to you, is it, Gomez?” he said. “Someone has ordered you not to give me a negative life analysis. Torrez? Or—”

  “Cut it out, Weller,” Gomez snapped. “You know damn well who protected you.”

  Weller laughed. “Sticks in your craw, doesn’t it?” he said.

  Gomez flushed. He ground his hands into fists. “You’d better be a great lay, Weller,” he said. “Because as soon as Maria Steinhardt gets tired of you, your ass is grass. And that doesn’t just come from me, it comes from Torrez. ”

  “But in the meantime … ,” Weller insinuated, feeling a marvelous sense of his own power.

  “In the meantime you’d better keep your nose clean,” Gomez said. “We’re under orders not to declare you a regressive, but that’s as far as it goes. Any more of this crap, and we can still find ways of making it mighty uncomfortable for you around here.”

  It seemed to Weller that Gomez’s threat was essentially hollow; in any event he had gone much too far to turn back now. The only way out was to press on. “What about my proposal?” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “I want it to go to John.”

  Gomez slammed his fist on the desk. “I told you. Torrez himself vetoed it. That’s the end of it. ”

  “Not good enough,” Weller said quietly.

  “Not good enough?” Gomez shouted. “What the hell do you mean, not good enough?”

  “I mean I don’t accept it,” Weller said evenly.

  “I don’t give a shit if you accept it or not; that’s the way it is.”

  “Is it?” Weller said softly. “Is it really? You’ve got a choice, Gomez. You can transmit my proposal to John through the regular Monitor channels… or I go the alternate route. You and Torrez won’t look so good if John overrules you personally, now will you?”

  Gomez gaped. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Oh, wouldn’t I? You’ve just told me that my ass is grass if Maria stops protecting me. That’s my hole card. What do I have to lose by betting my whole stake on it?”

  Gomez half leaped out of his chair, raging. “I’m warning you, Weller!” he screamed. “You lay off or—”

  “Or what?” Weller sneered contemptuously.

  Gomez subsided back into his chair. “Don’t underestimate us,” he said. “If you push this thing any further, it’s Coventry for you.”

  “Coventry?”

  “One step from being declared a regressive,” Gomez said. “And not such a large step at that. You’ve been warned. You can take it as being official. ”

  Weller stood up. “Do you have anything more to say?” he asked.

  Gomez sat there silently, as if disbelieving his own senses. “Then I’ll be going if it’s okay with you,” Weller said. Holding his breath, he walked to the door. Gomez was silent. Weller opened the door, glanced back at the immobile Gomez, and stepped through into the hallway.

  “Motherfucker!” he heard Gomez whisper to empty air as he closed the door behind him.

  “Hot shit!” Weller exclaimed to himself. You played that beautifully, kid, he told himself. From here on in, the name of the game is escalation.

  Maria Steinhardt lay naked on her bed, her head propped up on one elbow, staring at Weller, who sat up against the headboard looking down at her like the Great Sphinx. “You realize, love,” she said, “that you are in my power. Fred Torrez was ready to declare you a regressive, and I don’t think you fully realize what that means. Trying to communicate directly with John was pushing it too far; Torrez is an awful enemy for anyone to make. And now you want me to get this proposal to John in direct defiance of the Monitors! Don’t you recognize any limits?”

  “You said you’d do it,” Weller said distantly. “You said if I came up with a reason for John to want me there that you’d get it through to him. Isn’t this idea something that will appeal to him?”

  Maria laughed. “Appeal to him? It’s just the sort of egoboo that he loves to get drunk on. But how am I supposed to put it to him?”

  “Tell him the truth,” Weller said. “Tell him that the Monitors blocked the proposal and that I appealed directly to you.” Maria scowled. “Don’t you realize that telling him that would be telling him that you’re directly defying a Monitor life directive?”

  “So what?” Weller said.

  “So what? So if John doesn’t like it, there’s no way I can protect you from him.”

  “You think that’s going to happen?”

  Maria sat up beside him. She shrugged. “With John, even I don’t always know,” she said. “Don’t forget, he’ll read your Monitor dossier, maybe even talk it over with Torrez. Anything the movement knows about you, John will know.” Weller reached out a hand and flicked at her nipple. “Including what’s going on here?” he asked.
“Is that what you’re afraid of?”

  “You really think he doesn’t know about us already? You think I could go to bed with anyone without John knowing? You think when I stopped Torrez from declaring you a regressive, he didn’t report it to John?”

  “So when you present my proposal to John, he’ll know exactly where it’s coming from and why?” Weller said. “You think that’ll make him turn it down and ax me without ever talking to me?”

  “On the contrary, pet,” Maria said. “He’ll want to meet you. It’ll probably get you into the Institute. But have you given any thought to getting out?”

  Weller felt a slight twinge of dread. He hadn’t given too much thought to how he would get Annie and himself out… . But the Master Contact Sheet, was damned good blackmail material, and the fail-safe copies had already been mailed.

  And ever since he had begun this course of action, ever since his first night with Maria, his sense of his own power had been growing. There wasn’t anything logical about it. It was a psychic thing, a sense of more fully inhabiting his own skin, perhaps something as simple and irrational as a slow and gradual rediscovery of the possibilities of his own courage. The way he had gotten away with defying Gomez had been the capper. Now he was beginning to feel that there was nothing he would not try, nothing he would not dare.

  “You let me worry about that,” he said, surprised at the ominous strength he heard himself putting into his own voice.

  Maria must have heard it too, for she seemed to shrink back from him slightly. “What if I decide I just don’t want to do it?” she said.

  Weller ran a hand teasingly through her pubic hair. “Then you lose my lovely young bod,” he said. On impulse he added, “As well as my goodwill.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Maria asked uneasily. Weller felt a streak of cold cruelty leaping from his core to his mouth, like a sudden dagger drawn from a hidden scabbard. “You’re always kidding me about working for some agency,” he said lightly. “What if it isn’t a joke?”

  Maria’s eyes widened. “You’re not serious?” she whispered. “Did I say I was?” Weller answered ambiguously. “But what if I was? What if something bigger and stronger than Transformationalism were closing in?”

  “What could that be?” Maria said scornfully. But there was the slightest edge of nervousness in her voice.

  Weller laughed. “The federal government,” he said. “Maybe even the Mafia …”

  “The Mafia … ? Oh really!”

  Weller shrugged. “Transformationalism is a large business with a lot of useful contacts,” he said. “Might make an attractive-looking meal to an even bigger fish. Someone might want to make you a merger offer you couldn’t refuse.”

  “You’re not serious …”

  “Did I say I was?” Weller repeated archly. “But if I was, who ended up protecting whom might turn out to be a horse of a different color …”

  Maria studied him narrowly. “You’re just playing a game with me, right?” she said.

  “Right.” Weller said fatuously. “I’m just playing a game with you.”

  They stared into each other’s eyes for a long, silent moment. “And you’re just playing the same game with me,” Weller said evenly. “You’re going to speak to John as you promised to.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Aren’t you?”

  Maria smiled at him, somewhat nervously, somewhat wantonly. “If you want to play that game, I’ll go along with you,” she said. She laughed. “I wish I really believed you. I find something feral about it. I think it’s turning me on. Grrr!”

  She leaned over and sunk her teeth into Weller’s earlobe, a really hard bite that sent a flash of pain to his brain. He tried to pull away, but she hung on, gnawing and growling. She rolled over onto him, reaching between his thighs.

  Something snapped inside Weller—perhaps it was the sharp pain, perhaps it was the persona he had assumed, perhaps it was the need to ram the lesson home, perhaps all three. He threw his arms around Maria and wrestled her off of him. He slapped her lightly across the cheek; she gasped, more in surprise than pain, and released his ear.

  Weller flipped her over onto her stomach, pinioning her to the bed at the waist with his hands, raised his torso above her, spread her legs, and thrust between them.

  “No! No!” Maria screamed in shock and outrage.

  “No?” Weller snarled. “You’re telling me you don’t want it?” He laughed wildly and drove deeper.

  Maria screamed in pain, but began to move her body against his, and soon the tone of her screams lowered, became a mewling of pain mixed with pleasure as she thrashed and ground slowly against him, impaled like a vassal, hating it and loving it at the same time.

  Weller found himself stunned at what he was doing, astonished at his own sadism, and even more astonished at how much it pleased him to have Maria Steinhardt writhing in pain and pleasure beneath him. He snarled gutturally and found himself going with it completely—the savagery, the feral animal pleasure, the sophisticated mental power trip— with a demonic energy he had never felt before. He was a stranger to himself. The Jack Weller that had been would not be capable of something like this.

  But that was in another country, and besides the lad was dead.

  Weller entered the lobby of the Transformation Center at six fifteen, after an unusually long shooting day, feeling bone weary and piano-wire tense. Two days now and he had heard nothing from Maria Steinhardt. He had no idea how long it might take for her to speak to Steinhardt, nor how long it would take Steinhardt to react, nor what form the reaction might take if it turned out to be negative.

  But the tension of waiting was becoming unbearable. At the studio Sara was totally ignoring him, and even Georgie and Shano seemed reluctant to be seen in conversation with him, as if word of what he was doing had filtered down to their level. Even his own crew seemed rather taciturn and sullen, thought that might just be an extension of his own paranoia in an admittedly paranoid situation.

  Weller paused at the gate desk, waiting to be recognized by the guard and passed through to the inner lobby. But instead of just nodding and passing him through, the guard pointed silently to a piece of paper taped to the front of the desk. “What… ?”

  Silently, insistently, the guard jabbed his finger at the notice. Grunting, Weller bent over slightly and read it:

  NOTICE: GENERAL LIFE DIRECTIVE

  Jack Weller has been placed in Coventry by directive of the Monitors until further notice. No member of this Transformation Center may speak to Jack Weller except in the necessary course of relaying official directives, instructions, or information authorized over the signature of Benson Allen. Failure to obey this directive will result in one week’s Coventry. Second offenses will be considered regressive behavior.

  Weller stared at the guard in disbelief. The guard pointedly looked away, then buzzed him through the gate. Woodenly Weller walked to the bank of elevators. Another copy of the same notice was taped to the wall between the two doors. There was another Coventry notice inside the elevator. And between the elevator doors on his floor. And further down the hall near his room. What was this juvenile horseshit? Did they expect anyone to take this boarding-school hazing tactic seriously? Did they expect him to take it seriously?

  He took a quick piss, washed his hands, and went down to the dining room, where he spotted Coventry notices outside the entrance, at the head of the food line, and on the garbage bins. The silly fucking things were everywhere.

  He got a plate of franks and beans and potato salad at the steam tables, where the servers wouldn’t meet his eyes, and looked around for a place to sit. This time, perversely, he wanted to sit with people he knew, with some of the nerds who had been sucking up to him, to blast this stupid Coventry thing apart before it really got started. Tina Davies was sitting at the end of a table opposite Ted and Lori Brenner. There was an empty seat next to Tina, and Weller took it.

  “Hi, Tina,” he said. “How’s it going?”

>   Tina stared down at her plate and continued to shovel spaghetti into her mouth.

  “Ted? Lori?”

  They wouldn’t even meet his eyes.

  “What the fuck is this?” Weller snapped. “Are you people actually going along with this juvenile nonsense?”

  Tina gave him a furtive look; Ted and Lori ignored him completely. It was beginning to get to Weller. The whole thing was like some kind of stupid high-school joke, and it was getting on his nerves on exactly that sort of cretinous level.

  “What’s the matter with you assholes?” Weller said conversationally. “You have shit for brains?” Still no response. This was no longer funny. Weller was really getting pissed off, and now he was determined to get a rise out of these bastards.

  “You stupid motherfuckers!” he shouted loudly. “You spineless dog-faced baboons! Don’t you have any minds of your own?”

  The noise level in the dining room suddenly dipped as everyone looked to find the source of this unseemly disturbance. But when people saw who was doing the shouting, they immediately looked away again. Weller had the feeling he could have whipped out his cock and pissed in his plate and no one would dare to notice.

  Tina, Ted, and Lori exchanged nervous looks. Then, without a word the three of them got up at once and moved to another table, far across the room.

  “Son of a bitch,” Weller muttered to himself. He was surprised at how quickly this silent treatment had gotten under his skin. It was not so much that he craved the conversation of any of these nerds as it was anger and amazement that people who had been pestering him for attention for weeks were actually obeying this asshole directive to the letter. As if they had no minds of their own at all. Was that what this was supposed to be too, in addition to everything else—a demonstration of total Monitor power?

  Weller looked around the dining room. Two tables away, Harry, the aging nobody who wanted to be a processor, sat alone picking at his food. Weller decided to give old Harry a try; no one had been forcing his company on him more than Harry. Weller picked up his tray, walked over, and sat down across the table. Harry deigned to look up at him with a sad, somewhat wistful expression.