”But what?” Torrez’s attention seemed to have narrowed to a tight point of focus.
He believes that, Weller thought. All I have to do now is convince him I don’t have it, that I’d have no leverage over them when I get to the Institute.
“But he wouldn’t let it out of his hands long enough for me to copy it,” Weller said. “Your boys grabbed me as I came out the door, so I couldn’t have it hidden anywhere. So all you have to do to prove I’m telling the truth is search me. ”
Torrez leaned back in his chair and studied Weller for a long moment while Weller held his breath. It would work, I am clean. I’ve turned his own logic in on him.
“Very well, Weller,” Torrez finally said. “We’ll search you all right, and I’m sure we’ll come up with nothing. I’m sure you still have some strong regressive programs running, but it really doesn’t matter any more. From here on in, you’re under total Monitor control. ”
He smiled his shark smile at Weller. “Because you’re getting what you wanted. Tomorrow morning we’re flying you to the Institute.” He pressed a button on his intercom. “Send Irv in for Mr. Weller,” he said. “Standard Institute security procedure. ”
Weller had only a short moment to savor his triumph. Then the three men who had snatched him entered the interrogation room. “Good luck, Weller,” Torrez said. “But then, you’ve already had it.” He nodded to the guards.
“This way,” said Irv. The other two pulled Weller to his feet by the elbows, hustled him down a featureless white hallway, up two flights of stairs, and into a small green cell containing only a john and a Spartan cot.
“Strip,” said Irv.
“What?”
“Take your clothes off, Weller. Standard security procedure. We’ll go through them and return them to you in the morning.”
Woodenly Weller took off his shoes, socks, trousers, and shirt and handed them to the blond Monitor.
“The shorts too,” said Irv. “Don’t be bashful.”
“What’s the matter? You think I’ve got a gun in my shorts?”
“just do it!” snarled Irv.
Weller sighed, then stepped out of his shorts, handed them over, and stood there naked; vulnerable, depersonalized.
“Now lean your hands against the wall and spread your legs.”
“What the fuck—”
“Help him!” snapped Irv.
The other two Monitors each grabbed one of Weller’s wrists and slammed his palms up against the wall, while Irv spread his legs by kicking his left foot to the side. Then he bent down and examined Weller’s rectum. “Okay, he’s clean. You can release him.”
Weller came off the wall boiling with fury and outraged dignity. But the three Monitors standing shoulder to shoulder in front of him instantly brought home the total powerlessness of his position, the futility of even making some smartass remark, which he couldn’t come up with anyway.
“Okay,” said Irv. “Sweet dreams.”
Suddenly, as if on cue, each of the other two grabbed one of his arms and whipped them behind his back in a double half nelson. Irv pulled a hypodermic out of his jacket pocket and jabbed it painfully into the pit of Weller’s right elbow.
Weller felt the sharp needle pain, then a pins-and-needles pressure traveling up his arm, then a rubbery feeling in his knees, a soft fuzziness intruding upon his sensorium.
Irv withdrew the needle, and the other two released his arms. Weller stood there for a long moment, boiling with fury, shaking with fear. He took two hesitant steps forward. His head began to whirl, his vision doubling, then tripling, and then his knees began to turn to Jell-O.
“Onto the bed,” said a distant voice.
Arms eased him backward onto the cot just as his legs went out from under him. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion through a clear but viscous fluid. “Son … of… a … bitch … ,” he heard his own voice mutter thickly as his leadened eyelids drooped toward unconsciousness.
The last thing he heard before the blackness closed in was the heavy click of the door lock.
Weller drifted up from inky dreamless sleep along a line of sparks that seemed to be traveling slowly down his right arm across his shoulder up his neck and into his head, where it expanded into a dull ballooning throb. He opened gummy eyelids to see vague towering black shapes against a sea of green. He rubbed his eyes, trying to gather his scattered thoughts as his vision slowly came back into focus.
He was lying naked on a cot in a small green room. His body felt strangely detached from his mind, heavy with a luxuriant lassitude. His thoughts seemed to be coming very slowly and somehow no cerebral event seemed to have any real import. He was somewhere in something called Monitor Central. He had been drugged. He was going to the Institute. He had met Fred Torrez. He dimly realized that wild emotions should be coursing through him, but nothing seemed important. No thought was more than a random image flitting across the surface of his mind, nothing seemed to associate itself with anything else.
The three Monitors who had brought him here were standing over his cot. One of them held a pile of clothes. Another held two empty hypodermics. All three of them were studying him. Why did they bother? He was an inert pile of putty. What possible interest could he have for anyone?
“He’s awake,” said one of the figures in black. “Let’s get him up and dressed.”
Hands gripped Weller’s arms and lifted. He seemed to float effortlessly up off the cot like a big helium-filled balloon. Nothing seemed to take any effort at all. How warm and peaceful it all was!
“Come on, Weller. Let’s get dressed.”
Clothes seemed to slip onto his body of their own accord, like live slithering things. No effort was required of him. All he had to do was float in the warm viscous air and everything would be taken care of. Wasn’t that nice? Wasn’t that better than … than … whatever… ?
Something was fitted over his head and now he was in the middle of a fluffy white cloud, just drifting along peacefully. It was much nicer than the green room and the black figures, much more soothing, far more relaxing. He was abstractly aware that hands were gripping his arms, holding him up, guiding him along through the cloud. Or rather holding him down to keep him from drifting away into the stratosphere, for his feet seemed to be skipping featherlight over some level surface. And if they weren’t holding him down, why then he would probably bounce slowly away like a big, silly beach ball.
Bounce, bounce, bounce, slowly down some stairs, losing altitude, though his head remained in the nice white cloud. Across another surface, down more stairs, another level… . He lost count. It began to seem as if he had been doing this for a very long time—years, maybe—as if it might continue forever. Forever? What was that? The concept seemed illusive. It had something to do with watches and hourglasses, but there were neither watches nor hourglasses up here in the clouds… .
Then he found himself sitting on a soft bench, with the presence of a body on either side of him. A roar and a whir, and the bench started to move. It must be a car. I must be sitting in a car. We’re going for a ride. Isn’t that nice?
For a long time or for a short time, at any rate definitely for some period of time, the car floated along, speeding up, leaning around curves, slowing down, stopping now and again, while Weller drifted peacefully in fluffy whiteness. Hie various motions of the car made him feel a little strange, as if there were a heavy balloon inside him, filled, perhaps, with water instead of air, so that it moved around more sluggishly with the motion of the car than the rest of him, wallowing and surging.
Finally the car stopped, and the engine sound died away. Hands guided Weller out of the car and onto his feet. Then the mask was taken off his head, and he was momentarily blinded by painful bright lights.
Still half-blinded he was guided across another level surface, and by the time his eyes cleared, he was standing at the entrance ramp to a small, sleek jet aircraft with two engines at the tail, all silvery and shining in the brigh
t smoggy sunlight.
“An airplane ride?” he said, his mouth all cottony. “Where are we going?”
The three black figures ignored the sounds that were coming out of his mouth, and they guided him up the ramp. The inside of the airplane was like a nice little living room: brown leather armchairs, some of them beside little airplane windows, others arranged around a small wooden table; wooden paneling, and a navy-blue carpet.
The three black figures guided him to one of the chairs around the table. But Weller couldn’t see out a window.
“Could I have a window seat?” Weller asked politely. “They’re not all taken, so could I have one, please.”
“Oh, for crying out—”
“Let the man have his window seat,” said the one with the steel-colored hair. “Maybe it’ll keep him quiet. They told us not to give him another shot unless we really had to. ”
The nice man helped Weller to his feet and guided him to a soft window seat in the middle of the cabin. His body melted into the buttery cushions and seemed to fade away, so that only his eyes were left, looking out the window across a concrete runway and a field of parched grass at a tiny control tower shimmering through the gray-blue smog, far, far in the distance. Hands fastened his seat belt to keep his body from floating up out of the seat, which would make it hard for him to look out the window. They were taking good care of him. They thought of everything.
Then he heard a sudden loud roar which went on and on and on. And then the plane began to move along the ground, so slowly you could hardly tell it was happening if you weren’t looking out your window, if you didn’t see the control tower disappearing as the plane swung around.
The plane moved along the taxiway just like a car driving down the freeway, only much slower, as if it were creeping through rush-hour traffic, though there didn’t seem to be anything else in sight. There were even white lines and symbols painted on the concrete, just like a highway.
Then the plane stopped. It pivoted like a cannon being aimed. The sound got much louder and it started to vibrate like some great beast straining at its leash. Suddenly the plane was moving again, faster and faster and faster, and then Weller felt something kick the back of his seat even as he melted further into it; there was a sudden, sharp, floating feeling that made the water balloon inside his body slosh and gurgle sending strange and not-very-pleasant waves through the clear Jell-O of his flesh.
He looked out the window and saw the ground dropping away, then tilting crazily to the right, becoming smaller and smaller and smaller. Far below he could see thousands of little toy buildings, and even little tiny toy cars moving along a toy highway. Then the world outside the window became a soft white fog for a time, just as it had been when the black figures were leading him along into the car.
When the fog cleared, Weller saw nothing but bright blue sky above and a carpet of white wool below stretching from horizon to horizon as far as he could see. It was very beautiful, and it was so incredibly peaceful, just like the white hazy feeling in his mind, just like the fluffy softness of his body melting into the seat, as featureless and undisturbed as his clear blue empty consciousness. I could drift here forever, he thought. Maybe I will. Wouldn’t that be nice? His eyelids grew sensuously heavy. After awhile he couldn’t tell whether his eyes were open or closed. Not that it mattered.
Sixteen
White clouds and blue sky, and sometimes, far below like a huge and beautifully made full-color map but without all the lettering and lines, visions of sere dun-colored desert, shoulders of furry green mountains, checkerboards of brown and green, moving past ever so slowly like time itself, like thick clear molasses.
Sometimes the colors would melt into warmy curvy shapes that floated and engulfed each other like amoebas. Sometimes the amoebas would devour each other, leaving only warm blue or velvety soft blackness. Sometimes he would see the dark figures seated around a table doing something with cards and stacks of money. Once in a while a face would peer into his and then become an amoeboid shape or a fluffy white cloud or just infinite blueness.
It lasted forever, or it lasted no time at all. How could he tell? Why would he want to bother? It was so pleasant just to float along through the softly moving shapes, riding the gentle swell of the infinite river of time, totally peaceful, totally calm, no ticking of watches or rapsing of sharp-edged thoughts to spoil the perfect peace of being a soft white cloud, of being nothing at all.
But then something happened to spoil it. He could feel a painful pressure where someone might have had ears, and the water balloon inside him seemed to rise unpleasantly upward.
Looking out his very own window, Weller saw the ground rushing up at him; low, wooded, rolling hills, incredibly lush and green. Then the world outside tilted and spiraled, and he saw tiny toy houses, open green fields, and a long gray line scribed on the ground, whirling up at him like a pinwheel.
The world straightened out and whooshed up at him. The model-railroad trees became real woods blossoming up just below the window, and the gray line on the ground became a concrete runway rolling arrow straight beneath the plane.
There was a hurricane sound which made him momentarily shut his eyes in confused terror and then a huge bump and more hurricane.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw that the plane was rolling to a stop in front of a low white building with a forest-green roof. Behind the building were the waving dark-green crowns of tightly packed trees. The forest extended around both edges of the building completely enclosing a large open area of thick green grass. They had landed in a huge grassy clearing in an endless wood. Wasn’t that nice? The trees were full of deeply green foliage tossing gently in the wind, and the grass was like a picture postcard of an English park. It was so much greener and richer than the vegetation of Southern California that it didn’t seem quite real. It was like a movie set of some African jungle, like a fairyland.
“End of the line, Weller,” a voice said. Then hands were unbuckling his seat belt and guiding him down an aisle, through a door, and out into open air, incredibly fragrant with the green smells of growing things and the rich brown odor of loamy forest floor.
They guided him down a ramp, his legs very rubbery, his head reeling with the fragrant forest smells on the sudden free breezes, the expansion of the visual universe from the cramped reality of the jet to a disorienting infinity of green.
At the bottom of the ramp a bald older man dressed in white shirt and pants as if ready for a tennis match was waiting in a green golf cart. The Monitors sat Weller down beside him. The bald man smiled at him. “Welcome to the Transformational Research Institute,” he said.
Weller smiled back at him but his mouth refused to form any words. The bald man scowled at the Monitors. “Fried to the eyeballs?” he said.
“Standard security procedure,” said the gray-haired Monitor. “He’s all yours now.”
The bald man shook his head. “That will be all,” he said to the Monitors, in what Weller thought was not a very friendly tone of voice. Then with a sudden lurch and a soft gentle hum, the golf cart drove off across the bright-green field toward the line of woods.
“I’m Dr. Irving Carson,” the bald man said with exaggerated slowness. “I suppose it’s up to me to apologize for the state you’re in. Rest assured, we don’t go in for such crudities here at the Institute.”
Weller smiled at Dr. Carson. He wondered what Dr. Carson was apologizing for. But it all seemed much too complicated to bother with. It seemed much nicer just to enjoy the ride and smell the trees than to try to figure out what all that meant.
They drove into the woods and along a complex network of concrete paths, past a series of rough wooden bungalows, a low windowless white building, and a big four-story brick structure which looked like a small, posh hotel. Through the trees, Weller glimpsed more bungalows, a swimming pool, what might have been a barn, and another low white building. The Institute seemed like a very nice place, a very private country resort for ve
ry rich people. They’ve sent me on a vacation to the country, Weller thought. Isn’t that considerate?
The golf cart pulled up beside the entrance to a small one-story building built of rough-cut gray stone. Dr. Carson checked his watch. “Dr. Bernstein has squeezed in an hour for you in thirty minutes,” he said. “But we’d better clear the cobwebs out of your mind first.”
Very gently Dr. Carson led Weller out of the golf cart, took his arm, and guided him inside the stone building. The halls were painted a soothing deep yellow with rich natural-wood moldings. There were women in crisp white nurses’ uniforms bustling about and men in doctor’s smocks. It seemed to be some kind of small hospital, though it didn’t have that awful hospital odor or that sterile hospital decor. Weller was sure he was going to like the Institute if even the hospital was so nice and cozy.
Dr. Carson led him into a small examining room filled with medical cabinets, instruments, and strange lamps. But it was painted a bright royal blue and had pretty pictures on the walls, so Weller was not at all uneasy as Dr. Carson sat him down on the edge of the examining table. This was such a nice place that he was sure the people would be very understanding and friendly and that no one would hurt him.
Dr. Carson took a hypodermic out of an autoclave, went to one of the cabinets, and came back with a vial and a cotton swab. He stuck the needle through the rubber top of the vial and filled it with clear fluid. He swabbed the pit of Weller’s right arm. “This won’t hurt at all,” he said, and stuck the needle into a vein.
As Dr. Carson slowly depressed the plunger of the hypodermic, a hard cold sensation moved up Weller’s arm, across his shoulder, and into his head. Something like cotton candy began to melt away in his mind, slowly replacing itself with a dull, throbbing ache. His consciousness seemed to sink back into his body, and he became aware that all his muscles were aching and trembling. A terrible feeling of weariness came over him.
The Mind Game Page 30