The Mind Game

by Norman Spinrad

  Steinhardt lowered his gaze to stare at Weller, and suddenly there seemed to be something crazed and monstrously monomaniacal leering at him across the breakfast table. “How do you like that little wet dream?” Steinhardt said. “The entire human race graven in the image of yours truly!”

  Weller reacted from the gut. “It makes me want to puke,” he said.

  Steinhardt broke up into rumbling laughter. He reached across the table and thumped Weller on the shoulder. “Ah, I think my instincts were right about you,” he said. “My own fantastic processing techniques have put a head on your shoulders.”

  “Huh?”

  “Huh?” Steinhardt mimicked. “You’re right, of course. It’s a stupid, disgusting, regressive idea, the exact opposite of what I’m determined to leave behind when I shuffle off to Buffalo. ”

  “I think you left me around the last bend,” Weller muttered.

  “Don’t worry,” Steinhardt said, “you’ll get used to it.” He steepled his hands and seemed to become more serious.

  “The story I’ve just told you is the history of all previous religions, social movements, and attempts to create higher levels of human consciousness,” he said. “A hotshot like me comes along, shatters generations of fixed consciousness, reignites ongoing change, and sets up a movement to perpetuate the situation. If he doesn’t end up swallowing his own hype—a long assumption in this racket, let me tell you—it works as advertised as long as he’s alive to keep throwing off changes. But once a Buddha, Jesus, or Steinhardt croaks, he becomes a graven image at the service of the surviving organization.”

  Steinhardt paused, took a sip of whiskey, shook his head sadly. “You see, we shaved apes are entropy junkies. People get tired of free consciousness, they get a sick craving for a new, stable mind freeze. And what do they do? When the psychic liberator is no longer around to kick them in the ass, the organization he’s left behind turns him into a new object of worship, iconized and Madisonavenuized for all time. In his name they turn his historical image into an instrument of the very kind of brain-freeze he’s busted his balls to destroy. The legacy of Jesus is Billy Graham. In the name of revolutionaries like Marx and Lenin we have a bureaucratic state. The party of Lincoln ends up as the party of old Tricky Dick. You’re dead right, m’boy. It is to puke!”

  Weller sat there transfixed while this monologue went on. This weird old drunk was apparently also an authentic visionary thinker. It didn’t add up to a coherent whole; Weller couldn’t reconcile these two Steinhardt personas no matter how much he tried. And he had no idea of what the man was getting at.

  “But what does all this have to do with why I’m here?”

  Steinhardt leaned forward and stared at Weller with cold, penetrating energy. “When I’m dead, I don’t want my assorted disciples and ten-percenters to own my image,” he said. “I don’t want them turning the memory of John B. Steinhardt into a billboard behind which the usual religion-money-power-mind-control shell game does business as usual. I want my memory to keep generating changes despite the legacy of Transformationalism, to be a continued source of creative chaos. And that’s why you’re here, Jack, that’s why I need a director. ”

  Suddenly Steinhardt went through another change, took a sip of coffee, and went back to eating his eggs. “And that’s also why I don’t want to make commercials,” he said. “They’ll have me making too many commercials when I’m dead as it is. What I want to make while I’m still around sniffing the flowers is a land of anticommercial. A video-taped last testament to be released far and wide when I croak. A half hour? An hour? Six hours? I dunno. We’ll have to figure that out.”

  He waved his fork in the general direction of Weller’s face. “But I’ll tell what I want it to be like,” he said. “I want it to be full of internal self-contradictions. I want to contradict all the bullshit Transformationalism is inevitably going to say about me for the next thousand years, and then I want to contradict my own contradictions. I want to reveal myself as a drunken teenybopper-fucking pathological liar as well as a saintly liberator of human consciousness. I want to tell dirty jokes and frame timeless epigrams. I want to live on on tape completely independent of Transformationalism, and I want a testament that will make it absolutely impossible for anyone to ever write the bottom line on John B. Steinhardt.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Weller said uncertainly.

  “Old Mao Tze Tung almost got the idea with his notion of permanent revolution,” Steinhardt said. “But he got too caught up in his own ego trip and ended up with a society forever consulting his Little Red Book of epigrams. It’s fun to be a god when you’re alive, but when I’m dead, I want to revert to the public domain, as it were. ”

  Perhaps it was the double dose of eptifier, or perhaps the sheer force of Steinhardt’s personality, but Weller felt his mind opening up to encompass this weird concept. A tape of Steinhardt supporting and debunking Transformationalism at the same time would indeed counterbalance the power of Transformationalism in the only way possible, with a dialectic between the ghost of Steinhardt and the inheritors of the movement he had founded. The Steinhardt testament would by definition always have to be the last word on the subject, but if it were properly made, no one would be able to be sure what it said. Even in death Steinhardt would remain the center of the movement, and the center would be void. The idea had style.

  “Well, what do you think?” Steinhardt asked. “Could you help me put together something like that?”

  “I gather you would write the script?” Weller said dryly.

  “Script?” Steinhardt bellowed. “Write? Are you nuts? I’ll get gibbering drunk and babble at the camera for about thirty hours. Then you’ll go shoot a lot of footage here and at the centers and put together something vaguely coherent out of the whole mess.”

  “Uh … I’d be willing to give it a try,” Weller said. “When do you want to start?”

  His head felt as if it were flying off in all directions at once. He was overwhelmed by Steinhardt, appalled by the arduous task that was being proposed, challenged by the concept and by the prospect of working with this incomprehensible creature. And he suddenly realized that no thought of Annie had crossed his mind during the whole conversation. His reason for being here in the first place had been driven from his mind by the force of Steinhardt’s personality. How in the world can I manipulate this conversation for two seconds? he wondered. How can I dare to bring up what I came here for in the first place? Somehow, at this moment, before Steinhardt, his own petty personal problems seemed gnatlike, picayune, beneath cosmic notice.

  “Not so fast,” Steinhardt said. “I didn’t say you had the job yet. I was just asking whether you wanted to try out for it. I mean, how can I be completely sold on a character like you, who wormed his way in here by fucking my wife, who’s played games with nerds like Garry Bailor, who’s driven some of my best Monitors screaming up the walls, who’s got poor old Doc Bernstein shitting in his pants?”

  But Steinhardt spoke in such a genial—indeed almost affectionate—tone that Weller could hardly work up even a healthy twinge of paranoia.

  Steinhardt took a final sip of coffee and stuck his cigar back in the comer of his mouth. “So I’m assigning you a guide who will also be a commissar,” he said. “Someone who will stick close to you and give me a better bottom line on where your consciousness is really at. You’ll spend some time getting the feel of the operation here and shooting the shit with me from time to time. You’ll be trying to sell yourself to me just as you would any other producer—while your guide reports back. Then we’ll see what’s what. It’s your big break, Jack, make the most of it. If you don’t blow it, you’ll be a big man in the movement. Not only that, you’ll share a little piece of my ineffable immortality. But there’s plenty of time, I ain’t about to kick off by next Tuesday.”

  Steinhardt rose somewhat ponderously from his recliner. “Now then,” he said impishly, “shall we go downstairs and meet your comrade
commissar?”

  He led Weller down the spiral staircase, into the vestibule, along the hall, and into a huge living room whose major feature was a giant sunken conversation pit with the huge flowing abstract sculpture growing in its center like some science-fiction tree. Seated alone at the far side of the pit and partially hidden by the sculpture from the angle at which they had entered was a woman wearing a white blouse and tennis skirt.

  As they rounded the sculpture and she came into full view, Weller’s heart skipped a beat and a big hollow balloon exploded in his stomach, sagging him at the knees, sending blood rushing in waves to his head.

  The woman in white was Annie.

  But a changed Annie. Her long blond hair had been cut short into a severe pageboy. Something was subtly different about her mouth. And her eyes. … They were pretematurally bright, but it was a cold vitality; younger, older, timeless as glacial ice.

  She rose to meet them, staring evenly at Weller with an absolutely unreadable expression. For his part, Weller could not find a word to say; his whole being vibrated with an immense silence, an echoing emptiness filled with half-formed memories, with anticipated expectations of this moment that had nothing to do with the reality itself. The whole world seemed to funnel down to a point centered between her eyes.

  It was Steinhardt who broke the silence with a great booming laugh. “Jack, meet your guide and comrade commissar,” he said. “And let this be a lesson to you, kiddo. You were promised you’d be reunited with your wife when you were sufficiently transformed. Well, how do you like your ultimate processor, Charlie?”

  He laughed again, took Annie’s hand, placed it in Weller’s, and drew them together by throwing his arms wide around both of their shoulders. “For the moment, at least, you have my blessings upon your union, chilluns,” he said. He withdrew his arms, walked away, waved his hand, shook his head, and left the room rumbling with laughter.

  They stood there alone staring at each other like long-lost lovers, like blind dates, like strangers. “God,” Weller finally said, “I just don’t know what to say.”

  Annie smiled, a thin ghost of smiles remembered. “Neither do I.”

  Then abruptly they were in each other’s arms, bodies pressed together, shapes fitting into well-remembered shapes, Ups tasting well-remembered lips, and for a while it seemed to Weller that months of time had been annihilated, as if this were only one more in an endless series of embraces down through the years, as if the space between this time and the last had never existed.

  Yet as their tongues touched and their bodies moved on each other, he came to feel a subtle alienness, the feeling of the first touch of a new lover; not so much the thrill of fresh flesh, but rather an indefinable psychic distance, a subliminal newness.

  They parted and sank down onto the upholstered Up of the conversation pit.

  “It’s over,” Weller sighed. “It’s really over.”

  Annie laughed. “That’s funny,” she said. “I was about to say it was just beginning.”

  A nervous tremor went through Weller’s body. This moment was nothing like anything he had anticipated. Words, even coherent feelings, were coming so hard. No time had passed since she left. A thousand years had gone by. He couldn’t get it together. “Well, how the hell are you?” he asked inanely.

  “Great,” she said. “Fulfilled. Whole. And you, Jack? They haven’t told me much. Just enough to write those two letters, and then a lot of Monitor security silence …”

  “I’ve gotten here,” Weller said.

  “So you have.” Annie broke out a great big old-time smile that began to warm the strange ice around Weller’s heart. “So you have!”

  She hugged him fiercely. “I have missed you!” she said. “It’s been fantastic, but it hasn’t been easy. It’s been a long lonely time. …”

  She rubbed her cheek against his. “If I hadn’t known it was the right thing for both of us, I don’t know whether I would’ve been able to go through it just for myself. But all that’s over now. You’ve come back to me transformed. And you’re going to be working directly with John. If I didn’t love you so much, I’d be green with envy.”

  The cold, distant feeling that had begun to dissipate began to close in on Weller again. For even now, in what should have been a personal moment, a joyous moment of reunited love, the massive shadow of John B. Steinhardt still hung over them, a gigantic afterimage that would not fade, a presence that intruded upon their intimacy by the very force of the man’s absence. Weller had the urge to grab Annie’s hand and run—out of the house, through the woods, over the fences, past the dogs, three thousand miles back in space and time to their house in long-lost, long-ago California.

  “Hey, can we get out of here?” he said. “Is there someplace we can be alone?”

  Annie kissed him lightly on the lips. “Sure,” she said. “I’ve got my own cabin in the Colony. But it’s going to be our place now. You’re authorized to move in with me. It’s a new beginning for us. Ah, it’s so wonderful the way things fall into place when you have the courage to ride the changes!”

  She hugged him again, took his hand, and pulled him to his feet. “Come on!” she said. “Let me show you our new home.” Weller forced a happy smile and a bouncy walk as she led him out of Steinhardt’s house. Why, he wondered, do I feel like this? I should feel happy, I should feel I’ve come home, I should feel I’ve won. Why can’t I let joy into my heart? What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel this dread? Why do I feel I’m holding hands with a stranger?

  Eighteen

  Birds sang, sunlight poured through the treetops, and Annie was babbling excitedly as they walked along the pathways of the Institute to God-knows-where. The air, the effort of his own body, the presence of Annie beside him, the rap that he was simply letting wash over him, all combined to relieve Weller of the pressure of his own thoughts. We’ll just walk through the woods and then make love, and we won’t have to think of anything for a while… .

  “… such high-energy people at the Colony. Maybe we can even rig up a mobile unit for you while you’re working with John. We should really get some meaningful results out of that!”!As Annie paused at the crest of a gentle slope crowned with trees, Weller realized that he had lost all track of whatever it was she had been talking about. And she was, apparently, talking about something that meant a lot to her. “The Colony?” he said. “What’s that? You keep talking about it, but I’m afraid I’ve been too happy to pay much attention.”

  Annie led him through the line of trees. In the hollow beyond Weller saw perhaps two dozen bungalows shaded by trees and clustered around a low white building. He thought he recognized the scene from yesterday’s walking tour. And sure enough, when he took a closer look, there was the fence surrounding the area and the guarded gate.

  “The Colony,” Annie said, nodding in the direction of the cluster of bungalows.

  “Yeah, but what is it? What goes on?”

  Annie looked at him peculiarly. “Don’t you know?” she said. “It’s one of the few projects under John’s personal directive; it’s got top priority. We’ve got about twenty residents now—writers, painters, sculptors, even a photographer. ”

  “You mean Transformationalism is running some kind of artist’s colony?” Weller said with some surprise. “What on earth for? As a reward for creative people in the movement?”

  “Oh no,” Annie said, “it’s not for movement people. Everyone has to be a working professional with real credits. They get three months free room and board and unlimited free processing while they work on their approved projects.”

  “In return for which?” Weller asked. There had to be a quid pro quo. Selflessly bankrolling a playpen for indigent artistes seemed way out of character for Steinhardt.

  “In return for which they serve as subjects for our experiments with creativity,” Annie said.

  “What sort of experiments?” Weller asked, with a picture of some diabolical Frankenstein laboratory in his head.
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br />   “They’re circuited into brainwave monitors while they’re actually doing their creative work,” Annie said. “Were recording creative consciousness so we can monitor the changes different Transformational processes make in their creativity. So we can try out different eptifier formulas. ”

  “What for?”

  “What for?” Annie said, dumbfounded. “So there’ll be no more writer’s blocks. No more down days on the set with you dragging yourself home in a black funk. We’re going to be able to optimize creative consciousness with eptifiers and new processes. Some day doing creative work is going to be a conscious function that you can turn on like a faucet. We’re going to take all the agony and frustration out of it. We’re going to turn creative consciousness into a permanent state of mind.”

  The notion had to be seductive to anyone who had ground his way through day after day of deadening hackwork, but Weller’s mind didn’t get caught up in that for very long. His consciousness was focused on Annie. He had never seen her so totally into what she was doing, not for what she might get out of it, but for the thing itself. But what the hell was she doing?

  “You didn’t say anything about actors,” he said. “What are you doing to optimize your creativity, Annie?”

  “Oh, I’m beyond all that,” she said breezily. “You have no idea what a relief it is. There was never anything creative about my so-called career. I was just trying to become a movie star; rich, famous, a wet-dream fantasy for guys sitting there in the dark watching me on the screen. It was all just a super ego trip. I was empty inside, and all I was doing was trying to fill that empty space with fame and adulation.”