“Damn it, Jack, won’t you ever stop being such a regressive?” Annie snapped. “Won’t you ever learn to trust John?”
“Trust John!” Weller shouted. “How much trust do you think this fucking number shows in me?”
Oh, my God! Of course. Schmuck that you are, Weller, to believe that a guy like Steinhardt is going to take you on faith or swallow his own bullshit! This is the acid test, kiddo. You gotta prove your loyalty by putting yourself totally in my power, bucko! No way to con yourself through this one; it’s either yes or no. He could all but hear Steinhardt telling it to him.
Weller forced some semblance of calm into his voice. “Don’t you see what this is, Annie?” he said. “Damn it, are you totally blind? Goons, electrified fences, guard dogs, and now this. What’s it going to take to show you where John’s coming from? Gas ovens? Firing squads? Flaming toothpicks under your fingernails?”
Annie’s lower lip trembled. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh Lord … ,” she whispered. “Oh my God…”
Weller put his arm tenderly around her shoulders. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “It’s pretty hard when you get your nose rubbed in it.”
Annie’s whole body began to shake. She began to sob. “Hey, it’s not that bad, babes,” Weller cooed, stroking her hair. “I’m not such a jerk that I walked in here without a ticket out. I can get us out of here. We’ll be home soon, and before you know it, this will all be a funny story to tell at parties.” He kissed her on the cheek and said with much more confidence than he felt: “It’s a promise.”
Annie choked back her tears, pulled away from him, and looked at him, dumbfounded. “What… ?”
“I’ve got ’em by the balls,” Weller said, trying to pump as much confidence into his voice as he could muster. “I’ve got material John can hardly afford to have made public. They’ll have to let us go. ”
Annie’s eyes widened. “You’re going to blackmail Transformationalism?”
“You could call it that,” Weller said with a certain satisfaction.
Annie shrank away from him in loathing. “After all the transformations you’ve been through, haven’t you learned anything?” she said.
“Haven’t you?” Weller snapped back. And as he spoke, he was transported against his will to a cold clear mountaintop where he saw at once that he had lost her.
“Look, it’s not too late, Jack,” Annie said, her voice now trembling with desperation. “I can forget what I’ve heard. You’ve changed, you’ve grown, you’ve been transformed, you’ve been chosen to work personally with John. And you’re going to throw all that away? For what? Because you can’t let go of an old instantaneous persona that isn’t even you anymore?” But he was seeing her now from an anesthetizing distance, from the other side of the great divide. There she sat, lovingly beckoning him down into the pit. For how long had it really been over between them before this moment of truth had finally forced him to face it? She was his for the taking, but she had become something he did not want to love—a ghost, a horribly distorted doppelgänger of the lost Annie that had once been his. But that woman no longer existed. This was a stranger.
“It’s over, Annie,” he said. “You and me. Transformationalism. Mind games. All I want now is out.”
“Won’t you change your mind?” Annie pleaded. She got up off the couch and began pacing in small circles. “Look, all you have to do is sign those cards and letters now,” she said. “That’s all, I’ll even write them for you. You don’t have to change what’s in your head now, all by yourself. There are processes that can help you. All you have to do is sign those cards, and we’ll do the rest. ”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Weller said. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”
A strange lassitude of spirit came over him. He had nothing left to love, nothing left to care about, nothing left of the life that had been. Only that pinpoint of consciousness within him that said, “I’m me”—and would not let itself be snuffed out—no matter what the cost.
Annie looked down at him with sad but patronizing sympathy. This was another person. This was his Comrade Commissar. “This is the end for us?” she said distantly.
Weller stood to meet her gaze levelly. “Unless you change your mind. Unless you’ll come with me.”
She reached out to him, pulled her hand back. “Oh, Jack …” She started, fluttered around the room like a trapped bird, shaking her head and muttering to herself.
“Oh God, I don’t know. … I mean maybe … maybe there’s a way … maybe this doesn’t have to be …” A wave of indecision passed across her face. She stopped in front of him and studied his face with an unreadable expression. “Look, I’ve got to think. I’ve got to be alone by myself for a while. I’m going to take a little walk. You wait here, okay?”
She started for the door, but Weller caught her by the elbow. “Wait for what?” he said. “For you to come back with a squad of Monitors?”
She turned and looked at him coldly. “Do you really believe I’d do that?” she said.
“I find it hard to believe you wouldn’t,” Weller said sadly. “You think I’m going to rush off to get the Monitors to stop you from escaping, is that it? But you can’t escape, Jack. There’s no way out of here. The Institute is surrounded by—”
“I know, I know, a double electrified fence, guard dogs, and a fucking free-fire zone!” Weller snapped. It was true. She was right. There was no way to physically escape from the Institute, and even if there were, the long arm of the Monitors would reach out to grab him wherever he was. It didn’t matter if she got the Monitors now, or if he surrendered to them himself. There was only one avenue of escape from Transformationalism, and that was with his mind, not his feet. I’ve got to do what I’ve planned to do all along and use my insurance to talk my way free. And the way through was John B. Steinhardt.
Weller looked at Annie speculatively, and, though he was totally conscious of the process, he started to direct. From where he was now, she was one more Transformationalist, she was part of the enemy, she had to be … dealt with. “Don’t get the Monitors, Annie,” he said. “Get John.”
Annie blinked, then her mouth creased in a tiny ghost of a smile. “That’s what I was really going to do,” she said.
“I figured you would,” Weller lied. Now that he thought about it, though, he should have seen it. He shouldn’t have let his loathing for what she had become make him underestimate her like that. Who else could decide this issue? Who else would she run to when she runs away from me?
“John will know what to do,” Annie said, opening the cottage door. “John will sync our optimum life scenarios together again.”
“John is the answer, John is the way,” Weller chanted sarcastically.
“You’ll see,” she said, as she closed the door behind her. “John will know what to do.”
“And if he doesn’t, I’ll tell him!” Weller answered after she had gone.
“What’s all this crap about refusing to carry out a simple life directive? What’s this shit about blackmail threats? Why are you breaking the poor lass’s heart, you cadly bounder?”
John B. Steinhardt, in all his worldly glory, stormed into the cabin with his mouth already going at cruising speed, and by the look of him, with a bit of a glow already on. Oiled to a sheen with suntan lotion, he wore only red satin swimming trunks and a black beach towel thrown around his shoulders like a cloak. He was still clutching a half-consumed mint julep as if summoned directly from his poolside pleasures, and Weller did not suppose it was his first of the day.
Annie trailed behind him like Lois Lane after some ungodly barroom parody of Superman.
“Fuck a duck, kiddo, what’s wrong with you? I thought we had everything straightened out,” Steinhardt said, collapsing into a chair.
How long Weller had rehearsed this confrontation in his mind and how blank he had become, now that he was faced with doing the whole scene in one perfect take! He had tried to rehearse it again in
his mind while Annie went to fetch the Great I Am, but he couldn’t come up with any scenario. He was going to have to improvise, he was going to have to be himself.
“That’s right, Jack, isn’t it?” Annie said, sitting down on the couch at the opposite comer, completing yet another angle of this twisted triangle. “You and John were going to work together.”
“Are going to work together, Annie,” Steinhardt declared expansively. He gave Weller a peculiar look. “Surely we’re evolved enough to clear up a minor misunderstanding about a standard security procedure,” he said. “And that’s all this existential crisis is all about, isn’t it?” There seemed to be a definite edge of threat to his voice.
Is this his way of inviting me to let him forget about any blackmail threat for the sake of my own health? Weller wondered. Does that mean he’d rather not deal with it?
“Yeah, this is an existential crisis about a standard security procedure, John,” Weller said. “You’ve got too many standard security procedures. But when you borrow one from the Nazis, even an unevolved type like me gets the point.”
Annie shrank away from him in horror. Steinhardt gave him a look of what seemed like genuine hurt. “Come on, Iaddy-buck,” he said, “I’ve got to maintain security. This isn’t a concentration camp, is it? It’s more like the Manhattan Project. We re developing the atomic age of the mind here. We can’t risk letting just anyone get ahold of what we have.”
“Pardon me for being dense,” Weller said dryly, “but why not? If you’re supposed to be liberating minds, why don’t you give all this wonderful benign knowledge to the world? That’s what you’d be doing if you were what you pretend to be, John.”
“Don’t be a prick,” Steinhardt said more harshly. “You know as well as I do that what we have would not exactly be benign in the hands of the current holders of worldly power. They’d just use it to sell dogfood to cat owners on TV and elect themselves to office. Universal Transformational knowledge is only benign in the hands of Transformational men. Before we can safely give it to the world, we have to create a Transformational world to give it to. ”
“The ends justify the means, right?” Weller said. “Pardon me for being so 1968, John, but you’re talking like a fascist pig.”
“Fascist pig!” Steinhardt exclaimed in wounded outrage.
“I’m liberating the world from its frozen cultural matrices, its programmed consciousness, and you have the nerve to call me a fascist pig!”
“That’s ridiculously awful, Jack!” Annie echoed.
“You’re just replacing old programming with new programming of your own!” Weller said angrily. “That’s what every fascist-in-liberator’s-clothing says!”
Steinhardt leaned back into his chair, took a sip of his warming drink, and regarded Weller evenly and coolly. “I think I’m getting pissed off, bucko,” he said. “I think I’m really getting pissed off.”
“So am I,” Weller said evenly, giving him a cold, level stare back. “That’s why I want out of here. I look at what you’ve done to Annie and to me and to dozens of people I’ve met since I found out you existed, and I just wish I didn’t have to know there was any such thing as Transformationalism. I don’t care how much you like me, I don’t care what you can do for me, I think what you’re doing sucks, and I just want no part of it, okay.”
Annie goggled at him in horror, bolted from the couch, and perched herself on a chair across the room, clarifying the true geometry of the situation, even as he had finally made his rock-bottom feeling clear to both of them for the first time. And perhaps to himself as well.
“You don’t want me for an enemy, Jack,” Steinhardt said with more coldness than Weller had believed him capable of.
“You’re right. I don’t,” Weller said. “I might if I thought I could do anything about you, but I know that I can’t. You’ve taken my wife, you’ve pauperized me, you’ve cost me my job, you’ve messed with my mind, but you’ve also convinced me that you’re too big for me to try to think about revenge. It’s all too much for me, John. Just let me go.”
Steinhardt took a sip of his drink. Annie exchanged glances with him as if pleading for Weller’s boon. Steinhardt sighed, shrugged, frowned, shook his head. “Aw, come on, don’t make me feel like a bad guy,” he said unhappily. “You know I can’t let you go. You know too much. I’ve unburdened the secrets of my soul to you. You’ve fucked my wife. And you’re my favorite experiment. How can I give up on you? You’re right, I’ve fucked you over, okay? So how can I leave you in this shape? I owe it to you to get you and Annie together, to eptify your messed-up mind, and to make you healthy, wealthy, famous, and wise.”
“I don’t want any of that, John. I just want out. I’d rather we shook hands on it, but I’ll force you if I have to.”
Weller held his breath as Steinhardt tapped his fingers on the lip of his glass. Now the cards were on the table and the final hand was about to be played.
“You’re really going to try this blackmail thing on me?” Steinhardt finally said. “You’re really going to reduce it to that level?”
“Only if I have to. If you’d just agree to let each other alone, the subject would never have to come up.”
“The way you feel, it already is the subject,” Steinhardt snapped. “How can I let you go after you’ve just spent so much energy convincing me you’re a dangerous man with plenty of motivation for revenge?”
Weller’s stomach sank. Oh my God, I didn’t see that angle at all, he thought dismally. I just let my big mouth run off. “I … I didn’t mean that at all … ,” he stammered lamely. “I mean, I’m not an enemy of the movement. I don’t want to end up like Richard Golden. I just want to live my own life and let you live yours.”
Annie’s mouth twisted into a moue of distaste. “You’re groveling, Jack, it’s disgusting,” she said.
“If that’s all it is,” Steinhardt said shrewdly. He studied Weller. “How am I supposed to believe this live-and-let-live declaration from someone who admits he’s ready to blackmail me? And from someone who’s got some pretty good ammunition. I mean, Torrez is the expert, but it seems to me that Los Angeles’s corporate Master Contact Sheet might really be potentially damaging. I’m supposed to trust you not to use it?”
“You know?” Waller gasped.
Steinhardt laughed. “You think the Monitors didn’t search your house the night they grabbed you in Golden’s apartment house? You think they didn’t find it?”
“But… but if you knew, they why did you let me get this far, all the way to the Institute?”
Steinhardt took a drink, set the glass down, and floated up out of his chair. “Where better to isolate a maximum security risk?” he said.
Weller found himself scrabbling desperately for mental purchase. “But… but working on the film with you, getting drunk together, all the little games … ,” he said. “You knew where I was coming from, and you played them anyway? Like a cat with a mouse!”
“You sell yourself short, laddy-buck,” Steinhardt said, pacing the room ponderously. “And you sell me short too. All of that was sincere. I told you you were my favorite experiment, ever since you started screwing around with my wife. You’ve got balls, and you’ve got brains, and that’s what I like even when it’s fighting against me. You’re a lad after me own heart. Which is now breaking because you’re forcing me to deal with you like the stupid regressive blackmailer you’re determined to be. ”
“Please, Jack, listen to him,” Annie begged. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re throwing the best thing in your life away.”
Steinhardt perched heavily on the far end of the couch. “She’s right, you know,” he said. “But aside from that, think of what you’re trying to convince me of. That you’ve got information so damaging to Transformationalism that we’ll agree to leave you alone for fear that you’ll make it public if we don’t. Isn’t that right?”
“That’s just about the size of it,” Weller said woodenly, dazed by t
he way Steinhardt had pulled the rug out from under him.
“Well, isn’t that an even better argument for fitting you with cement overshoes and taking you for a long walk on a short pier?” Steinhardt said, putting mocking menace into his voice, or perhaps making a very serious threat in a mocking way.
But whatever Steinhardt’s true intent, he had suddenly given Weller something to cling to, he had revealed that the Great I Am knew everything in his hand but his high hole card. He doesn’t know that killing me would just cause the Master Contact Sheet to go out to the whole wide world as a general press release in the worst possible circumstance! He doesn’t know about the fail-safe mail drops.
“That’s just what my little security procedure is meant to prevent, John,” he said somewhat smugly. “I’ve multiple packets of press releases and letters to the authorities in secure mail drops. With instructions to drop them all in the mail unless they hear word to the contrary from me at short intervals. And the latest interval is almost up. If you don’t release me or if anything should ever happen to me, the shit will hit the fan.”
Steinhardt goggled at him. He seemed genuinely taken aback. “I’m supposed to believe that?” he said uncertainly. “How do I know it’s not a bluff?”
“The only way you can find out is to call me on it,” Weller said. “And neither of us would like the results of that, John.” Annie, who had shrunk back into herself during all this, now bolted from her chair, wringing her hands and looking pleadingly at Steinhardt. “I don’t want to hear any more of this, John,” she said desperately. “It’s too awful. I can’t stand watching this happen.”
“I can understand that,” Steinhardt said. “Why don’t you just leave it to me?”
Annie nodded woodenly and started toward the door. She hesitated, looked back at Weller. “Jack, unless John can help you, this is the end, this is—”
“We’ve already said good-bye, Annie,” Weller said softly. Annie nibbled at her lower lip, sobbed once, and sighed. “I guess we have,” she said. And then she was gone.
The Mind Game Page 40