Zelazny, Roger - Novel 07

by Bridge of Ashes

  "Good, good. Why don't you give him some more time to himself now—since he is covered on that front—and see what he makes of it?"

  "You mean stop therapy and give him his head?"

  "Nothing quite that radical. But you are going to want to observe him a while before you decide what course of therapy is now in order. You do not want to keep things as highly structured as when he was barely able to get around on his own, do you?"

  "No. That is true. I guess I will he low a bit and let the machines do the watching. I will just drop in on him later to see how the painting is going—and observe. I will see you."

  "Take care."

  Alec knocked on the door, waited.

  "Yes?"

  "It's me—Alec."

  "Come on in."

  He entered, to find Dennis seated on the bed, a portable viewer set up at his side. Across the room stood an easel bearing a completed canvas. It was the skyscape as seen from the deck, the Earth prominent within it. Alec moved to stand before it.

  "You did the whole thing that fast?" he said. "It's wonderful! And this is your first painting. It is very impressive."

  "Acrylics are really something," Dennis replied. "No fooling around, and they dry fast. A lot better than oils when you are in a hurry."

  "When did you ever use oils?"

  "Well— What I meant was that it seemed that way. I had watched people using them back in class."

  "I see. You continue to amaze me. What are you doing now?"

  "Learning things. I have a lot of catching up to do."

  "Maybe you ought to take it a bit easy at first."

  "No problem. I am not tired yet."

  "Care to take another walk?"

  "To tell you the truth, I would rather stay here and keep working."

  "I meant to ask you about reading...."

  "I seem to have absorbed the basics somewhere along the line. I am working on expanding things now."

  "Well, that is just great. What about dinner? You have to eat. The cafeteria is open."

  "That is true. All right."

  He turned off the viewer and rose, stretched. 101

  "On the way over, you can tell me what things are like back on Earth," he said, "and tell me about the telepaths."

  Dennis let him out, listening.

  That evening, Alec made a full report to Dr. Chalmers.

  "... And I got through to him at dinnertime," he said. "He agrees that he is Dennis Guise, but he does not really believe it. He says it for our benefit. He is personally convinced that he is Leonardo da Vinci." Dr. Chalmers snorted. "Are you being serious?" "Of course."

  Dr. Chalmers relit his pipe.

  "I don't see any harm in it," he finally said. "I do see possible harm in trying to rid him of such a delusion at this point, when it is allowing him to make such fine progress."

  "I agree on leaving the da Vinci aspect alone," Alec said. "But my concern with it goes far deeper. I am not at all certain that it is a delusion." "What do you mean?"

  "I got through to him at dinnertime. He was relaxed, his thoughts drifting. I tried a probe and succeeded. He believes he is da Vinci, does not want us to know it, is doing everything he can to make us believe he is a recovering Dennis Guise. At the same time, he is trying to learn everything he can about the world in which he now finds himself."

  "That does not make it anything more than a paranoid situation—one which we are fortunately able to capitalize on." Alec raised his hand.

  "It seems more than just the belief, though. With Condorcet, he picked up the man's thinking as well as the French language. Now, with da Vinci, he has acquired artistic skills, and he shifted hands—da Vinci was left-handed, I just looked it up—and an almost pathological curiosity with respect to just about everything—"

  'Then why isn't he speaking Italian?"

  "Because this time he has taken his thought patterns from one of the greatest minds that ever existed, and he has decided to play along with us, to fit himself into the situation in which he finds himself. He has therefore been learning modern English all day, at a phenomenal rate. If you listen to him, though, you will hear that he speaks it with an Italian accent, which he is already attempting to cover. He is trying to adapt himself."

  "The entire notion is preposterous. But even granting it for a moment, by what possible mechanism could he be achieving it?"

  "All right. I have been doing a lot of thinking. How does telepathy work? We are still not certain. Our approach has been mainly practical. All of our telepathic security guards, communication specialists, psychological therapy workers, semantic engineers, precision translators, have worked out various ways of exploiting the faculty without really advancing our understanding as to its mechanism. Oh, we have our theorists, but they've really very little substance on which to base their guesses."

  "So you've another guess to add to the list?"

  "Yes. This is really all that it is. A guess—or a strange feeling. The reason Dennis was sent here in the first place was the phenomenal range of his ability. He is the most powerful telepath on record. Here, he was effectively blocked from reaching the sorts of minds for which he seemed to have an affinity—a matter of distance. He simply could not reach far enough to make the contacts he seemed to require. Now, what did that leave him?"

  "He had to fall back on his own resources. He finally did so, according to plan, and he has now begun the recovery we had hoped for."

  "Unless I am right about the continued personality assumption."

  "Alec! Condorcet, da Vinci and anyone else he might have been play-acting—they are all dead. Surely you are not suggesting something like spiritualism?"

  "No, sir. We know even less about the nature of time than we do about telepathy. I was wondering whether, frustrated in his efforts to reach across space, he has succeeded in driving his mind back through time and actually reaching those individuals whose identities he has assumed."

  Dr. Chalmers sighed.

  "As in paranoia," he said, "and as in those attempted age-regressions to other lives which amateur hypnotists occasionally write books about, one significant feature is that everybody wants to be important. No one identifies himself as a skid-row bum, a serf, a common laborer. It is invariably a king, a queen, a general, a great scientist, philosopher, prophet. Does that strike you as peculiar?"

  "Not really. It simply strikes me as irrelevant to Dennis' case. Granting the ability to penetrate time, those are the sorts of minds to which one would be most attracted. They were certainly the most interesting. If I would reach back, they are the ones I would attempt to scan."

  "All right. This is not getting us anywhere. You say you got through to him earlier, and he is indeed convinced that he is da Vinci."

  "Yes."

  "Whatever the source of this new identification, it is motivating him to do things he has never attempted before. It is therefore a good thing. Let him retain his delusion. We must capitalize on it as fully as possible."

  "Even if he is not really Dennis Guise?"

  "Look, he answers to Dennis Guise now and he acts the way he believes Dennis Guise should act. He is suddenly showing high intelligence and the beginnings of remarkable skills. If, in his heart of hearts, he chooses to believe he is Leonardo da Vinci pulling a fast one on a world of twenty-first-century clods, what difference does it make, so long as he behaves in an acceptable fashion in all other ways? We all have our pet daydreams and fun delusions. There are certain areas where therapy ceases to be therapeutic and simply becomes meddling. Leave him with his daydream. Teach the outer man to behave in an acceptable fashion in society."

  "But it is more than a daydream!"

  "Alec! Hands off!"

  "He is my patient."

  "And I am your boss, here to make sure you do a proper job. I do not see a proper job as involving your proceeding along lines dictated by so tenuous a matter as this telepathy through time notion. We must act on the basis of knowledge, not guesswork. We do pos
sess knowledge of paranoia, and have for a long time. Some forms are quite harmless. Leave him with that part and work on the rest. You will probably notice that as he gains more experience, becomes surer of himself, that part will simply fade away."

  "You do not give me much choice."

  "No, I do not."

  "Okay, I will do as you say."

  "... And keep me posted, informally as well as through channels."

  Alec nodded, turned to go.

  "One thing more ..." Dr. Chalmers said.

  "Yes?"

  "I would appreciate your keeping that notion about time to yourself, at least for now."

  "Why?"

  "Supposing there is something to it? Just supposing, of course. It would take a lot of substantiation, a lot of research. Premature publicity would be the worst thing."

  "I understand."

  "Good."

  Alec went out, returned to his own quarters, stretched out on his bed to think. After a time, he slept.

  The following day, Alec decided to leave Dennis alone with his studies and his painting, dropping by only at mealtimes. Dennis was not particularly communicative at breakfast or at lunch. Over dinner, however, he grew more animated, leaning forward, fixing him with his gaze.

  "This—telepathic ability," he began. "It is a strange and wondrous thing."

  "I thought that you said you were not going to fool with it for a while."

  "That was yesterday. I said that I would not experiment with it for a time. Very well. Time has passed. I grew curious."

  Alec made a small noise with his lips and shook his head.

  "You could be making a serious mistake ..." he began.

  "As it turned out, I was not. I can control it. It is amazing. I have learned so many things, so quickly, by taking them from other minds."

  "Whose minds?" Alec asked.

  Dennis smiled.

  "I do not know that it is proper to say. From yours, for instance, I learned that there is a certain code of courtesy which precludes wanton browsing among the thoughts of others."

  "I see that it impressed you a lot."

  Dennis shrugged.

  "It works both ways. If it does not apply to me, why should I observe it myself?"

  "You already know the answer to that. Your status here is that of a patient. I am your therapist. It is a special situation."

  "Then I do not see why I should be castigated for my actions by those who do not consider me fully responsible for them."

  Alec chuckled.

  "Very good," he said. "You are learning fast. Obviously, things should be revised very soon. In the meantime, all I can say is that it is just not nice."

  Dennis nodded.

  "No argument there. I have better uses for my time than voyeurism. No. I was leading up to a discussion of two things in which I am currently interested: my own case, and the telepathic function itself."

  “If you have indeed been behaving as you indicated, then you probably know as much about them both as we do."

  "Hardly," he said. "I cannot plumb the depths of your mind and dredge up all your experience and skill."

  "Oh? Since when? You seemed able to manage it before."

  "When?"

  "Let me ask you a question first. Do you remember anything of other periods of clarity, times when you felt as if you were someone else?"

  "I—I do not think so. Things—like dreams—sometimes come and go, though. Idle thoughts, occasional disjointed fragments of something like memory. But I do not really have much to associate with them. Do you mean that I have been other people, that everything I now feel and think is just some sort of—overlay? Are you saying that there is really someone else buried within me and that the person I think I am may be subject to recall at any time?"

  "No, I am not saying that."

  "What, then?"

  "I do not know, Dennis. You know yourself better than I do. You appear to be learning things at a fantastic pace—"

  "You do not believe that I am really Dennis Guise," he said.

  "Are you?"

  "That is a silly question."

  "You raised it"

  "You think that I am still some sort of overlay, and that the real Dennis Guise is still buried within me?"

  "Dennis, I do not know. You are my patient. More than anything else, I want to see you fully recovered and functioning normally in society. It was never my intention to raise these doubts in your mind. A therapist just naturally tends to speculate, to go over every possibility, no matter how farfetched. Generally, these things remain unvoiced. At this point, it seems unfortunate that you are such a good telepath and that you chose to exercise your ability just when you did."

  "Then you are saying that you now feel you were wrong in this?"

  "I am saying it was just one of those guesses one sometimes makes with very little to go on. Guesses are made and discarded countless times during a course of therapy. It should not really concern you."

  Dennis took a drink of juice.

  "But it does, you know," he said, after a time. "I am not tremendously fond of the notion that I am keeping the rightful inhabitant of this body, this brain, from his proper existence."

  "Even if he may never be so fit as yourself to do so?"

  "Even so."

  "Beyond the fact that this is all idle speculation, I fail to see where there is much that you can do about your tenancy."

  "I suppose you are right. It is an interesting hypothetical situation, however, and coming out of the dark as I so recently have, matters of an existential nature do hold a certain fascination."

  "I can see that. However, I feel that this is not the best time to consider them—coming out of the dark as you so recently have, as you put it."

  "I can see why a therapist would feel that way... • But I may be more stable than you realize."

  "Then why are you expressing all these doubts about yourself? No. I want to give you support right now, not provide a dissection of your inner landscape. Let all this pass, will you? Concentrate on perfecting your strengths. After more time has passed, these problems may not seem as important as they do now."

  "I have a feeling that you are talking for Dr. Chalmers rather than yourself."

  "Then consider the idea, not its source. You were ill, you are getting better. These are two things we know, two things we have to work with. The hell with theory. The hell with speculation. Curb your introspective tendencies for the time being and concentrate on matters of substance."

  "Easily said. But all right, let us drop it.”

  "Good. You realize that it is the next thing to miraculous that we are speaking of things at this level this soon? You are an amazing person. If this is any indication of what you are to become we should both be impressed."

  "Yes, I guess that you are right. I should be thankful for this flash of existence which has been granted me. Now, just for purposes of rounding out my education, tell me about this telepathy through time business that I caught a thought or two concerning, here and there. Is there anything at all on it in the literature?"

  "No. I have checked recently. There is not."

  "Have you ever managed it yourself?"

  "No."

  "Any idea how it might be done?"

  "None whatsoever."

  "Pity, is it not—when you consider all the things that might be learned from the past, if it could be taken more seriously?"

  "One day... Who knows?"

  "Indeed," he said, and he rose from the table.

  Alec stood also.

  "Walk you back?" he asked.

  "Thank you, but I would rather be alone. There are many things I wish to think about."

  "All right. Sure. You know where my rooms are, if you should want to talk about anything—any time."

  "Yes. Thanks again."

  Alec watched him go, seated himself and finished his coffee.

  The next day, Dennis did not take breakfast with Alec, nor did he invite him into his
room. Through the partly opened door, he told him that he was very busy and was going to skip that meal. He offered no comment on the nature of his activities. After breakfast, Alec checked the tape in the monitor for Dennis' room, from which he learned that the light had been burning all night and that Dennis had alternated between long periods at his easel and sitting motionless in his armchair.

  Returning at lunchtime, Alec received no answer when he knocked on the door. He called out several times, but there was no response to this either. Finally, he opened the door and entered.

  Dennis lay on the bed, clutching at his side. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling and a small trickle of saliva had run back over his cheek.

  Alec moved to his side.

  "Dennis! What is it?" he asked. "What happened?"

  "I—" he said. "I—" and his eyes filled with tears.

  "I'll get you a doctor," Alec said.

  "I am—" Dennis said, and his face relaxed, his hands fell away from his side.

  As Alec turned to go, his eyes fell upon the canvas still resting on the easel and he stood for several moments, staring.

  It bore a study of the Mona Lisa, quite complete and exquisitely rendered, he thought, because acrylics are so much better than oils. That has to be it, he thought. I remember that that was his thought, right before he hurried out.

  Part IV

  I remember them all. There were so many. But I do not remember myself, because I was not there. Not before that moment.

  It was in that moment that I first knew myself.

  That moment.

  Once there was a man. His name was Gilbert Van Duyn. We watched him in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Watched him get up to say that the preservation of the Earth required some sacrifice. Watched as the world froze about him. Watched him make his way through that still landscape of flesh. Watched him go out of the hall and meet the dark man. Watched them fly to the roof of the tower and regard the city, the world. Listened to the dark man's story. Watched them return to the ground. Watched Gilbert Van Duyn return to the hall, to the lectern. Watched as there was movement once more and the bullet struck us. Watched the blue flag as the life left us, by our own choice.