Collected Stories

by Lewis Shiner

  I stayed on the low road, headed for the house where I’d seen the brown-haired woman. The streets were crowded, and this time the other people on the sidewalks were noticing me, stepping out of my way and changing directions to avoid me. It was as if I were becoming more real to them instead of the other way around.

  There were no cars on the streets, and the entire level of technology in the city seemed lower than that of the highway that ran past it. I saw pushcarts, and even a sort of rickshaw, but no horses or mules. Or for that matter, birds, dogs, cats, or insects.

  When I got to the woman’s house I sat and waited again, but it was only a few moments before I saw her standing in the doorway. Her mouth was moving, trying to form words or maybe just wavering in and out of a smile. She made a curious gesture with her hand, twisting her wrist as she raised it, then quickly dropped it again. I got the meaning, though, and began climbing the steps toward her. She waited until I reached the top, then turned and went into the house.

  The front room looked like a modern museum before the art was moved in. The walls were white and the windows were simply openings to the outside, without glass or shutters. The furniture was like everything else in the city—white and squared off, without ornament. The chairs were cubes of some porous material, and what must have been a couch or bed was just an oblong of the same stuff.

  The woman motioned toward the longer block and I sat down on it. It was softer than it looked, with a texture like very dense foam rubber. The woman sat at the other end of it, maybe two or three feet away. Her eyes were ringed in black, making them seem to leap out at me. Her nose was small and bent, like a tiny beak, and her lips were thin and sharply defined.

  “Who are you?” I asked her. It was the first time I’d tried to say anything on the other side, and the words seemed to waver a little as they came out.

  She shook her head at me, bouncing her short, tangled hair. Her mouth was working again, but she didn’t smile. From somewhere out of sight she came up with a deck of the same cards that the men in the park had been using. She started to deal them out, and when I held up a hand to stop her, she ignored me.

  “I don’t understand this game,” I told her. She shook her head again and finished dealing. The cards were laid out in the shape of a five-pointed star. She reached out and turned over the top card of one of the piles. The face of the card showed a snake’s head.

  She seemed to be waiting for something, and so I reached for one of the piles. She stopped my hand and held on to it. I felt a slow excitement building in my chest and thighs. I looked into her face and saw no resistance. Leaning across the cards, I took her face in my other hand and kissed her.

  Her mouth moved under mine with a sort of abstracted passion. I got up and stood in front of her and tried to pull her into an embrace, but she rested her head against my chest. The feel of her was light and vaguely electric, as if a mild current were running across her skin.

  I tried to turn her face toward me, but she pulled away and began gathering up the cards. When they were in one pile her hands seemed to swallow them. She touched my face and went back out the front door.

  I lay down in the coolness of the room, remembering dark, snowy mornings, the grimness of the hospital, the squalor of my apartment, all with the detachment of someone looking at last night’s dreams. When the images began, I was sure I was going back across to wake up again, but it didn’t happen.

  I lay there for what seemed like hours, then finally got up to walk the streets again. The subjective time I spent in the city was growing with every dose of the drug. When I finally did begin to fade, I felt like I’d spent a full day in the city. I didn’t even sense the transition as I went back across. The Adonine had cleared up the withdrawal symptoms, and the Seconal I’d already taken dropped me into a dreamless sleep.

  “I got the analysis today,” Matheson said. He didn’t seem happy about it, but then he wasn’t in any shape to be happy about anything. The orbits of his eyes looked bruised and the skin on his hands was translucent. If he’d come into Emergency looking that way, they would have started feeding him intravenously on the spot.

  We went into the conference room and shut the door. He pulled an envelope from his pocket and tossed me a few sheets of paper. They were the standard charts and graphs that PharmChem always did—high pressure liquid chromatography, UV spectroscopy, and so on. I was shivering and depressed, and couldn’t concentrate on the needle-like peaks on the paper.

  “They separated out two fractions,” Matheson said. “One proteinaceous, the other RNA.”

  “What does it all mean?” I asked.

  “It’s a virus,” Matheson said.

  “What?”

  “A virus,” he repeated. “A short-lived, non-contagious virus. The virions are small enough to cross the blood-brain barrier and hook on to some form of receptor in the brainstem. Then they shoot a load of RNA into the cells.”

  “Holy Christ,” I said. I was picturing a drawing from one of my college textbooks, showing the virion crouched over a cell, long, spidery legs plugged into the receptor, its bulbous head bent down to the cell wall and its beak raping the cell, the coiled strands of RNA spurting out of it.

  That was what I’d been doing to my brain.

  “The narcotic effects,” Matheson went on, “seem to come from the protein coat, which floats off into the cerebro-spinal fluid after the virus has shot its wad.”

  “What,” I asked, fighting nausea, “does the RNA do when it gets in there?”

  “They don’t know. There was a note with the analysis, from the technician who ran the tests. He said they weren’t set up to do any more, but he was interested and had kept out a sample to run some tests of his own.”

  “Something must have caught his attention.”

  “You’re damn right it did. Thirty percent of the amino acids in the protein coat are optically backwards. On top of that, the nitrogens in what should have been the cytosine residues are in the wrong places. This shit is bizarre. It’s like it came from another planet.”

  I had a sudden vision of Smith, his beady eyes and strange, oily skin. I was wearing long underwear and heavy clothes to fight the hypothermia, but I still felt a chill run straight through me.

  “Matheson,” I said. He had been about to walk away. “I—tried to do without it last night. I couldn’t.”

  He nodded distractedly, “You’ve been across what, three times? It’ll sort itself out. You’ll get used to it. You want me to get you some more?”

  His casual attitude put me off and I didn’t answer him for a minute.

  “Well?”

  “All right,” I said at last. “Get me some more.”

  I left the ward at 10:30 that night. I was in no shape to deal with patients, but I’d muddled through the day somehow. I had only enough concentration to take care of what was directly in front of me, and the world had closed down to the moment and the area of space I was occupying. The feeling of dirtiness around me had gotten worse, and even while part of my brain was trying to tell me it wasn’t real, the rest of my mind was recoiling from it. I could barely remember what happened when I took the drug; all I had was the vague knowledge that when the day was over I would take it again.

  I’d left the heater blazing all day and the apartment was like a sauna. I didn’t even bother to eat anything since I would have lost it to the diarrhea anyway. After showering I wiped the thick steam off the bathroom mirror and looked at myself.

  I was in nearly as bad a shape as Matheson. Loose skin hung off the washboard of my ribcage. My elbows and knees looked swollen compared to the arms and legs they clung to. My face was as dull and expressionless as a wooden mask.

  I toweled off and got into bed. The empty syringe from the night before was still lying on the bedside table. I stared at it for a long time before fitting a new unit dose into the holder. Then I swallowed two of the 50-mg Seconals so I wouldn’t wake up when the drug wore off.

  The red-brow
n beginnings of a bruise discolored the inside of my elbow where I’d done a bad job the night before. I had to tie off my other arm and give myself the shot left-handed.

  Virus, I thought, as I watched the blood mixing with the thick, metallic drug. A wave of nausea went over me, and my right hand clenched the sheets up into a knot. I pushed the plunger home.

  It was like waking up from a bout with the flu to find my fever broken and the sun shining. I stood at the end of the footbridge and breathed the sweet-smelling air that blew out of the trees. The miseries of the day seemed to seep out of me and right on into space. I remembered everything that had happened, right up to the needle sliding into my arm, and it all seemed clearer to me than when it had actually been going on.

  But that was another world. I couldn’t even think of it as the real world, not any more.

  Instead of going into the city, I turned and followed the dirt road into the trees. Dry, summery-looking leaves had sprung out everywhere. Once it was out of sight of the city, the road turned parallel to the highway and led downhill. A few hundred yards along it I came to a shallow, clear stream. Trees ran along both banks, and rocks arched the river into spray and foam. It was right where I’d known it would be, and I got out of my clothes and waded into it.

  The woman appeared from somewhere in the trees and sat on the bank watching me. I tried to get her to join me, but she didn’t seem to understand what I wanted. Finally I got out of the water and lay on the bank beside her. She touched my stomach and her fingers gave me that strange, tingling sensation again. I pulled her down to kiss her, but after a moment she eased back and lay down a little farther away. An alienness about her kept me from pursuing her, even though I was aroused and wanted her.

  “Can you understand me today?” I asked her. My voice sounded clearer to me, but still wasn’t coming through for her. She shook her head.

  It felt like a long summer afternoon that we spent there by the river. Sometimes she would sketch stylized figures in the dirt; sometimes I would go back in the water and swim. Then, without any kind of warning, she got to her feet and walked away. I dressed and followed her, but she was still faster than I was, and she had disappeared by the time I reached the overpass.

  It didn’t seem to matter. I went back to the park and sat for a while on the bench. As I sat there, relaxed, staring into the empty sky, I realized that the time I spent in the city was now the only time I had to think things out. If any intelligent decisions were to be made, it had to be then and there. The first decision I had to, make was whether or not I was willing to give the stuff up.

  After that came the question of whether or not I would be able to.

  I was still trying to sort it all out when a sudden flash of movement caught my eye. Someone had just ducked into a side street, and the motion riveted my attention. City people didn’t move that way.

  I got up and ran to the alley for a look. The people I passed almost seemed to resent my moving so quickly, turning to stare at me with narrowed eyes. I ignored them and turned the corner just in time to see a heavyset figure disappearing around the next block.

  I would have known him anywhere. It was the man Matheson called Smith.

  I ran after him. When I rounded the corner I saw him knocking at one of the doors that faced the street. He was looking around anxiously, and I ducked back out of sight. When I leaned out for another look, he was gone.

  I moved to the window of the building and peeked inside. Like all the windows in the city, it was just an open place in the wall, and I found myself staring right at Smith’s back. In the shadows beyond him stood one of the city’s people, dressed in the usual light pants and shirt. There was a look of eagerness on his face that I’d never seen in any of them before. He was concentrating on something in Smith’s hand, and I craned my neck for a better view of it.

  It was a plastic pouch of Adonine. At that instant the city man raised his eyes and saw me, and Smith followed the direction of his gaze. He turned his bulk around to face me and focused his flat, piggish stare on me.

  I looked from Smith to the Adonine, my mind filling with questions. But it was too late for answers. I could already feel the tingling in my legs that meant the drug was wearing off. I tried to fight it, but the force pulling me back was too strong. In a moment I had faded completely away.

  Matheson didn’t show up for morning report. I was groggy from the Seconal, but I’d taken a Valium anyway to try and take the edge off my nerves. It had made me calmer, but it hadn’t helped the fuzziness in my brain. I couldn’t seem to shake the delusion that I was working in a decaying zoo, not a hospital. Why doesn’t somebody clean the cages? I kept wondering.

  If it kept up I was going to need something stronger than Valium. Thorazine, maybe.

  No, I told myself. Not Thorazine. I’m not crazy.

  Between the withdrawal symptoms and worry over Matheson I was a wreck by the end of morning report.

  “Blake.”

  It was my name. The sound of it had startled me so badly my leg had jumped into the table. If it hadn’t been for the Valium, I would probably have gone completely to pieces.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “Stay here a minute,” the chief resident told me. “I want to talk to you.”

  Christ, I thought. He knows. They all must know.

  “You look terrible, doctor,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?” He had a face like a kindly old GP, but it seemed to me like he was smiling with some sort of secret pleasure.

  “Ocelots...” I said. It came out as a mumble, but I was terrified by the loss of control.

  “What?”

  I cleared my throat and tried again. “I’m not...sleeping too well, that’s all. Nothing else. Nothing wrong.”

  “I’ve heard you’ve had some personal problems lately,” he said. Was he talking about Sarah? Or something else? What was he after?

  “Some, sir,” I said. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll take your word for it. But we can’t have our doctors running around here looking worse than the patients. Start taking care of yourself, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh, and Blake?”

  “Yes, sir?” He had caught me just as I was turning and I had to casually reach for the table to steady myself.

  “Do you know anything about Matheson? He’s still not here, and no one’s heard from him at the desk.”

  I tried to concentrate on his eyes, tried to keep the parts of my body still. “No, sir,” I said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

  He was wearing a strange look, and I knew he hadn’t believed me. He was after something, I was sure of it, but I didn’t know what it was.

  “All right, Blake,” he said. “That’ll be all.”

  Matheson didn’t answer his phone when I tried his apartment. I kept at it all morning, and when lunch break came I went looking for him.

  Driving was bad. My concentration was even worse than the day before. From second to second I had to fight to remember where I was, what I was doing. I had the car heater on full, and it still wasn’t enough. I imagined I could feel tiny drafts blowing in from the edges of the windshield and doors. Traffic was heavy, and I might have made better time on foot, but I couldn’t face leaving the warmth of the car. When gaps formed in front of me, I accelerated too hard, and twice I nearly went off onto the sidewalk.

  I finally skidded into a parking place next to Matheson’s car. Before I knew what I was doing, I had the door open and was searching the glove compartment for Adonine. I didn’t find any. So I slammed the car door and ran up the stairs. The effort left me exhausted and shaking in front of his door. I pounded on it and rang the bell, and when nobody answered I pried the ancient lock open with my pocketknife.

  Except for a few details I could have been looking at my own apartment. It seemed unbelievably filthy to me. A narrow bed sagged at one end of the room, and a hot plate sat on top of a small icebox at t
he other. The walls were covered by tilting bookshelves, and a closet was stuffed with dirty clothes. The area around the bed was littered with empty Adonine cartridges.

  The covers were heaped on the mattress, and the refrigerator was full of food, but Matheson was gone. And if he had any Adonine in the apartment, it was gone too.

  I went back for another look at the bed, pulling the blankets onto the floor. There, laid out between the sheets, was a pair of heavy wool pajamas, just as if the body that had been in them had vanished into the air. Tied loosely around one of the arms was a piece of surgical tubing.

  No one on the ward had any idea where Matheson could be. I called St. Mary’s long distance to find Davis, the only other user I knew. No one had heard of him.

  With Matheson gone I had to stay on the ward all night. I never had a chance to get to the Pub and look for Smith, which meant no chance to get any more of the drug.

  I was down to my last dose, and every time I thought about it, I started to panic all over again.

  I came across that night gasping like a drowning man. I dropped to my knees and leaned my head against the cool stone of the overpass.

  It was a relief to be able to think again. I remembered pieces of the day—Matheson’s disappearance, the confrontation after morning report—and it seemed incredible to me that I’d managed to get through the day at all. Then I dismissed it, the way I would a bad nightmare, and went on to other things.

  What bothered me most was seeing Smith in the city. It was the first time I had seen anyone from the waking universe on this side. If it had been Matheson, or my parents, or Sarah, it might have made sense. But, seeing Smith, I had the eerie premonition that he wasn’t there because of any associations I’d had with him in the other world. I was sure that he was somehow part of the drug, part of the information carried by the RNA.

  I had to know for sure. I walked into town to look for him.