Death Qualified (54 page)

    "God!" he whispered.

    "Oh, God!"

    Barbara got up uncertainly and took a step toward him, then another. He raised his head, but his eyes did not focus on her; his face was twisted, in pain or fear was impossible to tell. She stopped.

    "I have to finish," he said hoarsely.

    "I didn't know enough to go all the way through them. Don't you under stand, I can't stop here!" He raised one hand before him and made a sweeping gesture, as if brushing away cob webs. He did it again and turned his head aside, brushed his cheek.

    "Mike!" Barbara screamed.

    "Look at me! I'm here!

    Look!"

    He kept brushing at his face, at the air before him. Desperately she snatched up the crystal candy dish and waved it in front of his eyes.

    "Look at this! You concentrated on Dad's car and drove home, you can concentrate on this!

    Look at it!"

    Slowly he stopped his motions, his eyes fixed on the dish as she moved it back and forth in front of him. He drew in a deep breath.

    "Frank," he said tiredly, "don't."

    Prank had been moving toward the telephone. He stopped.

    "You know what Brandywine's solution was," Mike said in a voice that sounded as if it were coming from a deep tunnel.

    "You know Schumaker and Margolis went along. They didn't know what else to do with Lucas. They don't know how to control this, none of them. No doctor would have any better solution than they do. I need to finish. Lucas finally came out of it, remember. That's the only way."

    Barbara felt Frank's arm about her shoulders. They stared at Mike. A smile crossed his face and he said al most mockingly, "I am quite lucid at the moment. Lucid, from the Latin luce re meaning to shine. And they made it mean sane, or rational. Wrong. It means to shine. And I am quite lucid. You see, what has happened is that all the synapses have been disconnected, and now when they fire, it's rather random, but brilliant, with shining patterns, and new ways to see and hear. Like, I hear the river singing a melancholy dirge. It's cold the river, I mean and it's unhappy, thinking about the spring and the summer and the quickness of the fish then. Now they are sluggish.

    Is that lucid, Barbara? I never thought of the river that way before, you know. Never. But the trouble is I can't seem to keep the river out there. If I open my eyes it might be in here with us. Or I might be out there in it. And you, Barbara, I can't tell where you stop and start, where your edges are. Or mine. Especially mine. Where are the boundaries? Where do you start and I end? I 'm spread too far, too far. And I don't know how to pull in again. I need the disks, Barbara. The whirlpool will throw me out sooner or later, the synapses will reconnect in a new pattern, the turbulence will end and there will be different linkages, but what kind, what will they mean? The light goes on and off, on and off, but it has to stop one way or the other." He grimaced and his hands clenched, his eyes squeezed shut even tighter. When he spoke again, his voice was so distant, it was hard to make out the words.

    "This world will kill me, Barbara. I need to be guided back. Is that lucid enough?"

    "Yes," she whispered. Frank's hand clutched her shoulder convulsively, and she said it again, clearer, louder.

    "Yes."

    "Good," Mike said quietly.

    "Let's start."

    He directed her without opening his eyes. Occasionally a grimace passed over his face as if he was in pain or in terror, and at those times his voice stopped. Once she had to shake his arm to get his attention in order to proceed.

    She got the program loaded and running before Mike attempted to join her. When he did, he walked like a sleepwalker, keeping his gaze fixed and staring, keeping one hand on the wall as he moved. Then he sat at the desk and breathed in deeply.

    "Don't watch," he said; after that he ignored her and Frank altogether. Presently the screen was filled with patterns that danced and writhed. Barbara backed away. Her mouth was very dry.

    Frank took her by the arm and led her to the kitchen.

    "I really did make coffee," he said.

    "I'm so afraid. Dad, I'm so afraid!"

    "Me too, honey. Sit down. I don't think we had much choice in the matter. Sit down."

    She sat down and wrapped her arms about herself and rocked back and forth. Frank came to her side and held her, stroking her hair gently.

    Barbara had made sandwiches that neither she nor her father wanted. From time to time one or the other went to the study door to gaze at Mike, who was transfixed before the monitor. His fingers on the keyboard--jabbing, pausing, jabbing again--were the only sign of consciousness, the only sign of life. An hour passed, another.

    "How many disks are there?" Barbara asked in desperation, returning again from the study door.

    "I don't know. Eight, ten. A stack."

    They both jumped when the doorbell sounded. Frank went to see who it was, and in just a second or two, he came back with Schumaker and Margolis and a third man who had a revolver. They were all dressed in business suits and topcoats, like three stockbrokers, or realtors out to close an important deal.

    "This is our private detective," Walter Schumaker said.

    "Only ours is quite real. Mr. Holloway, please join your daughter over there. I want my property that Mike Dinesen stole. Mr. Claypole here is our insurance that there will be no violence."

    When it appeared that if Frank did not join Barbara, Claypole would assist him, he walked stiffly across the kitchen. Schumaker nodded to Margolis.

    "Why don't you have a look down that hallway?"

    "No!" Barbara cried, and started to run toward the study.

    Schumaker stepped in front of her.

    "Don't be tiresome," he said.

    "You can't come in here with an armed man like this!"

    she snapped.

    "That gun makes it deadly assault!"

    Schumaker shrugged. The detective and Margolis had gone into the study. Prank walked across the kitchen, out to the hallway. Schumaker did not try to stop him. At the study door the detective blocked entrance. Mike, at the computer, appeared unaware that Margolis had come to his side and was reaching past him. When Margolis turned off the monitor, Mike roused, started to rise. Margolis put his hand on Mike's shoulder, pushed him down into the chair; with his other hand he picked up the disks that were by the side of the computer. He slipped them into his pocket. Mike had become as passive as a zombie.

    "They loaded the whole thing onto the hard drive, it looks like," Margolis said.

    From the hallway Schumaker said, "Well, erase it or something. You're the computer expert."

    Suddenly Mike started to jerk away from Margolis's hand, and this time the detective moved into the room and grabbed his arm, jerked him from the chair, and held him with his arm twisted behind him. Mike winced and groaned and tried to swing at the large man, who simply twisted his arm higher. Without warning Mike slumped and would have fallen to the floor if the detective had not caught and held him. Claypole looked bewildered.

    Barbara was already at Mike's side, feeling for a pulse.

    "What did you do to him? Bring him to the living room couch. For God's sake, what did you do to him?"

    "Get on with it," Schumaker said to Margolis, then turned and led the way back through the hall to the living room.

    "You can go now," he said to Claypole as soon as he had deposited Mike on the couch. The detective shrugged and left without a word. Schumaker walked to the couch and stood over Mike with a brooding expression.

    "He'll sleep for hours, more than likely," he said.

    "They mostly do after a session." He took off his topcoat, folded it precisely, laid it carefully over the back of a chair.

    Barbara glared at him with fierce hatred. She had been kneeling on the floor by Mike; now she got up stiffly and walked to the telephone.

    "I'm calling the police. Forced entry. Assault with a deadly weapon. Theft. Vandalism."

    She lifted the phone.

    "They will wake him up and have a raving madman on their hands, and two incoherent witnesses." Schumaker sank down into the chair, careful not to lean back against his coat.

    "Ms. Holloway, you and your father are in something you can't start to comprehend. Don't exacerbate the situation more than necessary by bringing in additional outsiders. You know we can burn the disks and destroy everything on the computer long before police arrive. Let's talk first."

    She looked from him to her father, who was ashen-faced. Wordlessly he nodded and sat down in his own chair. She put the phone down.

    "Talk," she said, not moving yet from the table.

    "Sit down," Schumaker said wearily, and then waited until she went back to the couch and sat on the floor by Mike.

    "If you bring in the police this is what I shall tell them. Yesterday, this man, a complete stranger to me, forced his way into my home and made wild threats. He was in possession of work I assisted with seven or eight years ago; how he obtained that work, I don't know. He made insane accusations and demanded explanations for work that I have not even thought of in a decade. At one point we had to subdue him, and then he fled. I called my associate who had been involved with the work from long ago, and we agreed to meet at the airport to try to talk the young man into surrendering the disks that are ours.

    He admitted that the work was ours and said that we could have it if we chose to accompany him to his home and collect it. We chose to do that. However, you two interrupted us in the middle of our task. Today, fearing more violence, I hired a bodyguard to accompany us here to collect the remaining copies of the disks." He scowled and shook his head.

    "It isn't pretty, and not altogether believable, but accept this, Ms. Holloway: Your friend is in no condition to contradict a word of it. He did threaten me, and he did say I could collect the disks."

    Frank had listened with an intent expression. He said, "Tell us, Dr. Schumaker, what is on those disks that's important enough to-fcring all you people up here from Denver, to resort to such means to recover?"

    Schumaker nodded gravely.

    "You deserve that much," he said after a pause.

    "Very well. Probisher discovered a perfect tool to induce insanity. Believe me, it was not what he was looking for, but a by-product that he could not eliminate. It takes only a few hours, and it appears that no one is truly immune. Think what such a program would be like in the hands of unscrupulous people. It could be watched in small segments and still retain its effectiveness.

    A minute or two during a half-hour television show. A few minutes during a special of two hours. That would be enough eventually after continued refinement. Anyone could reproduce and broadcast his material. That's what's so important, Mr. Holloway. For a very brief time I assisted in his project, before I realized exactly what he was producing, at which time I severed all connections with the work and the man. I thought he had abandoned it, also, right up until his death at the hands of one of his subjects.

    I had no idea that he had continued, and that the disks were still operable, until Ruth said someone had recovered them here. Yesterday your young friend convinced me that indeed the program is still powerful, still deadly. At least four young people were driven mad by it, Mr. Holloway, five counting Dinesen here. Four of those young men are now dead. As soon as we know your computer has been cleansed of the material we shall destroy the other disks, in your presence if you like, and that will end the matter."

    He gazed at Mike, pityingly now.

    "As for how he will be, I have no idea. Lucas Kendricks was salvaged enough to lead the rather dull life of a maintenance man. He was the lucky one of the four we knew about. And Frobisher is dead. There's no one to punish, no one to blame. Ruth, Herbert, and I tried to eradicate the menace. We didn't know there were disks, and as soon as we did know, we tried to recover them." He spread his hands wide and shrugged.

    "If you had turned them over to Ruth, this young man would not have exposed himself as he did.

    Who is to blame, Mr. Holloway? Where is the axe to fall first?"

    They all turned to look when Herbert Margolis entered the living room.

    "Done." He pulled a bunch of disks from his pocket and held them up.

    "This is the lot."

    "Let's add a log to the fire, make sure we have a good updraft, and then finish," Schumaker said. He got up to kindle the fire, and when the new log was blazing, he stood back and watched as Herbert Margolis tossed in the disks one by one. It did not take very long; no one moved as the disks curled, caught fire, and burned fiercely for a second or two, and then turned into black ash.

    "And now it is really over," Schumaker said and drew in a long breath.

    "At last."

    "No," Barbara said softly, still on the floor by the couch where Mike slept.

    "It isn't over. I don't know what Fro bisher thought he was doing, but he succeeded with Lucas finally. He succeeded with the last boy he worked with, and he killed that boy because he succeeded. Didn't he?

    Isn't that what really happened?"

    Margolis looked startled and began to shake his head vigorously.

    "That isn't what happened! The police said the boy killed Frobisher!"

    "Shut up," Schumaker said coldly.

    Barbara went on.

    "What if it worked with Mike, Dr.

    Schumaker? Would you want him dead, too? Is that why Lucas is dead, because it worked?"

    Schumaker picked up his lovely gray topcoat and pulled it on. The look he gave her was pitying and contemptuous.

    "You know as well as I do that Nell Kendricks killed her husband. And you should be grateful, young lady, that the process did not succeed with your lover. Because if it had, he would be the loneliest man in the world. Better he should be mad and content than the only one of his kind on Earth."

    "He's a mathematician, like you," she said softly.

    "No, that's not quite right. Not like you. He doesn't think you're very good. He said you peaked twenty-five years ago and haven't been able to do any original work since, but he's as brilliant as you probably thought you were once." A deep flush suffused Schumaker's face. She got to her feet, speaking in the same low, intense voice, "He knows what's on those disks now."

    "You're a fool!" Schumaker snapped.

    "If the process worked with him, he wouldn't care if anyone else knows or not. But it didn't, simply because it can't. The process itself is impossible. Frobisher tried the impossible and failed. Dinesen will appear quite mad, my dear. Raving mad. For how long, I can't predict. Schizophrenic, perhaps paranoiac. He may suspect and dream that there was something wonderful on those disks, but it will forever be out of reach, as impossible to attain as the rainbow. There will be no financing. Until he recovers, no teaching. No job of any sort. He won't even be able to hold a conversation with another human being. I saw those boys: gibbering maniacs, every one of them. Lucas was a raving madman when he wasn't sedated. I wanted to let him go to an institution, to let him go anywhere. He would have been killed in a day, in an hour, out in the real world. Two boys drove off the road. Probably thought they could fly or something. That's what the process does, Ms. Holloway. " He started for the door.

    "What did Ruth Brandywine find out when she hypnotized those boys?" Barbara demanded.

    This time Schumaker was taken aback.

    "She didn't tell you that," he said.

    "She never said anything like that."

    "What did she learn from them?"

    Herbert Margolis nearly ran from the room.

    "I'm leaving," he said.

    "She learned something that frightened you all into stopping the work, didn't she?" Barbara demanded.

    ' "That's when you quit, not because some unfortunate boys were driven mad, or died, but because you learned something that frightened you. What was it, Dr. Schumaker?

    Was it that the process actually worked the way Emil Probisher hoped it would? And you had something on your hands you didn't know how to handle? Was that it?"

    Slowly Schumaker pulled kid gloves from his pocket and started to put them on, studying her all the while.

    Then he said in a quiet voice, "Leave it alone, Barbara Holloway. You may know the law, but you've bumbled into an area where you are as ignorant as a school child. The work is gone. It cannot be reproduced. Dinesen will be in no condition to reproduce it, and you know nothing about it. I will give you just this bit of advice. If you bring in a psychologist, try hypnosis with him, you will simply confirm that he is mad, that he is out of touch with reality;

    he may even talk about a strange, alien world view, but nothing about the work, the process. Just leave it alone."

    He turned and walked out of the room. Frank followed him to the front door, closed and locked it after him. When he got back to the living room, Barbara was standing at the couch, gazing at Mike, who had not stirred once.

    Frank put his arm around her and held her for a moment.

    "Ah, Bobby, what a hornet's nest we've got ourselves into."

    She drew back.

    "Right. Did you tape it all?"

    "Jesus, how did you know that?"

    "I saw you fiddling with your pen, and I remembered that junior G-man kit you used to have, with the microphone that looks like a pen. Is that how you taped the trial?"

    "Yep. Works just fine. Just fine. But damned if I know what good it will do us."

    She looked down at Mike again. She should get a blanket, she thought vaguely. Or restraints? Straitjacket? The tape recording wouldn't do a bit of good, she thought in despair. Not a bit of good.

    THIRTY-FIVE

    at four Doc called to see if he could drop in. Frank glanced at Barbara, who was sitting with a book in her hands, not reading a word. She shrugged. Mike was sleeping on the couch, covered now with a blanket. She had removed his shoes. He was sleeping as peacefully as a baby.

    "Sure, Doc," Frank said.

    "I'll be here."

    "No point in having him see Mike, I guess," she said.

    "No point in my seeing him."

    "We'll talk in my study." Now and then that afternoon he had gone to the couch, felt Mike's forehead, or his pulse. When he sat down, he had not even pretended to read. He had gazed at the fire, or out a window, or at his daughter, or Mike. He welcomed Doc, welcomed an interruption.

    He left Barbara baby-sitting. He thought of it that way, baby-sitting. At the thought, a pang of grief swept him.

    He never had even breathed to her how much he longed for a grandchild, a whole passel of grandchildren. He would have been overjoyed by a grandchild by way of Tony as much as he disliked him. But his genes were probably okay, he had told himself, and he damn well knew that Barbara's were just fine. The moment of grief passed when he took a last look at Mike on the couch. Then he closed the living room door and went to the kitchen to wait for Doc.

    At first Doc turned down his hospitality.

    "It's a business call," he said almost primly, taking off his long, heavy jacket. He was as jerky and jumpy as always, not sitting still long enough to warm a chair.

    "Damn it, we can talk business over a glass of wine, or a cup of coffee," Frank growled.

    Doc agreed to coffee and went to the sliding door to the terrace. The river was nearly black in the late-afternoon light. It was getting dark already, the clouds low, threatening rain again, heavy snow in the mountains.

    "I want you to divorce me," Doc said suddenly, and with nervous energy he paced the kitchen as Frank made the coffee.

    "Um. Have you both discussed it?"

    "No. No. I wanted to talk to you first. But she knows, just not when. Now is when."

    "Sit down. Doc. You'remaking me twitchy." Frank came around the counter with the coffee tray and indicated one of the chairs at the table. Doc sat down.