Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane (15 page)

“What?”

“The crazier he acts, Colonel, the
healthier
he gets! Now, then, tell me, Colonel Pussycat—do you or don’t you agree?”

“I think I do,” murmured Kane.

“Hah!” Spoor leaped down from the pinball machine and pointed at his dog. “There!
Now
do you believe me,” he crowed, “you temperamental idiot!” Spoor looked up at Kane. “Thank you,
thank
you, Colonel Pussycat! You’ll have house seats opening night!” Spoor glided out of the office.

*   *   *

Cutshaw was waiting in the dorm. “Did he buy it?” he pounced on Spoor.

“Did he
buy
it? Listen,
I
bought it!
I
think something’s
wrong
with us!”

“We’ve got him!” exulted Cutshaw. “Now we pull out all the stops! We’ll drive him crazy just convincing him that
we’re
crazy! Got it?”

*   *   *

“Don’t you get it?” Kane demanded.

Fell’s voice was bleakly cynical. “Man, they’ll try
anything
to keep you from telling the General they’re goofing off. They’d have to
leave
this little paradise.”

“You don’t understand,” said Kane, exhilarated.

“It’s a
con!
” Fell insisted. “They dug up that Hamlet junk from your textbooks, man! Hell, haven’t you read them?”

“
Desperation
dug up that theory! You think they’re shamming? So do
they!
Because they can’t admit to
themselves
that they’re sick! But they are! They’re on the brink! These men are Hamlet down the line! And obviously desperate enough to dig up the cure and lay it right in my lap!”

“Cure?”

“The crazier they act,” said Kane, “the healthier they’ll get! I’m going to stay! I’m going to stay! I’m going to indulge their wildest whims!” Kane’s head was whirling with visions; then with schemes; then with doubts. A sudden notion slapped his face. Wasn’t his “great impersonation” just as mad an indulgence as Hamlet’s? as Cutshaw’s? as Zook’s? My God, he thought, even madder, madder than Spoor’s or any of the others! Kane thought he heard a cry of piercing agony from afar; a cry of terror; a cry for help. Then he realized, with sudden horror, why the voice that went on shrieking was so achingly familiar; the voice was his own.

Fell caught him as he fainted.

Chapter 11

Fell carried Kane up to bed. As the medic was pulling up the blanket, Kane opened his eyes. “Does Groper know?” he murmured.

“No,” answered Fell.

Kane closed his eyes again and slept. Fell looked down at him sadly, felt his pulse, then left the room.

Kane dreamed. And this time remembered. Although later he wasn’t sure that it was a dream; that it hadn’t happened. He thought he’d abruptly opened his eyes and seen Captain Cutshaw sitting beside him, smoking a cigarette by his bed. Kane said, “What? What do you want?”

“It’s about my brother, Lieutenant Spoor. You’ve got to help him.”

“Help? How?”

“Leslie Spoor is possessed of a devil, Hud, and I want you to cast it out. He is levitating nightly and it’s upsetting Lieutenant Zook. It reminds him of his belt. Also, Spoor talks to dogs, which is not entirely natural. I want you to exorcise him tonight. You’re a colonel and a Catholic and an unfrocked priest. It’s your
duty,
Colonel No-Face!”

Kane said, “I can’t!”

“You mean, you
won’t!
”

“I mean I
can’t!
I don’t know how! I really want to, but I can’t! I’ve forgotten how to do it!”

“All you have to do is care. Then you’ll remember,” Cutshaw told him.

Suddenly Spoor was in the room floating three feet off the floor. He was wearing a high-altitude flight suit. He looked at Kane and opened his mouth and out came the yappings of a dog.

Kane put a finger to his neck and felt a round Roman collar. He was a priest! It was true! He was a priest after all! He felt a surging exhilaration; felt a release; felt a joy. It was the feeling after confession that had long been postponed; that had long been feared and dreaded. He lifted an arm and pointed at Spoor. “Satan,” he commanded, “be gone! In the name of Christ Jesus!”

Spoor continued to levitate. He grinned evilly at Kane. Then he rasped, “You don’t care.”

“Yes, I
care!
”

“But not for yourself.”

Kane remembered what was wrong. He should have asked the demon his name. “I adjure you in the name of Christ, in the name of the living God, demon, to tell me who you are!”

Spoor’s tongue lolled out of the side of his mouth, red and narrow and long. “Call me Legion, for we are many. We are eighty-two plus one.”

“Who is the one?” asked Kane, knowing.

“‘Killer’ Kane!” said Spoor, and vanished.

It was then that the dream changed in texture, seemed to be not a dream at all. Cutshaw was staring at him intently, his cigarette glowing in the darkness. “You awake?” said the apparition.

Kane moved his lips, tried to say “Yes,” but no sound would issue forth. He spoke with his mind, thinking—saying?—“Yes.”

“Do you really believe in an afterlife?”

“Yes.”

“No, come on. I mean,
really.
”

“Yes, I believe.”

“Tell me why.”

“I just know.”

“Blind faith?”

“No, not that; not that, exactly. Although it
is
partly feeling.”

“Then how do you
know?
” insisted Cutshaw.

Kane paused, dredging for arguments. Then at last he said (thought?), “Because every man who has ever lived has been born with desire for perfect happiness. But unless there is an afterlife, fulfillment of this desire is a patent impossibility. Perfect happiness, in order to be perfect, must carry with it the assurance that the happiness won’t cease; that it will not be snatched away. But no one has ever had such assurance; the mere fact of death serves to contradict it. Yet why should Nature implant—universally—desire for something that isn’t attainable? I can think of no more than two answers: either Nature is consistently mad and perverse, or after this life there’s another; a life where this universal desire for perfect happiness can be fulfilled. But nowhere else in creation does Nature exhibit this kind of perversity; not when it comes to a basic drive. An eye is always for seeing and an ear is always for hearing. And any universal craving—that is, a craving without exception—has to be capable of fulfillment. It can’t be fulfilled
here;
so it’s fulfilled, I think, somewhere else; some
time
else. Does that make any sense at all? I think I’m dreaming, so it’s hard.”

Cutshaw’s cigarette glowed bright. “Why did Nature make fleas and dinosaurs? Or putting it your way, why did Foot?”

“I don’t know,” responded Kane. “But the concepts aren’t analogous. In the first case, you see, we have all the pieces of the puzzle; or at least as much of the data as seems to bear upon the problem. But in the second we’re merely speculating on causes and motives unknown. We don’t know why Nature—or God—created dinosaurs or fleas. Yet we concede that there
might
be a reason which is not yet quite apparent; such as a necessary condition for the evolution of man. Why did God make the planet Mars? To me, it’s senseless and superfluous. But I might change my mind about that when you get there.”

There followed a very extended pause. Cutshaw’s cigarette tip flared briefly, and at last he spoke in a whisper. “Kane, you sadistic bastard!”

Then Cutshaw was gone. Kane closed his eyes. Or ceased to dream—he didn’t know which. He thought he saw Cutshaw in the room again that night, and asked him, “Are you crazy?” Cutshaw answered him immediately: “I don’t know.” And again was gone.

Kane awakened, but not in bed. He was sitting on the floor in a corner of the room. He could not fathom how he had gotten there. He remembered fainting, remembered the dream. And remembered he’d come to some shocking awareness only seconds before he’d fainted. What it was, he couldn’t recall. Nor did he feel inclined to try. He dressed in his blues and went to his office. It was only four A.M.

Kane flipped psychology books from his shelves, skimming rapidly for some reference that would tend to confirm his theory. By dusk he’d not found it. But then he noticed a title was missing. And he remembered—
Madness in Hamlet.
Faintly, he smiled. And knew he was right. Kane leaned back in his chair, lit a cigarette and relaxed. Smoke curled up from the cigarette as he looked, with remembered affection, at the pied beauty of dawn. Sunrise and sunset, he’d loved them as a boy. They had filled him with a sense of glory, made him feel somehow closer to God; a God he could touch, and see and breathe. “Peace I leave you, My peace I give you…” He remembered the words from the Mass and wondered what had happened to that peace. Then tried to forget the answer. His glance scanned the wood that hemmed in the courtyard. Trees turning bare; birds singing fitfully, flitting from branch to branch. Suddenly, he thought he detected movement somewhere deep inside the wood; something that looked like a woman, again, a woman gowned in black. But when he stared at the figure directly, he saw nothing, nothing at all. Am I in the madhouse, wondered Kane, or is the madhouse in me?

He thought once more of his theory, and was vaguely nagged by a formless feeling that the theory somehow related to him. He deliberately refused to pursue it. But from time to time, as he brooded, putting an ear to the sounds of awakening, he found himself thinking of Gregory Peck. He irritably wondered why.

Cutshaw came in at seven, irrupting unannounced in his customary fashion. “Good morrow, Killer Cat!” he blared. “I’ve come to help you pack!”

“That won’t be needed,” answered Kane.

“Think I’d demand a tip, you swine? Fie, fie on your couth!”

“I’m not leaving.”

“You’re not
what?
” Manfred Cutshaw feigned surprise as though his life depended upon it.

“I’m not leaving. I’ve changed my mind.”

“Hud, don’t tease!”

“No. You win.” Colonel Kane feigned quiet anger as though his life depended upon it. “Go ahead. Gloat all you want. But every day away from the jungle is another day of heaven. What’s the price? Name your deal!”

“Hud, don’t
rush
me! Please! Don’t
rush
me! Foot! Can’t a man have a moment to
weep?
”

“Come on, come on! What’s the price?”

“Hud, you know nothing of gracious living.”

“And you know nothing of simple honesty. Now name it, Cutshaw, name it! Name the price!” demanded Kane.

“So ridiculously modest that you’ll lick my hand appreciatively. I wouldn’t ask for a
thing,
in fact, but as Social Director and Games Leader I
must
provide the men with their minimal needs for self-expression.” He whipped out a paper from his pocket, began to unfold it with loving care. “The preliminary list of particulars, Hud!”

“Come on, come on! Let’s hear it!”

“Yes! First on the agenda—Spoor is ready to cast!”

“Cast?”

Cutshaw looked vaguely frimmled. “If I were looking for an echo, Hud, I’d go to Grand Canyon. I said ‘Cast!’, dummy, ‘Cast!’ Spoor has finished
Julius Caesar!
”

Chapter 12

General Syntax, on the telephone, paused for a look at the mouthpiece, not quite believing he’d heard correctly. Then he continued talking to Kane, making mysterious penciled notes on a yellow pad beside the phone.

He said, “Dalmatians, wolfhounds, chows, and—and
what?
 … Pekinese. Uh-huh … No, no, that’s—no … I understand, that’s sort of—well—yes—
therapy.
I mean, you clearly know what you’re
doing.
You’re—well—I’ve seen, you know, and Lastrade (pause) Lastrade has given carte
blanche.
You—what?… No, no, no, no. That’s very (pause)
easy.
No. The Superman suit we can make, but the—well, the pulleys and paints. Why do you need the pulleys and paints?… Oh. Oh, I see. He wants to to do the Slovik ceiling like the Sistine …
Chapel.
Yes. Now what about the flying belt? There’s an experimental model or two, but they aren’t too easy to get, you see, and … Oh? T-Tinker Bell? You’re doing a performance of
Peter
(pause)
Pan.
Well, it’s—look—won’t he sort of—well—sort of fly over the
wall?
 … Oh. Oh, I see. He—he promised he wouldn’t
do
that…”

*   *   *

Six days later Captain Groper gripped the second-story balustrade with unbelieving hands. He had eyes but would not see; he had ears but would not hear—not the creaking of the pulleys nor the scaffold heaving before him, bearing Corfu and buckets of paint ever upward toward the ceiling like an obscene and mad benediction. Corfu, stirring paint, looked with bemusement at the Captain. “
Buon giorno,
Captain Frogface!” he greeted him as he passed.

From below came the yapping of dogs. Groper looked down at an office near Kane’s. Tethered outside it, with Krebs standing guard, was a yipping, howling, barking clot of dogs of various breeds. Kane stepped out of his office, munching a sandwich with nonchalance, just as the door beside the mound of dogs flew open, revealing Spoor. He gestured into the office, commanded, “Out! You hear me?
Out!
”

A rather large chow padded despondently out of the room. Spoor called angrily after him, “And tell your stupid agent not to waste any more of my time!”

Kane stepped in to him, chewing. Spoor eyed him with outrage. “Can you imagine? He
lisps!
Here I am casting
Julius Caesar
and they send me a dog who
lisps!
” Then he turned and called into the room, “Alterman!
Out!
Hear me?
Out!
”

Out came Captain Alterman. He wore grieving disappointment and a blue-and-red “Superman” costume. “But
why?
” he pouted.
“Why?”