Death Qualified Part 50

"Then what?" she asked. Her voice sounded unfamiliar, too shrill, trembling.

"I think I got erratic in Schumaker's office, or somewhere.

Erratic. Nice word. Off the straight and narrow, veering, unpredictable. He kept saying the work was over with, done, destroyed. He lied. I think they probably re 3 strained me, and then gave me something to calm me down. It worked just fine. Then we were home, my home, and they were looking for the disks, to see if I had loaded them into my computers, saved them under some other name, hidden them under the laundry. He brought Margolis because he's the computer genius. The disks can't hide from him." The laughter broke out this time. It vanished almost instantly.

"Hey, Barbara, don't cry. It's all right."

Tears were running down her cheeks. But he had not opened his eyes.

"I'm going to get us some coffee," Frank said, hurrying from the room.

"I'm sorry I scared him," Mike said softly.

"And you.

I can't seem to help it right now. Listen to me, Barbara.

Listen. I have to go through the disks one more time. I can't stop where I am, you see. I can't keep my eyes closed forever, but if I open them, I'm not really sure what I'll see. That's how it is right now." He was laughing again, not openly, but under his words laughter seemed to ripple and bubble.

"No! Where are they?"

"Frank has them. But, Barbara, I need to go through them again. I really need to. I feel like a nickering light bulb, on and off, on and off. I can run the copies on Frank's computer."

She shook her head.

"Tell me what's on them. What they did to you. You act as if you've been brainwashed or something."

"Brainwashed. In the was.h.i.+ng machine, churning around and around. That's exactly right. In the Whirlpool.

That's a brand name, you know. Apt. In a whirlpool you get spun around and around and finally thrown out. There are a lot of places where you can land, a lot of places where you can be thrown free, some of them places you don't want to hit, because you won't leave them again. In the whirlpool, spinning, spinning. That's where I am, Barbara, spinning around and around. You can't guide me out and neither can Frank. The disks can, I hope."

"You're tripping," she whispered.

"My G.o.d, they must have given you LSD or something like that. A hallucinogenic drug."

He laughed.

"I want the disks, Barbara. Come on in, Frank. And bring your briefcase. That's where you put them, isn't it?"

Frank walked into the living room.

"I think we should call Doc, or take him to the hospital if Doc's not home yet."

Barbara nodded miserably.

"And have another Lucas on your hands?" Mike murmured.

"That's what they did to him, you know. He was caught in the whirlpool and they didn't know what to do, so they kept him on tranquilizers for years and years. No way, Frank. Not me." He drew his feet in and started to rise from his chair; when he opened his eyes he went dead white, swayed, and then clutched his ears with both hands, closed his eyes again.

"G.o.d!" he whispered.

"Oh, G.o.d!"

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 hoa.r.s.ely.

"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 brus.h.i.+ng 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 brus.h.i.+ng at his face, at the air before him. Desperately she s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 s.h.i.+ne. And they made it mean sane, or rational. Wrong. It means to s.h.i.+ne. 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed, 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 a.s.sist 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 a.s.sault!"

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 pa.s.sive 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 G.o.d'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. a.s.sault 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 a.s.sisted 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 a.s.sociate 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 a.s.sisted 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."