I fought for the surface, desperately trying to stay on top of the turbulent currents, giving up thought direction and fighting only for the integrity of my own mind. Then I was suddenly up and splashing through the pillar of foamy water that roared into the black, heavy sky; like a bullet out of a rifle, whining, spinning, was I. Splashing, sputtering, I showered out of the mind of Child.
The room was dark. The hex signs glowed on the walls, partially illuminating the serious faces of the generals and the technicians. They were all grimacing, like gargoyle masks.
'He threw me out,' I said in the quiet which stretched to the breaking point.
Everyone stared at me with what was obviously a bad case of doubt. I wished I had been more conciliatory in the days past, so that this incident would not appear so suspicious.
'He just threw me out of his mind,' I said. It was the first time it had ever happened to me. I explained that.
They listened. Somewhere, I was certain, Child was laughing.
VIII
Rumors of war.
The Chinese had slaughtered the skeleton staffs manning the last two Western Alliance embassies in Asia. One was in what had once been called Korea, the other on the home islands of Japan. The Japanese denied any responsibility for the massacre on their own soil. The story was that citizens of Japan and Chinese ancestry had forced their way past the police detailed to protect the Western delegates, had run wild in an orgy of destruction. The Japanese press pointed out that the West, perhaps, should have been expecting this for years, their own silly trade practices-from which China had always been excluded-drawing the wrath of a poverty-stricken people who felt cast aside from the main commerce of the world. Other reports, from eyewitnesses in Japan, said that the Japanese police did not resist the mob at all and actually seemed to be directing its bloodthirsty attack on the foreign consulate offices.
The Tri-D screen showed headless bodies for the benefit of those with shallow imaginations. In the streets of Tokyo, masses marched, holding those heads speared on the ends of sharpened aluminum poles. Dead eyes of our countrymen looked back at us from the other side of the screen
The Pentagon, the same morning, announced the discovery of the Bensor Beam, which was capable of shorting out all synapses in the nervous system of the human body, leaving the brain imprisoned in a mindless hulk. Named after its creator, a Dr. Harold Bensor, the beam was already being referred to (by Pentagon officials and their cronies in the War Bureau of Moscow) as 'the turning point in the cold war.' I knew the idea had come from Child; I recognized it the way one recognizes a bad dream that someone has made into a movie. But the censors had learned from the mistakes they had made with me in the past; the public would never hear of Child.
I wondered, for the briefest of moments, what sort of inhuman fiend this Bensor must be to want his name attached to such an inglorious device. Then I lost my facade of superiority when I considered that the weapon might just as likely have been called the Simeon Kelly Beam, for I had been the middleman who had brought it into existence. I was more responsible than anyone, even Child, for whatever might be done with this damn thing.
Pictures on the screen showed two Chinese prisoners on whom the weapon had been used. Spastic, they flopped about on the gray floor of their cell, eyes sightless, ears unhearing, bodies pulled by strings that none of us could really understand.
I turned it off.
I pushed my unfinished breakfast away from me, and got my coat from the closet. I was to meet Melinda at her apartment for another session with the tapes, and I did not want to miss that. Besides, seeing her might somehow purge the strain of guilt running through me.
AM the interviews were at her apartment, for she had a ton of equipment there and preferred not to have to move it. That evening, we were going to the theater-and that was no business meeting at all. In fact, even the interviews had become more than business.
I was trying to heed the mechanical psychiatrist's advice, trying to reach out and accept human warmth. And, in small ways, in kisses and touches and a few words, she was returning that effort of mine. To me, so thirsty for companionship after a long drought, it seemed even more heady and fine than it really was.
The sky was gray again and whispered snow. It was a regular oldtime winter, a Christmas-card sort of winter, sparkling and white and bitterly cold. Somewhere, far above, floated Dragonfly.
'Did the FBI mistreat you at any other time?' she asked.
The black microphone dangled above us like a bloated spider. Behind the couch where we sat, reels hissed in the recorder, like voices commenting on the anecdotes I told.
'It wasn't the FBI so often as the doctors who treated me not as a human being, but as something to be pricked, punched, and jabbed. I remember once when-'
'Keep remembering,' she said. She reached behind the couch and stopped the recorder, laid the microphone down. 'That's enough for one day. If it gets moving too fast, you lose the color. You try to tell too much, and the details are blurred. It happens with everyone.'
'I guess so,' I said.
She was wearing a peasant blouse with a scalloped neckline, an alluring garment which I found myself staring at. And that, in itself, was a shock. It did not seem disgusting, as it once would have. In fact, the fullness, the perfect roundness of her breasts seemed deeply exciting.
Perhaps my mechanical psychiatrist had been correct. Perhaps this was a purpose, a legitimate need.
She saw the direction of my gaze. Perhaps that was what produced the following. Perhaps she had been awaiting a sign, and this was the one she saw and chose to travel by. She moved across to the couch, beside me, leaned upwards, and made a bow of her mouth, her tongue flicking along those lips, anxious and inquiring.
What is your mood, the tongue seemed to say. How do you feel? Is this the time? Why don't you do something?
I obeyed the wishes of the tongue. I found it with my lips and with my own tongue, drew her closer with both arms and felt her breasts against my chest And was not disgusted.
In time, I had touched the flesh of her legs, felt the warmth of her thighs through her skirt. Then I scooped her breasts free of the peasant blouse and tested them with teeth and lips. An hour passed in a minute and had the joy of a century encapsulated in it When I left, a hundred yearsa minute later, she stood clean and brown before me, a dark, supple woman divested of all but the glow of her body's youth. We kissed and said nothing more-for there was nothing more to be said. Not really. Even if I could have forced words out of my dry throat Outside, I stood in the drive a long while, oblivious of snow and wind, of stares from passing pedestrians, of the need to get to the AC complex and confront Child again.
For the first time in my life, I had been with a woman.
And she had been a goddess, a good place to start. I didn't feel tainted or used or sinful. I felt better, in fact, than I had ever felt in my life. In time, I managed to think enough to get to the car, climb inside, and close the door. I sat for maybe five minutes before I started it.
My body seemed to burn where she had touched me.
Flames played along my lips. All the way to AC
I was in love: no question. I had not even attempted to esp her thoughts ever since we had met, and that was unusual. I was affording her the same privilege that Harry received, but before she had done half as much for me as he had, before I really knew whether she would accept me or demolish me. I imagine I had been afraid, at first that she would love me-and later that she would not.
How foolish I had been at the party, weeks ago, when she had been pointed out to me and when, later, she seemed to take interest in me, looking my way, smiling, doing all the things a woman can do. I had bolted. I had left the party even before anyone asked for parlor tricks, and I had hidden in my house, pretending I had not been interested in her. Foolish. I was so much older then-but I am younger than that now.
A band of peace criers had gathered before a precinct house, for some unfathomable reason. They had stoned the windows. A phalanx of coppers was charging down the steps as I went by.
At a red light two blocks on, a stream of young militants burst from an alleyway to the right, half a block
