could tell me the names of only six grains at this stage.
Our time ran out just as prot decided to make a trip to one of the K-PAXian libraries. He asked me whether I would like to join him. I said I was sorry, I had some appointments. 'It's your loss,' he said.
After I had awakened him, and before he left my examining room, I asked prot whether he could, in fact, talk to animals, as Giselle and I suspected.
'Of course,' he replied.
'Can you communicate with all our beings?'
'I have a little difficulty with homo sapiens.'
'Can you talk to dolphins and whales?'
'They're beings, aren't they?'
'How do you do that?'
He wagged his head in abject frustration. 'You humans consider yourselves the smartest of the EARTHS beings. Am I right?'
'Yes.'
'Then obviously the other beings speak much simpler languages than yours, right?'
'Well-'
Out came the notebook, pencil poised. 'So if you're so smart, and their languages are so simple, how come you can't communicate with them?' He waited for an answer. Unfortunately, I didn't have one.
JUST before I left for the day Giselle gave me another discouraging report from the police. Her contact had come up with a list of all disappearances of white males born between 1950 and 1965 from the entire United States and Canada. There had been thousands during this period, of course, but not a single one even came close to matching prot's profile. Some were too tall, some were bald, some were blue-eyed, some were dead, some had been found and were accounted for. Unless prot were a female in disguise, was much older or younger than he seemed, or someone whose disappearance had not been noticed, our patient, for all practical purposes, did not exist.
She was also waiting for the names and locations of all the slaughterhouses operating anywhere in North America between 1974 and 1985.
'You can eliminate the ones in or near large cities,' I told her. 'There's only one movie theater.'
She nodded her acknowledgment. She looked tired. 'I'm going to go home and sleep for about two days,' she said, yawning. How I wished I could have done the same!
I was lying awake that night trying to make some sense of the day's events-why, I wondered hazily, was there no record of Pete's disappearance? And what good, I tried to reason, was a list of slaughterhouses without further information as to where our abattoir might be located?-when I got a call from Dr. Chakraborty. Ernie was in the clinic. Someone had tried to kill him!
'What? Who?' I barked.
'Howie!' came the chilling reply.
All I could think of as I sped down the expressway was: Jesus Christ! What have I done? Whatever happened to Ernie was my fault, my responsibility, just as I was responsible for everything else that happened at the hospital. It was one of the worst moments of my life. But even at that blackest of hours I was heartened by the glow of the city, her throbbing lights bright against the steel-gray background of the dawning sky, as full of defiant life as the night, some forty years earlier, that we futilely rushed my father to the hospital. Same glowing sky, same darkening guilt.
Ernie was still in the emergency room when I got to MPI. Dr. Chakraborty met me in the corridor with: 'You are not to worry. He is very fine.' And indeed he was sitting up in bed, sans mask, smiling, his hands behind his head.
'How are you feeling, Ernie?'
'Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.' I had never seen a smile quite like his. It was positively beatific. 'What happened, for God's sake?'
'My good friend Howie just about strangled me to death.' When he threw his head back to laugh, I could see a red abrasion where something had been wrapped around his neck. 'That old son-of-a-bitch. I love him.'
'Love him? He tried to kill you!'
'No he didn't. He made me think he tried to kill me. Oh, it was fantastic. I was asleep. You know, with my hands tied and everything? He wrapped something around my neck-a handkerchief or something and tightened it up, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.'
'Go on.'
'When I stopped breathing and became unconscious, he somehow lifted me onto a gurney and ran me up here to the infirmary. They got me going again in a hurry, and when I woke up I realized immediately what he had done.'
'What do you think he did?' I remember saying to myself as I asked him this: I must be a psychiatrist! It was all I could do not to laugh.
'He taught me a lesson I'll never forget.'
'Which was?'
'Mat dying is nothing to fear. In fact, it's quite pleasant.'
'How so?'
'Well, you've heard that old adage-when you die your life passes before your eyes? Well, it does! But only the good parts! In my case, I was a child again. It was wonderful! My mother was there, and my dog, and I had all my old toys and games and my catcher's mitt.... It was just like living my whole childhood over again! But it was no dream. It was really happening! All those memories-I never realized what a wonderful thing childhood is until I got the chance to relive it like that. And then, when I was nine, it started all over again! And again! Over and over again! It was the best thing that ever happened to me!' There he was, his skin pale as a scallop, laughing about the event whose prospect had terrified him all his life. 'I can hardly wait for the real thing!'
They had taken Howie to Ward Four. I let him stew there the rest of that day and most of the next before I found time to talk to him. I was angry with him and let him know it, but he just sat there beaming at me, his grin a perfect copy of prot's know-it-all smirk. As he was heading back to his room on Ward Two he turned and proclaimed, 'Prot says one more task and I'll be cured, too.'
'I'll decide that, goddamn it!' I shouted after him.
ONE of the night nurses told me later that the Duchess had begun to take some of her meals in the dining room with the other patients. She was shocked and offended by all the belching and farting (courtesy, primarily, of Chuck), but, to her great credit, she usually stuck it out.
At her first appearance Bess tried to get up and serve her. One glance from prot and she returned to her place.
As usual, however, she wouldn't eat anything until everyone else had finished.'How did he get her to come to the table?' I asked the nurse.
'She wants to be the one who gets to go with him,' came the obvious reply. She sounded envious.
Session Twelve
WHILE prot was munching peaches and plums I brought up the subject of Howie and his tasks. I explained that the first one he had assigned to him (to find the 'bluebird of happiness') had produced a positive effect not only on Howie, but on the rest of the ward as well. Though it had turned out successfully also, the second (to 'cure' Ernie) was more problematical. I asked him if he had anything else in mind for my patient.
'Only one final task.'
'Do you mind telling me what it is?'
'That would spoil the surprise.'
'I think we've had enough surprises around here for a while. Can you guarantee this task will cause no harm to anyone?'
'If he does it well, it will be a very happy day for everyone, including yourself.' I was not so certain about
