_An Analysis of Psychotic Time_, a heavy tome, full of graphs and tabular material, which Bayliss had insisted he read, asserting that it filled in necessary background to the case. Larsen had spent a couple of hours on it, but so far he had got no further than the preface to the third edition.
Periodically he went over to the window and peered through the plastic blind for any signs of movement in the next chalet. Beyond, the desert lay in the sunlight like an enormous bone, against which the aztec-red fins of Bayliss’s Pontiac flared like the tail feathers of a flamboyant phoenix. The remaining three chalets were empty; the complex was operated by the electronics company for which he and Bayliss worked as a sort of ‘re-creational’ centre for senior executives and tired ‘think-men’. The desert site had been chosen for its hypotensive virtues, its supposed equivalence to psychic zero. Two or three days of leisurely reading, of watching the motionless horizon, and tension and anxiety thresholds rose to more useful levels.
However, two days there, Larsen reflected, and he had very nearly gone mad. It was lucky Bayliss had been around with his hypodermic. Though the man was certainly casual when it came to supervising his patients; he left them to their own resources. In fact, looking back, he — Larsen — had been responsible for just about all the diagnosis. Bayliss had done little more than thumb his hypo, toss Kretschmer into his lap, and offer some cogitating asides.
Perhaps he was waiting for something?
Larsen tried to decide whether to phone Bayliss on some pretext; his number — 0, on the internal system — was almost too inviting. Then he heard a door clatter outside, and saw the tall, angular figure of the psychologist crossing the concrete apron between the chalets, head bowed pensively in the sharp sunlight.
Where’s his case, Larsen thought, almost disappointed. Don’t tell me he’s putting on the barbiturate brakes. Maybe he’ll try hypnosis. Masses of post-hypnotic suggestions, in the middle of shaving I’ll suddenly stand on my head.
He let Bayliss in, fidgeting around him as they went into the lounge.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ he asked. ‘Do you realize it’s nearly four?’
Bayliss sat down at the miniature executive desk in the middle of the lounge and looked round critically, a ploy Larsen resented but never managed to anticipate.
‘Of course I realize it. I’m fully wired for time. How have you felt today?’ He pointed to the straight-backed chair placed in the interviewee’s position. ‘Sit down and try to relax.’
Larsen gestured irritably. ‘How can I relax while I’m just hanging around here, waiting for the next bomb to go off?’ He began his analysis of the past twenty-four hours, a task he enjoyed, larding the case history with liberal doses of speculative commentary.
‘Actually, last night was easier. I think I’m entering a new zone. Everything’s beginning to stabilize, I’m not looking over my shoulder all the time. I’ve left the inside doors open, and before I enter a room I deliberately anticipate it, try to extrapolate its depth and dimensions so that it doesn’t surprise me — before I used to open a door and just dive through like a man stepping into an empty lift shaft.’
Larsen paced up and down, cracking his knuckles. Eyes half closed, Bayliss watched him. ‘I’m pretty sure there won’t be another attack,’ Larsen continued. ‘In fact, the best thing is probably for me to get straight back to the plant. After all, there’s no point in sitting around here indefinitely. I feel more or less completely okay.’
Bayliss nodded. ‘In that case, then, why are you so jumpy?’
Exasperated, Larsen clenched his fists. He could almost hear the artery thudding in his temple. ‘I’m not jumpy! For God’s sake, Bayliss, I thought the advanced view was that psychiatrist and patient shared the illness together, forgot their own identities and took equal responsibility. You’re trying to evade—’
‘I am not,’ Bayliss cut in firmly. ‘I accept complete responsibility for you. That’s why I want you to stay here until you’ve come to terms with this thing.’
Larsen snorted. 'Thing'! Now you’re trying to make it sound like something out of a horror film. All I had was a simple hallucination. And I’m not even completely convinced it was that.’ He pointed through the window. ‘Suddenly opening the garage door in that bright sunlight it might have been a shadow.’
‘You described it pretty exactly,’ Bayliss commented. ‘Colour of the hair, moustache, the clothes he wore.’
‘Back projection. The detail in dreams is authentic too.’ Larsen moved the chair out of the way and leaned forwards across the desk. ‘Another thing. I don’t feel you’re being entirely frank.’
Their eyes levelled. Bayliss studied Larsen carefully for a moment, noticing his widely dilated pupils.
‘Well?’ Larsen pressed.
Bayliss buttoned his jacket and walked across to the door. ‘I’ll call in tomorrow. Meanwhile try to unwind yourself a little. I’m not trying to alarm you, Larsen, but this problem may be rather more complicated than you imagine.’ He nodded, then slipped out before Larsen could reply.
Larsen stepped over to the window and through the blind watched the psychologist disappear into his chalet. Disturbed for a moment, the sunlight again settled itself heavily over everything. A few minutes later the sounds of one of the Bartok quartets whined fretfully across the apron.
Larsen went back to the desk and sat down, elbows thrust forward aggressively. Bayliss irritated him, with his neurotic music and inaccurate diagnoses. He felt tempted to climb straight into his car and drive back to the plant. Strictly speaking, though, the psychologist outranked Larsen, and probably had executive authority over him while he was at the chalet, particularly as the five days he had spent there were on the company’s time.
He gazed round the silent lounge, tracing the cool horizontal shadows that dappled the walls, listening to the low soothing hum of the airconditioner. His argument with Bayliss had refreshed him and he felt composed and confident. Yet residues of tension and uneasiness still existed, and he found it difficult to keep his eyes off the open doors to the bedroom and kitchen.
He had arrived at the chalet five days earlier, exhausted and overwrought, on the verge of a total nervous collapse. For three months he had been working without a break on programming the complex circuitry of a huge brain simulator which the company’s Advanced Designs Division were building for one of the major psychiatric foundations. This was a complete electronic replica of the central nervous system, each spinal level represented by a single computer, other computers holding memory banks in which sleep, tension, aggression and other psychic functions were coded and stored, building blocks that could be played into the CNS simulator to construct models of dissociation states and withdrawal syndromes — any psychic complex on demand.
The design teams working on the simulator had been watched vigilantly by Bayliss and his assistants, and the weekly tests had revealed the mounting load of fatigue that Larsen was carrying. Finally Bayliss had pulled him off the project and sent him out to the desert for two or three days’ recuperation.
Larsen had been glad to get away. For the first two days he had lounged aimlessly around the deserted chalets, pleasantly fuddled by the barbiturates Bayliss prescribed, gazing out across the white deck of the desert floor, going to bed by eight and sleeping until noon. Every morning the caretaker had driven in from the town near by to clean up and leave the groceries and menu slips, but Larsen never saw her. He was only too glad to be alone. Deliberately seeing no one, allowing the natural rhythms of his mind to reestablish themselves, he knew he would soon recover.
In fact, however, the first person he had seen had stepped up to him straight out of a nightmare.
Larsen still looked back on the encounter with a shudder.
After lunch on his third day at the chalet he had decided to drive out into the desert and examine an old quartz mine in one of the canyons. This was a two-hour trip and he had made up a thermos of iced martini. The garage was adjacent to the chalet, set back from the kitchen side entrance, and fitted with a roll steel door that lifted vertically and curved up under the roof.
Larsen had locked the chalet behind him, then raised the garage door and driven his car out on to the apron. Going back for the thermos which he had left on the bench at the rear of the garage, he had noticed a full can of petrol in the shadows against one corner. For a moment he paused, adding up his mileage, and decided to take the can with him. He carried it over to the car, then turned round to close the garage door.
The roll had failed to retreat completely when he had first raised it, and reached down to the level of his chin. Putting his weight on the handle, Larsen managed to move it down a few inches, but the inertia was too much for him. The sunlight reflected in the steel panels was dazzling his eyes. Pressing his palms under the door, he jerked it upwards slightly to gain more momentum on the downward swing.
The space was small, no more than six inches, but it was just enough for him to see into the darkened garage.
