The next tragedy that struck was an abscessed and impacted wisdom tooth. Nicholas had no choice but to make an immediate appointment with Dr. Kosh, the best oral surgeon in central Orange County.
The Sodium Pentothal was a great relief to him; probably it was the first time in three weeks he had become completely unconscious. He returned home in good spirits—until the procaine wore off and pain flashed through his stitched-up jaw. The rest of the day he lay tossing and turning; all that night the pain was so great that he forgot the whirling buzz saws; the next day he phoned Dr. Kosh and pleaded for oral pain medication.
“Didn’t I give you a prescription?” Dr. Kosh said, absentmindedly. “I’ll phone the pharmacy and have them send it right out. I’m prescribing Darvon-N for you; that tooth had grown down into the jawbone; we had to sort of—well, crack the jawbone to get the pieces of tooth out.”
Nicholas sat with a moist teabag between his jaws as he waited for the pharmacy delivery boy to ring the doorbell.
The doorbell rang at last.
Still woozy from the pain, Nicholas made his way to the door and opened it. A girl stood there with heavy black hair, hair so black that the coils of it seemed almost blue. She wore an absolutely white uniform. Around her neck he saw a gold necklace, with a gold fish suspended between links of golden chain. Fascinated, staring at the necklace in a hypnoidal twilight state, Nicholas could not speak.
“Eight forty-two,” the girl said.
Nicholas, as he handed her a ten, said, “What—is that necklace?”
“An ancient sign,” the girl said, raising her left hand to point to the golden fish. “Used by the early Christians.”
He stood holding the bag of medication, watching her go. He was still there when Rachel came to tap him and rouse him to full consciousness.
The medication helped the pain, and in a few days Nicholas seemed okay. But he was, of course, under the weather from the oral surgery and stayed in bed resting. The buzz saws, mercifully, were now gone; he had not seen them since visiting Dr. Kosh.
“I have a favor to ask,” he said to Rachel one day as she was getting ready to go shop at Alpha Beta. “Could you get me a few votive candles and a glass candleholder? The candleholder has to be white and the candles have to be white.”
“What’s a votive candle?” Rachel asked, puzzled.
“One of those little short fat candles,” Nicholas said. “Like you see burning in Catholic churches.”
“Why do you want them?”
Truthfully, Nicholas said, “I don’t know. For—I guess healing. I need to get well.” He was calmer these days, but very weak from the surgery. Anyhow, he seemed unfrightened; the fear and disorientation, the franticness we had seen on his face, was at last gone.
“How’s your eyesight?” I asked him that night when I dropped over.
“Fine.” Nicholas lay on his back in his bed, fully dressed; on the table beside him a white votive candle burned.
After I had shut the bedroom door Nicholas said, staring at the ceiling, “Phil, I really heard the radio saying that. ‘Nick the prick, Nick the prick’ over and over again.” I was the only one he had told about it. “And I know,” he said, “I know equally that it could not have been saying that. I can still hear the voice in my mind. Speaking very slowly, very insistently. Like when someone is trying to program you. You understand? Programming me to die. A demon voice. It wasn’t human. I wonder how many times I’ve heard it in my sleep and not remembered it. If I hadn’t had insomnia—”
“Like you say,” I said, “it isn’t possible.”
“There are technical possibilities. They do exist. Such as electronic signal override, by a small gain transmitter located very nearby, say in the next apartment. That way it wouldn’t affect any other receivers. Just mine. Or from a satellite passing overhead.”
“A what?”
“There’s a lot of illicit satellite override of U.S. radio and TV stations,” Nicholas said. “Usually the material is subliminal. I must have somehow transliminated it, which I wasn’t supposed to do. They fouled up somehow in their transmission. It sure as hell woke me thoroughly up, and that’s exactly what it was not supposed to do.”
“Who’d do that?”
Nicholas said, “I don’t know. I have no theory. Some branch of the government, I suppose. Or the Soviets. There are a lot of secret Soviet transmitters overhead these days, beaming down to populated areas like this. Broadcasting filth and garbage and kinky suggestions, God knows what.”
“But your name.”
“Maybe everyone listening heard his own name,” Nicholas said. “ ‘Pete, you beat your meat.’ Or, ‘Mike, you’re a dike.’ I don’t know. I’m exhausted from trying to figure it out.” He pointed to the slightly flickering votive candle.
“So that’s why you want that burning all the time,” I said, understanding. “To drive—”
“To keep me sane,” Nicholas interrupted.
“Nick,” I said, “you’re going to come out of this just fine. I have a theory. The whirling pinwheels of fire, they were due to poisons, toxins, from your infected wisdom tooth. So was what you heard on the radio. You were highly toxic without knowing it. Now that the oral surgery’s done, you’ll cease to be toxic and be okay. That’s why you’re better already.”
“Except,” he said, “what about the golden necklace the girl wore? And what she said?”
“How does that fit in?”
Nicholas said, “I’ve been expecting her at the door all my life. I recognized her when I saw her. There she was, and wearing what I knew she’d be wearing. I had to ask her what it was; there was no way I could keep from it. Phil, I was programmed to ask that question. It was my destiny.”
“But that wasn’t bad, like the buzz
