The Cold Smell Of Sacred Stone

'I still love you, and you're still sick. And I'm still going to take care of you.'

Garth cocked his head slightly, and a sad smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. 'Garth feels strongly that you love and miss someone else. Garth doesn't feel that you can love him when he has no 'I'.'

'Let me tell you something, brother,' I said tightly. My stomach was hurting badly, and I had to fight back tears. 'My old buddy Garth is going to get his 'I' back. That's a promise. If you can't do it, and the doctors here can't do it, then I am personally going to paddle to the bottom of whatever ocean you dropped it in and haul it back up. And I still think you should give Wagner a break for a little while. You won't sink anywhere; I won't let you.'

'You should eat. The food's very good.'

'I don't care how good it is,' I said curtly. 'I'm not hungry, and I don't want to eat. All I want to do is just sit here and talk to my brother.'

Garth stared at me strangely for a long time, and then tears suddenly welled in his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. 'You're a dwarf,' he murmured.

'No shit,' I said bitterly. I knew I was behaving atrociously, and couldn't help it. Garth's tears had startled and frightened me. Now, for the first time, I was struck with the realization that Garth really could be insane, and might stay that way. For some reason, I felt threatened, and my immediate, defensive response was anger-and shame for the thought that it might have been better if Garth had never regained consciousness. I had never lost hope for the unconscious Garth, and now the madman sitting across from me was draining that hope away from me. 'Did you just notice?'

'But it doesn't bother you.'

'What the fuck are you talking about, Garth?'

'You've never suffered because you're a dwarf.'

'That's bullshit. I distinctly remember it bothering me when some of our nastier classmates in high school insisted on trying to use me for a medicine ball. You should remember, because you were the one who punched their lights out when they did it.'

'You've had bad experiences, but they only made you stronger. You're a very strong man, Mongo; you would have grown up to be a strong man in any case, but being born a dwarf made you stronger. It gave you a great challenge, something to test yourself against constantly. You've won. You've always won, because you've never allowed yourself to be beaten. That makes it very difficult for you to understand … the rest of us.'

'More bullshit, Garth. I've been beaten down a good many times, and you damn well know it.'

'But you always got back up again. You've never been crushed.'

'Neither have you.'

'Now Garth has been crushed.'

'You've always been as strong as me, if not stronger.'

'No. Your 'I' could never be lost, because you would die before you gave it up. You don't really need anyone. You don't need Garth.'

'I need Garth to be well. What do you need?'

'The reason you can't understand is because you've never really suffered any serious damage to the part of you that is you. If you weren't so strong, Garth believes you would understand what he is saying, and you would feel more comfortable with him.'

'Garth, what do you need?'

'Garth. . just needs.'

'You need what?'

'Garth. . isn't certain, Mongo. Right now, he knows only that he needs this music to stay on the surface.'

'Listen, brother,' I said through clenched teeth, 'what Mongo feels right now is like punching you in the mouth, and maybe Mongo will do it if you don't stop talking crazy. I mean it. How's that for a therapeutic prescription?! You have to fight madness, and you're not doing it!'

Garth's response was to abruptly reach up and snatch off his earphones. His hands were trembling slightly as he set the earphones down on top of the Walkman, shut the player off. He clasped his hands together on top of the table, leaned toward me.

'Garth was lost before you brought him the music of the Ring,' my brother said in a low, earnest voice. The muscles in his jaw and throat clenched, unclenched. 'He was drowning. It is impossible to describe what it was like-what Garth really means when he says 'drowning.' Garth's mind was still working; he could remember killing Orville Madison, and wounding Veil Kendry, just before he. . sank into this vast ocean of despair and unconsolable sadness. There was no hope in this ocean, Mongo-no reason whatsoever to live, much less to move or talk. Garth could hear voices; he knew what was happening all around him, but he couldn't move or talk under the weight of all that sadness. He couldn't-'

'That's because you'd been poisoned, Garth!'

My brother blinked slowly, as if momentarily disoriented, then leaned back in his chair. 'Yes,' he said in an odd, distant tone of voice. 'Garth was poisoned by one of two men-possibly both of them. Their names-at least the names they were using-are Larry Rhodes and Michael Watt. When Garth first started working on the case, he thought it might be a matter of one company trying to steal secrets from another. Now Garth thinks that Rhodes and Watt are foreign agents.'

'Then you know?! You realize you've been poisoned, and you even know who did it?!'

Garth shrugged, smiled faintly. 'Now Garth realizes that he was being slowly poisoned, and who was doing it. The three of us were always bringing each other coffee. Garth was very stupid.'

'It's the poison that's making you think the way you are, Garth! Realizing what's been done to you is the first step in fighting back.'

'No, Mongo. It was the poison that sent Garth to the bottom of the ocean, yes. . but the ocean was always there, before the poisoning, and it was the weight of the ocean that crushed Garth and destroyed his 'I'.'

'You're going to get better.'

'Better?'

'Yes, better.'

'You believe Garth will somehow get 'better' only because you do not understand how Garth is now.'

I sighed, shook my head. 'Rhodes and Watt took off yesterday, and they're probably already out of the country. Mr. Lippitt thinks they're K.G.B.'

'Oh, really?'

'You don't seem all that interested.'

'Who they really are, what they did, and where they are isn't important. They were two silly men doing silly things for silly reasons.'

'Yeah, the problem is that they made you silly.'

'Do you really find Garth silly, Mongo?'

'Damn it, you know I don't! But the poison they fed you screwed up your head, and it's still screwing up your head. You've got to understand and accept that if you want to get better. Unless you want the doctors here to start doping you up with psychotropic drugs, and unless you're ready for a lengthy stay in mental hospitals like this one, you'd better start giving a lot of serious thought to attitude adjustment. You have to will yourself to fight against the effects of the poison and get better. You have to want to get better. That isn't at all what I'm getting from you now.'

'Garth understands what you're saying, Mongo, but you don't seem to be able-or want-to understand what Garth is saying. You don't even seem to want to hear it. When Garth was telling you about the ocean, you interrupted him to talk about unimportant things.'

'I'm sorry, Garth,' I said, feeling as if I were talking to a child. 'Go ahead and tell me about the ocean.'

'It's thousands of feet deep, filled with needless pain, cruelty, stupidity, waste. It's the ocean Siegmund Loge showed us. All his life, he lived under that ocean, Mongo. All his life. He took the two of us down for only sixteen hours, and the experience almost shattered us. He'd lived there all his life, feeling all that pain, and yet he continued to function. And he functioned brilliantly.