Queen of Angels Page 20

  —Brhad Aranyaka Upanisad, 4.3 10

  36

  The Institute for Psychological Research rose from a seventeen acre lawn like an inverted step pyramid, one edge knifing into a ten story bronze and green glass cylinder. The building had originally belonged to a Chinese and Russian research center; under Raphkind many Chinese and Russian holdings within the continental United States had been nationalized following a joint default on US Bank loans.

  The building had gone unused for six months then had been handed over with virtually no strings attached to Martin Burke. Within a year the IPR had seemed a permanent fixture, employing three hundred people.

  The lawn was self maintaining as were all the gardens on the IPR grounds; desertion did not carry an onus of neglect anymore. Throughout the building arbeiters would have kept everything shipshape. Except for human plundering the IPR should be just as he had left it…

  The car parked openly before the glass doors and Martin stepped out, reaching back to take his slate from Lascal. “Home is the hunter,” Lascal said. “We’ve checked all federal and metro eyes and ears. None are in use now. The place is quiet.”

  Martin ignored that and walked toward the glass doors. They did not refuse him. For a brief moment simply to enter the building as he had a thousand times before as if nothing had ever happened was worth all he had agreed to.

  Lascal followed at a discreet distance. Martin lingered in the reception area for a moment clutching his slate with white knuckled fingers. He glanced at Lascal, who returned the ghost of a smile. Martin nodded and proceeded past the empty front desk then called back over his shoulder, “Who’s guarding the place?”

  “Not for you to worry about,” Lascal said. “It’s secure.”

  “We just drove up and walked in…” Martin said, his voice trailing off. Not to worry about. “Where’s Dr. Neuman?”

  “Everybody’s on the first research level,” Lascal said, following Martin’s hollow footsteps.

  “And where’s Goldsmith?”

  “In one of the patient rooms.”

  Martin stepped into his old office at the end of the hall two doors before the elevators to the underground research level. The disk cabinets opened to his touch but were empty; his desktop was clean. Biting his lower lip he tried the drawers on the desk; they were locked and would not accept his thumb-print. He was back but he was not home; home no longer recognized him.

  “You didn’t need that stuff, did you?” Lascal asked quietly, standing in the door. “You didn’t tell us you needed it.”

  Martin shook his head quickly and pushed past him.

  The elevator door opened at his approach and he got in, Lascal following two steps behind. Martin felt his anger rise and worked to control it. Two words kept echoing through his head: No right. Perhaps that meant that they had had no right to ransack his workplace; it might also mean there was no right to be found in anybody’s actions regarding IPR.

  Twenty seven feet down. The doors opened. No time at all since he last walked this hall turned to the left and authoritatively opened the large door to the central research theater. Martin stood hands on hips, darting glances at the lowered stage. Above the stage, behind thick glass, three rows of swivel seats occupied a gallery. Banks of lights glowed gently, recessed into the hemispherical dome directly over the theater. Most of the equipment was still in place as he had left it, tended by two research arbeiters: the white and silver triplex cylinder, nano monitors, flat ranks of five computers and one thinker arrayed to the left of the three gray couches, minus the buffer computer, within which investigators and investigated might have the security of knowing they were swimming in a time delayed simulation…

  Martin licked his lips and turned to Lascal. “All right,” he said. “Let’s get started.”

  Lascal nodded. “Miss Neuman and Mr. Albigoni are in the observation room adjacent. We’ve also managed to secure four of the five assistants you asked for.”

  “Who?”

  “Erwin Smith, David Wilson, Karl Anderson, Margery Underhill.”

  “Then let’s bring the group together.”

  They walked to the rear of the stage, through another small door and into the hallway leading to the patients’ quarters. Martin recalled the last of the twenty seven people he had investigated and therapied here, a young woman named Sarah Nin; he vividly remembered her Country, a gentle jungle dotted with sprawling mansions all filled with exotic animals. Voyaging through her he had half come to love Sarah Nin, a kind of reverse transference; her interior had been so peaceful, her exterior—large, cowlike, dull normal—so apparently untroubled.

  He had often dreamed about Sarah Nin’s Country. He doubted Goldsmith’s would be nearly so simple or pleasant.

  Goldsmith was being kept in the patient room Sarah Nin had occupied. Two slender powerful men in longsuits stood outside this door watching them intently as they approached, nodding acknowledgment to Lascal.

  “Mr. Albigoni is in there,” the taller of the two men said, pointing to the door across the hall. This was the observation room.

  Lascal opened this door and Martin entered.

  Albigoni and Carol Neuman sat talking quietly in chairs opposite the main screen. They looked up as the door opened. Carol smiled and stood. Albigoni leaned forward elbows on knees, eyebrows raised expectantly. Martin reached out and shook Carol’s hand.

  “We’re almost ready,” she said. “I’ve given our four assistants a refresher course. It’s been a while for them.”

  Martin nodded. “Of course. I’d like to talk with them as well.”

  “They’ll be here in a few minutes,” Carol said.

  “Good. I just…took a brief look at the theater. Everything but the buffer seems to be there, in place.”

  “It’s enough,” Carol affirmed. Martin tried to avoid looking at her directly. He felt particularly vulnerable now. His pulse was racing; he took periodic deep breaths and he could not stand still.

  “How’s Goldsmith?”

  “Fine, when I last spoke to him,” Albigoni said. The instigator of all this seemed calm, a center of peaceful purpose around which Martin saw he would be orbiting, electron to the publisher’s nucleus. Unimportant. Why here at all, then? Everything was ready to go; they might just as well do it without him.

  “Let’s see him, then,” Martin said, pulling the third seat into proper position to view the main screen. Lascal sat on a countertop behind them. Carol flipped open her chair arm controls and activated the screen. “Room one, please,” she said.

  Goldsmith sat stooped over on the edge of the neatly made bed, book held before him at knee level. Black hair rumpled clothes wrinkled but face serene. Martin studied the face quietly, noting the hooded sleepy eyes strong character lines surrounding nose and mouth steady sweep back and forth of eyes totally concentrating on the book.

  “What’s the book?” Martin asked.

  “The Qu’ran,” Albigoni said. “A special edition I published fifteen years ago. It was the only book he had with him.”

  Martin looked over his shoulder at Lascal. “He’s been reading it all along?”

  “Off and on,” Lascal said. “He called it ‘the religion of the slavers.’ Said if he was to be imprisoned he should know the mentality of masters.”

  “Moslems made lots of slave raids,” Carol said.

  “I know,” Martin said. “But he’s not a Moslem himself, is he? There’s nothing about that in his description.”

  “He’s not a Moslem,” Albigoni said. “Doesn’t believe in any formal religion as far as I know. Dabbled in vodoun a few years ago but not seriously. Used to visit a shop in LA for ritual items, more for research than spiritual need, I think.”

  Two of the IPR’s patients had been born to the Islamic faith. Their Countries had been difficult and disturbing places, magnificent from a research angle, easily worth ten times the three or four papers he had written on them, but not to Martin’s taste. He had hoped to be able to train
Islamic researchers to handle this particular cultural and religious terra, but had not been allowed enough time.

  “He seems more at peace than I feel,” Martin said.

  “He’s prepared for anything,” Albigoni said. “I could walk in there with a pistol or a hellcrown right now and he would welcome me.”

  “Mass murderer as martyr saint,” Carol said. She gave Martin a small conspiratorial smile as if to say The perfect challenge, no?

  Martin’s smile back at her was a mere flicker. His stomach was tight as a drum. There was a difference between being Fausted and being Faust. He was about to cross the line.

  Goldsmith’s hands were textured like fine leather, fingers loosely gripping the book. Clean. No blood.

  Martin stood. “Time to go to work. Carol, let’s meet with the four and plan out the next few days.”

  Albigoni looked at him with some surprise.

  “We don’t do this all at once, Mr. Albigoni,” Martin said, glad to see something other than calm expectation on his benefactor’s face. “We plan, we prepare, we rehearse. I trust you’ve given us enough time here.”

  “As much as you need,” Lascal said.

  Martin nodded sharply and took Carol’s arm. “Gentlemen, excuse us.” They left the room together. Martin shook his head dubiously as they walked past the guards down the hall to the support and monitoring room.

  “I wish they’d all just leave,” he said.

  “They’re paying the tab,” Carol reminded.

  “God save us all.”

  The integration, as well as the development of the various internal and external languages continues throughout an individual’s life, but for the most part the groundwork is fixed at an early age—probably around two years. At this age, the nature of fear undergoes a radical change in many infants. Before this age, infants fear unfamiliar sensations—loud noises, strange faces, and so on. After two years, supplementing these fears and/or replacing them is a fear of lack of sensation, darkness especially. In the dark or in silence, subconscious contents can be projected. The child’s recent grasp of language helps it to understand that these subconscious contents are not perceived by its parents. It begins to sublimate the visual language of the Country of the Mind. It is on its way to becoming a mature individual.

  —Martin Burke, The Country of the Mind (2043-2044)

  37

  Richard Fettle clasped the slate and thirty pages and walked on unsteady legs up the steps, turning with a jerk as the autobus made an unusual wheel noise against the curb behind him. His nerves were frayed and he could hardly think. He did not remember climbing the rest of the steps when he stood beside the white enameled wrought iron bird cage. He fancied for a moment that the bird was alive blinking at him. He pressed the doorbell and heard chimes within. The day was warming nicely and that was well for he wore only a shortsleeve shirt.

  + Please answer. Need company.

  Leslie Verdugo answered the door. She did not speak but smiled in his general direction, ether seeing.

  “Hello,” Richard said. “Is Madame in?”

  “It’s show and tell,” she said softly. “Everybody’s here but Nadine. Are you alone?” She looked behind him with wide eyes as if expecting a crowd of Selectors.

  “Alone,” Richard affirmed.

  Madame’s voice drifted from within. “Is that Richard? Richard, do come in. I’ve been worried.”

  Time went white and empty until he found himself reading the manuscript aloud. In a circle facing Madame de Roche familiar faces all around listening to him read. Coming to himself with a start Richard surmised he had spoken to a few people or perhaps only to Madame de Roche and had expressed his perhaps less than convinced joy that he was again writing. Conveyed his qualms about what he wrote. General sense of unease. Someone probably Raymond Cathcart had said something significant and he tried to remember it as he read + Possession by Goldsmith literary possession.

  They fed him a delayed lunch midway, the whole group standing around making small talk and waiting for the rest. + More attention than I’ve gotten in years.

  Richard felt stronger and more human. His memory became steady and his bowels as well. “I’d like to finish this now,” he said, handing his tray to Leslie Verdugo. Madame de Roche, sitting in her broad padded wicker chair, flame colored dress the color center of the throng, nodded. “We’re ready,” she said.

  He read on. Twilight came to the canyon and the house lights came on startling him a little though he did not break stride; he had appreciated the deepening shadows the grayness of the large living room. Here was a kind of low stimulus heaven his colleagues his friends his companions all sitting and standing around him listening to these fresh words, quiet as if in awe. He might die now and happily stay frozen here forever a museum specimen.

  “I still haven’t worked out the conclusion yet,” he warned as he switched to the text recorded in the slate. “It’s very rough.”

  “Go on,” urged Siobhan Edumbraga, hooded eyes focused on him alone enthralled by the gore.

  He revised as he read frowning at the crudeness yet feeling the power, knowing he communicated his emotions better than he had ever done before. At times he could not keep tears from his eyes and a tremor from his voice.

  “Don’t stop,” Madame de Roche said as he paused to recover from a particularly affecting sentence.

  Sadness and a sense of loss beyond the manuscript’s melancholy horror came upon him as he finished the last few paragraphs. He had written and written well and had become the center of this circle of people he now seemed to admire and look up to, people who meant a great deal to him. They were the last real link he had with social life and he would soon surrender their complete attention. This moment would pass and it might be the finest moment of his recent life the finest moment since he had watched his daughter being born—

  He fumbled the last sentence backed up read it again lowered the slate but did not raise his eyes, long fingers trembling.

  Madame sighed deeply. “Alas,” she said. He raised his eyes just enough to see her shaking her head. Her own eyes were closed, her face pruned into a mask of sadness. “He was of us,” she continued. “He was one of us and we could not know, only Richard could know what he was going through.”

  Raymond Cathcart stepped forward blocking his view of Leslie Verdugo, who was not smiling. “My God, Fettle. You actually believe that’s why he killed them all?”

  Richard nodded.

  “That’s bizarre. You’re saying he did it for his art?”

  Siobhan Edumbraga brayed whether laughter or weeping Fettle could not tell, for her face was fixed as a mask eyes hooded fingers clumped beneath her chin.

  “I’ve tried not to put it so baldly,” Richard said.

  “No. Hide confusion behind confusion, I always say.” Cathcart circled him. “Madame de Roche, do you believe this…writing of Fettle’s?”

  “I can see this need,” she said, “this desire to so change one’s circumstance or to be stifled…I’ve felt it myself. From what I know of Emanuel, Richard has it correctly.”

  Madame did more than tolerate differing opinions; she encouraged them, and she particularly encouraged them from Cathcart, a poet Richard did not admire though he had written some worthwhile pieces. Richard felt as if he were being stalked.

  Cathcart shrugged off Madame de Roche’s support. “I don’t believe it. It’s all horrible cliche, Fettle.”

  “I don’t believe it either,” Edumbraga said decisively, unclumping her fingers. Thorn Engles, a newcomer to the group, moved in now and squatted on his haunches before Richard.

  “It’s an insult,” he said. “It’s not even well written. Pure stream of consciousness melodrama. Goldsmith is a poet, a human being, a character as complex as you or I. To kill just to regain some poetic insight or shake loose the bonds of society still means to kill, and that requires a tremendous change in a human being, unless we’ve all misjudged Goldsmith…We may have, but I’m
sorry. You haven’t convinced me.”

  Richard looked up with wounded eyes and realized he was behaving like a victim again, also realized he was not about to defend himself. The work must stand alone; so he had always said, so he had always believed.

  He had not seen Nadine come in but now she stood at the rear of the group. She tried to speak up for him and he was darkly grateful but Cathcart beat her back with a cruel witticism. Three printers of broadsides offered halfhearted objections to Cathcart’s criticism, then gave helpful criticisms of their own that were if anything more devastating; suggestions to reduce the visceral enhance the salutary. Madame let them speak.

  + She does not know what they are killing.

  After a time Richard stood up, papers and slate clutched in one long fingered hand, nodded to each of them and thanked the group, took Madame’s hand and shook it and walked from the room. Nadine followed.

  “Why did you read it to them?” she asked, hanging on his long arm. “It’s not ready yet. You know that.”

  Confusion. Why indeed? Immediate gratification; despite what he had told them he had felt it was a masterpiece already complete and final. Why be disappointed? “I have to go now,” he said quietly.

  “Are you all right, Richard?” Nadine asked. He looked at her, wounded eagle, nodded. Left her in the house, passing the macaw.

  “Do come again,” the macaw screeched, finding in its corroded innards a chance spark of motion.

  He hadn’t called an autobus. He walked with a small stagger left right down the road and two kilometers out of the canyon into a shade retail zone.

  In an old corner shopping center resided an Ancient Psyche Arts parlor for those who found true therapy threatening but felt they needed outside help; a store that rented booths containing sexually capable arbeiters called fappers or prosthetutes; an automated convenience store with small delivery carts rumbling in and out of the slaved commercial traffic lanes. On the corner before this angle of common life, Richard caught an autobus on a whim stop.