Читать книгу Perchance - Michael Kurland - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

Delbit spent the next two days adjusting to his new environment. Dobbins found him a bed on the servants’ floor of the clinic, sharing a room with three dull teenage boys-of-all-work. After lunch on the third day, Dr. Faineworth called him into the laboratory and explained the techniques of deep breathing, relaxation, and mental disassociation that Delbit would need for his projected job. Of what use this would be when the subject had disappeared from a locked room, leaving only a pile of clothes in her wake, was not discussed. What effect this electrical probing would have on his brain, or the girl’s brain, was dismissed by the doctor as beneath consideration.

“You are going to get into this girl’s mind, young man,” Dr. Faineworth told him. “The similarity of your brain waves to hers will make it possible for us to monitor the girl’s dreams while she is asleep. That is why I have purchased you at great expense, and diverted you from an otherwise useful existence as a shoemaker. You will, in effect, be an observer at these dreams. I warn you that, as they seem to be nightmares, the experience may not be the most pleasant you have ever had. Although you will be awake, and therefore not as impressionable, you may be horrified by what you see. This is all very theoretical. I cannot tell you precisely in what form you will experience the young lady’s dreams. We are on the frontiers of science, as it were. But the theory is good, and it is worth the risk. The value of these experiments is incalculable.”

Worth the risk to whom? Delbit wondered. He tried to imagine what it would be like to be in someone else’s dream, and found that he couldn’t, and that the idea bothered him. A dream was surely an extremely personal thing. But he didn’t say anything. He had long since learned the futility of protesting the inevitable.

On the fourth day the girl came back, escorted by a constable, who had found her wandering above Lower Broadway naked at four in the morning. He wrapped her in his greatcoat and brought her uptown to the clinic. “I figured that if she weren’t a patient of yours, Dr. Faineworth, then she ought to be,” he said.

The next day Delbit was up in his room sewing the gold insignia of the Faineworth Clinic on his jacket when Dobbins appeared at the door. “Come,” he said, beckoning with a bony hand. “Dr. Faineworth wants to see you.”

Delbit followed Dobbins to Dr. Faineworth’s office and waited in the anteroom to be called. Faineworth was the sort who liked to keep you waiting a few minutes, just so you wouldn’t forget who called whom. Delbit picked up a copy of the New England Journal of Homeopathetics and settled down on one corner of the red couch.

Ten minutes later Dobbins ushered him into the inner office. Dr. Faineworth was sitting behind his desk, and a squat, excessively wide man with red mutton chop whiskers sat to one side. “Stand up straight,” Dobbins whispered, stopping Delbit squarely in front of the desk.

“Ah, Delbit, here you are,” Dr. Faineworth said, glancing up from the folder he was studying. “This is Mr. Edbeck, an associate of mine who is interested in the case at hand. Come along with us. We are going to try once again to introduce you to our mysterious guest. It may aid you in some way in visualization or resonance or something. And since the girl must know what’s happening, since we have to wire her to the synapse recorder, she should meet the man who’s going to be on the other end. No use in adding unnecessary or preventable stress to the experiment. At last report she was still in her, ah, room.” He stood up and strode out of the office, the others following in his wake.

“A very interesting case, as I have explained,” Faineworth told his chubby friend Edbeck as they headed toward the young girl locked up in the closed ward. “We are calling her Exxa, the unknown female. We don’t know where she came from, and we don’t know where she went—or how. It’s not everyone who can vanish from a locked cell. A pair of Confederal agents have been around asking about her. And a third man—a tall, hooded chap with the strangest accent. I don’t know how they got word; presumably someone on staff here. The concept of loyalty is a dying one in this age, I fear.”

“The CDE?” Edbeck twisted his puffy face into a worried grimace. “What did they want?”

“They want to know where the girl came from. I told them I’d have to get back to them on that. They want to know if she can really disappear. I told them not to be ridiculous. Exxa is our property, Edbeck, and the government is going to have to keep its grubby paws off.”

“What of the third man?”

“He said he had heard reports that we were holding an amnesiac young woman here, and he wanted to see whether it was his sister, who has been missing for a few weeks. He was obviously lying—and not very well. It was as though he were unused to the necessity of masking his desires beneath untruths as the rest of us do. A very strange and disturbing man. I told him nothing, and sent him on his way.”

“You’re calling the girl Exxa? Not a very flattering name, surely,” Mr. Edbeck commented.

“I didn’t want to pick a name that might have some unknown connotation to the young lady.”

“Ah,” Edbeck said, his puffy cheeks jiggling as he nodded his head, “very wise. Very astute.”

“One must be careful,” Dr. Faineworth said. “The mind is a delicate battleground. Purely from the scientific standpoint, a lot can be learned from this girl, once we can reunite her with her memories.”

“Science is all very well,” Edbeck said, puffing to keep up with the doctor’s long strides, “But what of the more practical considerations that we discussed?”

“If my theories are correct....” Letting the unfinished thought reverberate, Faineworth knocked on the locked door to the ward. “Ah, there you are, Fenton. Let us in; I have brought some guests to see our lady friend.”

They followed the burly male nurse silently down the ward corridor and stopped before the locked door.

Faineworth took a deep breath and turned the key in the lock, then pulled the door open.

The room was not empty this time. A slight, brown-haired girl stood by the cot, her hospital robe pulled around her. She glared at the group in the doorway. “It’s about time you got here, Dr. Faineworth,” she said, her voice musical but cold as ice. “The attendant told me I had to wait to talk to you. Now I am talking to you. What have you done with my clothes?”

She’s just a girl! Delbit thought, trying to get a look at her from over Edbeck’s broad and chubby shoulders.

“Please, I have some people to introduce you to,” Faineworth told her. “I will get your clothing for you if you like. There didn’t seem much point to it, my dear, with you disappearing all the time and leaving it behind.”

“Why, what a charming young thing,” Edbeck said, putting his hand to his face in a pudgy gesture of appreciation. “You didn’t tell me she was so attractive, Doctor. Shame on you!”

“I don’t like being locked up,” the girl said, ignoring Edbeck and advancing toward Faineworth until she could poke her finger in his chest, “and I don’t like having to wear a shapeless cotton bathrobe which smells of disinfectant!”

Faineworth held up a warding hand. “It’s for your own good,” he said.

“I choose my own good,” she told him, walking back to her cot and sitting on the edge.

“We are trying to help,” Faineworth assured her blandly. “Remember, they were our clothes in the first place. The first time you came here, you were wrapped in a horse blanket. We’ve clothed you, fed you, and given you a place to sleep. Our intentions are honorable. It is difficult to know what to do, but we’re doing our best. We don’t have people disappearing from our locked wards every day—or appearing naked on Broadway four days later. And you’ve done both three times now.”

Three times? Delbit wondered why nobody had mentioned that to him. Probably they didn’t want to crowd his mind with unimportant facts. Appeared and disappeared three times? Moving to the side of the door so he could see in past Edbeck’s bulk, he looked at the girl with some interest.

Her light brown hair fell in soft curls below her shoulders. Her slender body, now tense with anger and frustration, looked to be soft and supple in repose. And her large, wide brown eyes encompassed universes in their depths.

She is younger than a spring day, Delbit thought, and older than life. Unaccustomed to such thoughts, he shook his head and stared, unconscious of staring. A long-suppressed emotion stirred deep within him.

“I have not done it with purpose,” she said. “I have not willed it to be so. I will repay you for your kindnesses. And what I do against my own will, I do as easily against your locked doors.”

“You’ve stopped taking your medication,” Dr. Faineworth said. “Fenton tells me you refuse to do so.”

“That is so. Keeping me sedated may make it easier for you to manage me, but it does me no good. I do not choose to be so.”

“We will discuss that,” Faineworth said.

“Come now, this is very interesting,” Edbeck said, waddling farther into the room. “You mean, girl, that you really do what Dr. Faineworth says? That you disappear—poof—and reappear—plop—and don’t know where, when, or how?”

The girl looked the chubby man over carefully. “That is so,” she said. “What business is it of yours? Are you a doctor?”

“Mr. Edbeck is an associate of mine,” Dr. Faineworth said.

“A medical associate? Dr. Faineworth, I am not here to be put on display. I will not have you bringing around casual friends or associates to gawk at me. Next I know you’ll be charging admission. I suppose I’m lucky that you left me with a bathrobe. And who is that young man who stares at me as though I were a gazelle?”

“Mr. Edbeck represents the Confederal Government,” Dr. Faineworth explained, indicating his fat friend. “The Confederal Department of Examination is interested in your case.”

“What case?” the girl demanded.

“And young Delbit here has come all the way from Philadelphia, in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to help diagnose your problem. He will help us monitor your dreams, and with his aid, perhaps we can learn to prevent these nightmares you’ve been having.”

“This is the help you’ve been promising me? This boy?” She glanced disdainfully at Delbit before fastening her gaze on Dr. Faineworth.

Delbit was not insulted by this reaction. He would have felt the same way himself, he was sure, in her place. But he would help her if he could. He silently promised her that. It seemed clear that Dr. Faineworth had no intention of doing so. Edbeck from the Confederal Government? Ridiculous! He was too short for the CDE. And he wasn’t wearing a hat! What the doctor was after was unclear to Delbit, but it clearly was not an unmitigated desire to help this girl.

“I shall help you,” Dr. Faineworth assured her, speaking to her slowly and patiently as one would to a balky child. “But first I must know what to do. Remember, a doctor swears to do no harm. I have to better understand your case—your situation—before I can be sure that what I do is for your good. I have only your good in mind. It is clear that your bad dreams are somehow associated with your disappearances. We must study those dreams. This boy Delbit, here, can help us. He is a useful tool, nothing more. You must not get upset at his presence.”

Thanks a lot, Delbit thought. But he said nothing.

“No more than at yours,” the girl told Faineworth.

“That is not the right attitude to take,” Dr. Faineworth told her. “We are here to help you, after all.”

“Let me be on my way, if you want to help.”

“On what way?” Faineworth asked smoothly. “You don’t know who you are, or where you’re from, or what you’re doing here. You don’t even know your right name.”

“I know that if you leave me alone, I’ll be better off,” the girl told him.

Edbeck advanced toward the girl and sat on the edge of the cot next to her. “Tell us where you go when you disappear from here,” he said, taking her hand, “and how you do it. The CDE wants to know.”

“I’ve told you before,” the girl said in a tired voice. She removed her hand from Edbeck’s grasp, but made no attempt to move away. Where was there to go? “I don’t know how I do it. And the other place—where I go when I disappear from here—seems to be nothing but a forest in all directions, with a wide river about a mile from where I appear.”

“Is it a place you dream about?” Edbeck asked.

The girl shook her head. “No,” she said. “My dreams are all—populated. This place is not.”

“So,” Dr. Faineworth said. “You go to the same place each time?”

“I seem to,” the girl agreed.

“We will talk more about this,” Faineworth said.

“I want to get out of here,” the girl told him.

“Your request will be forwarded to the proper authorities,” Faineworth told her. “In the meantime, please bear with me. I am trying to help you regain your memories.”

“I haven’t much choice, it seems,” the girl said. “Please have the guard bring my clothes.”

“That I will do,” Faineworth agreed.

“Did you notice the girl’s reaction when I told her you were from the CDE?” Faineworth asked Edbeck as they walked back to the office.

“I wondered why you did that,” Edbeck commented. “But the girl had no reaction that I could see.”

“That’s it!” Faineworth said. “She seems to have good recall for events and facts outside of her direct life—a common syndrome in amnesia. Yet she reacted to the CDE not at all. Most people react strongly to any mention of our government’s most secret police—apparent strong approval masking cringing fear. But our Exxa seems ignorant of the existence of the organization.”

“That is so,” Edbeck agreed. “What does it mean?”

“That my theory may be correct. That young lady may not be from around here.”

“This city?” Edbeck enquired.

“This universe,” Faineworth replied.

* * * * * * *

At four o’clock the next morning Dobbins came to Delbit’s room and shook him awake. “Come,” he said.

Delbit groggily slipped into his pants and shirt and pulled his boots on. “Where?” he asked.

“Downstairs. The doctor wants you.”

Dr. Faineworth was waiting impatiently in his office. “Are you fully awake?” he asked Delbit. “Come, sit here. Have a muffin. Prepare to go to work.”

Delbit took the plate of muffins and buttered one. “Work?” He looked fuzzily about the room. “I don’t think I’m awake. It takes me a while to wake up in the morning. And it’s not even morning.”

“Have some coffee. Do you drink coffee? It will wake you up. Dobbins, get him some coffee. Here, put a lot of cream in it.”

Delbit sipped at the coffee and ate his muffin. “What—?” he said, and then paused, considering what to ask.

“What are we all doing up at this hour?” Dr. Faineworth rubbed his hands together. “This is the true witching hour, my lad—the dreaming hour. For most of the night we sleep soundly, dreamlessly; but during the early-morning hours we begin to dream. You and I are going now to capture one or more of those dreams. Finish your coffee.”

“Yes, sir.” Delbit drank up his coffee and stared impassively into the immediate future like a man examining the edge of a cliff he is about to leap off.

Dr. Faineworth looked up at the clock on his far wall and strummed his fingers on the desk. “All right. Enough coffee. Enough time wasted,” he said a couple of minutes later. He took off his suit jacket and wrapped a white laboratory smock around himself. “Let us see about entering the land of dreams. Come with me.”

Delbit was taken to a small, white-painted room down the corridor. “Exxa is asleep in the next room,” Faineworth told him. “We call it the sleep research room. She wears a special helmet, with built-in electrodes. You will don a similar one, and lie down here.” The doctor indicated a black leather couch in the center of the room. “But you will not sleep. You will receive mental images through this device here”—the doctor pointed to a large black box that was humming ominously in the corner—“and report back to me on them. Is this not quite simple? Good. Now lie down.”

With a feeling that might have been shared by St. Barnabas as he prepared to face four hungry lions, Delbit lay down and allowed them to strap the leather helmet to his head.