Five Great Novels Part 13

"It's like asking, What's an impostor look like?" Arctor said. "I talked one time to a big hash dealer who'd been busted with ten pounds of hash in his possession. I asked him what the nark who busted him looked like. You know, the--what do they call them?--buying agent that came out and posed as a friend of a friend and got him to sell him some hash."

"Looked," Barris said, winding string, "just like us."

"_More_ so," Arctor said. "The hash-dealer dude--he'd already been sentenced and was going in the following day-- he told me, 'They have longer hair than we do.' So I guess the moral of that is, Stay away from guys looking the same as us."

"There are female narks," Barris said.

"I'd like to meet a nark," Arctor said. "I mean knowingly. Where I could be positive."

"Well," Barris said, "you could be positive when he claps the cuffs on you, when that day comes."

Arctor said, "I mean, do narks have friends? What sort of social life do they have? Do their wives know?"

"Narks don't have wives," Luckman said. "They live in caves and peep out from under parked cars as you pa.s.s. Like trolls."

"What do they eat?" Arctor said.

"People," Barris said.

"How could a guy do that?" Arctor said. "Pose as a nark?"

"_What?_" both Barris and Luckman said together.

"s.h.i.+t, I'm s.p.a.ced," Arctor said, grinning. " 'Pose as a nark'--wow." He shook his head, grimacing now. Staring at him, Luckman said, "POSE AS A NARK? _POSE AS A NARK?_"

"My brains are scrambled today," Arctor said. "I better go crash."

At the holos, Fred cut the tape's forward motion; all the cubes froze, and the sound ceased.

"Taking a break, Fred?" one of the other scramble suits called over to him.

"Yeah," Fred said. "I'm tired. This c.r.a.p gets to you after a while." He rose and got out his cigarettes. "I can't figure out half what they're saying, I'm so tired. Tired," he added, "of listening to them."

"When you're actually down there with them," a scramble suit said, "it's not so bad; you know? Like I guess you were-- on the scene itself up until now, with a cover. Right?"

"I would never hang around with creeps like that," Fred said. "Saying the same things over and over, like old cons. Why do they do what they do, sitting there shooting the bull?"

"Why do we do what we do? This is pretty d.a.m.n monotonous, when you get down to it."

"But we have to; this is our job. We have no choice."

"Like the cons," a scramble suit pointed out. "We have no choice."

Posing as a nark, Fred thought. What does that mean? n.o.body knows . . . Posing, he reflected, as an impostor. One who lives under parked cars and eats dirt. Not a world-famous surgeon or novelist or politician: nothing that anyone would care to hear about on TV. No life that anyone in their right mind . . .

I resemble that worm which crawls through dust, Lives in the dust, eats dust Until a pa.s.serby's foot crushes it.

Yes, that expresses it, he thought. That poetry. Luckman must have read it to me, or maybe I read it in school. Funny what the mind pops up. Remembers. Arctor's freaky words still stuck in his mind, even though he had shut off the tape. I wish I could forget it, he thought. I wish I could, for a while, forget _him_.

"I get the feeling," Fred said, "that sometimes I know what they're going to say before they say it. Their exact words."

"It's called _deja vu_," one of the scramble suits agreed. "Let me give you a few pointers. Run the tape ahead over longer break-intervals, not an hour but, say, six hours. Then run it back if there's nothing until you hit something. Back, you see, rather than forward. That way you don't get into the rhythm of their flow. Six or even eight ahead, then big jumps back . . . You'll get the hang of it pretty soon, you'll get so you can sense when you've got miles and miles of nothing or when somewhere you've got something useful."

"And you won't really listen at all," the other scramble suit said, "until you do actually hit something. Like a mother when she's asleep--nothing wakes her, even a truck going by, until she hears her baby cry. That wakes her--that alerts her. No matter how faint that cry is. The unconscious is selective, when it learns what to listen for."

"I know," Fred said. "I've got two kids."

"Boys?"

"Girls," he said. "Two little girls."

"That's allll riiight," one of the scramble suits said. "I have one girl, a year old."

"No names please," the other scramble suit said, and they all laughed. A little. Anyhow, there is an item, Fred said to himself, to extract from the total tape and pa.s.s along. That cryptic statement about "posing as a nark." The other men in the house with Arctor--it surprised them, too. When I go in tomorrow at three, he thought, I'll take a print of that--aud alone would do--and discuss it with Hank, along with what else I obtain between now and then. But even if that's all I've got to show Hank, he thought, it's a beginning. Shows, he thought, that this around-theclock scanning of Arctor is not a waste. It shows, he thought, that I was right. That remark was a slip. Arctor blew it. But what it meant he did not yet know. But we will, he said to himself, find out. We will keep on Bob Arctor until he drops. Unpleasant as it is to have to watch and listen to him and his pals all the time. Those pals of his, he thought, are as bad as he is. How'd I ever sit around in that house with them all that time? What a way to live a life; what, as the other officer said just now, an endless nothing. Down there, he thought, in the murk, the murk of the mind and the murk outside as well; murk everywhere. Thanks to what they are: that kind of individual. Carrying his cigarette, he walked back to the bathroom, shut and locked the door, then, from inside the cigarette package, he got out ten tabs of death. Filling a Dixie cup with water, he dropped all ten tabs. He wished he had brought more tabs with him. Well, he thought, I can drop a few more when I get through work, when I get back home. Looking at his watch, he tried to compute how long that would be. His mind felt fuzzy; how the h.e.l.l long will it be? he asked himself, wondering what had become of his time sense. Watching the holos has f.u.c.ked it up, he realized. I can't tell what time it is at all any more. I feel like I've dropped acid and then gone through a car wash, he thought. Lots of t.i.tanic whirling soapy brushes coming at me; dragged along by a chain into tunnels of black foam. What a way to make a living, he thought, and unlocked the bathroom door to go back--reluctantly--to work. When he turned on the tape-transport once more, Arctor was saying, "--as near as I can figure out, G.o.d is dead."

Luckman answered, "I didn't know He was sick."

"Now that my Olds is laid up indefinitely," Arctor said, "I've decided I should sell it and buy a Henway."

"What's a Henway?" Barris said. To himself Fred said, About three pounds.

"About three pounds," Arctor said.

The following afternoon at three o'clock two medical officers--not the same two--administered several tests to Fred, who was feeling even worse than he had the day before.

"In rapid succession you will see a number of objects with which you should be familiar pa.s.s in sequence before--first--your left eye and then your right. At the same time, on the illuminated panel directly before you, outline reproductions will appear simultaneously of several such familiar objects, and you are to match, by means of the punch pencil, what you consider to be the correct outline reproduction of the actual object visible at that instant. Now, these objects will move by you very rapidly, so do not hesitate too long. You will be time-scored as well as scored for accuracy. Okay?"

"Okay," Fred said, punch pencil ready. A whole flock of familiar objects jogged past him then, and he punched away at the illuminated photos below. This took place for his left eye, and then it all happened again for his right.

"Next, with your left eye covered, a picture of a familiar object will be flashed to your right eye. You are to reach with your left hand, repeat, left hand, into a group of objects and find the one whose picture you saw."

"Okay," Fred said. A picture of a single die was flashed; with his left hand he groped around among small objects placed before him until he found a die.

"In the next test, several letters which spell out a word will be available to your left hand, unseen. You will feel them and then, with your right hand, write out the word the letters spell."

He did that. They spelled HOT.

"Now name the world spelled."

So he said, "Hot."

"Next, you will reach into this absolutely dark box and with both eyes covered, and with your left hand touch an object in order to identify it. Then tell us what the object is, without having seen it visually. After that you will be shown three objects somewhat resembling one another, and you will tell us which of the three that you see most resembles the object you manually touched."

"Okay," Fred said, and he did that then, and other tests, for almost an hour. Grope, tell, look at with one eye, select. Grope, tell, look at with the other eye, select. Write down, draw.

"In this following test you will, with your eyes again covered, reach out and feel an object with each hand. You are to tell us if the object presented to your left hand is identical to the object presented to your right."

He did that.

"Here in rapid succession are pictures of triangles in various positions. You are to tell us if it is the same triangle or--"

After two hours they had him fit complicated blocks into complicated holes and timed him doing this. He felt as if he was in first grade again, and s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up. Doing worse than he had then. Miss Frinkel, he thought; old Miss Frinkel. She used to stand there and watch me do this s.h.i.+t back then, flas.h.i.+ng me "Die!" messages, like they say in transactional a.n.a.lysis. Die. Do not be. Witch messages. A whole bunch of them, until I did finally luck up. Probably Miss Frinkel was dead by now. Probably somebody had managed to flash her a "Die!" message back, and it had caught. He hoped so. Maybe it had been one of his. As with the psych testers now, he flashed such messages right back. It didn't seem to be doing much good now. The test continued.

"What is wrong with this picture? One object among the others does not belong. You are to mark--"

He did that. And then it was actual objects, one of which did not belong; he was supposed to reach out and manually remove the offending object, and then, when the test was over, pick up all the offending objects from a variety of "sets," as they were called, and say what characteristic, if any, all the offending objects had in common: if they const.i.tuted a "set."

He was still trying to do that when they called time and ended the battery of testing and told him to go have a cup of coffee and wait outside until called. After an interval--which seemed d.a.m.n long to him--a tester appeared and said, "One more thing, Fred--we want a sample of your blood." He gave him a slip of paper: a lab requisition. "Go down the hall to the room marked 'Pathology Lab' and give them this and then after they have taken a blood sample come back here again and wait."

"Sure," he said glumly, and shuffled off with the requisition. Traces in the blood, he realized. They're testing for that. When he had gotten back to Room 203 from the pathology lab he rounded up one of the testers and said, "Would it be all right if I went upstairs to confer with your superior while I'm waiting for your results? He'll be taking off for the day soon."

"Affirmative," the psych tester said. "Since we decided to have a blood sample taken, it will be longer before we can make our evaluation; yes, go ahead. We'll phone upstairs when we're ready for you back here. Hank, is it?"

"Yes," Fred said. "I'll be upstairs with Hank."

The psych tester said, "You certainly seem much more depressed today than you did when we first saw you."

"Pardon?" Fred said.

"The first time you were in. Last week. You were kidding and laughing. Although very tense."

Gazing at him, Fred realized this was one of the two medical deputies he had originally encountered. But he said nothing; he merely grunted and then left their office, made his way to the elevator. What a downer, he thought. This whole thing. I wonder which of the two medical deputies it is, he wondered. The one with the handle-bar mustache or the other . . . I guess the other. This one has no mustache.

"You will manually feel this object with your left hand," he said to himself, "and at the same time you will look at it with your right. And then in your own words you will tell us--" He could not think out any more nonsense. Not without their help.

When he entered Hank's office he found another man, not in a scramble suit, seated in the far corner, facing Hank. Hank said, "This is the informant who phoned in about Bob Arctor using the grid--I mentioned him."

"Yes," Fred said, standing there unmoving.

"This man again phoned in, with more information about Bob Arctor; we told him he'd have to step forth and identify himself. We challenged him to appear down here and he did. Do you know him?"

"Sure I do," Fred said, staring at Jim Barris, who sat grinning and fiddling with a pair of scissors. Barris appeared ill at ease and ugly. Super ugly, Fred thought, with revulsion. "You're James Barris, aren't you?" he said. "Have you ever been arrested?"

"His I.D. shows him to be James R. Barris," Hank said, "and that is who he claims to be." He added, "He has no arrest record."

"What does he want?" To Barris, Fred said, "What's your information?"

"I have evidence," Barris said in a low voice, "that Mr. Arctor is part of a large secret covert organization, well funded, with a.r.s.enals of weapons at their disposal, using code words, probably dedicated to the overthrow of--"

"That part is speculation," Hank interrupted. "What you suppose it's up to? What's your evidence? Now don't give us anything that is not firsthand."

"Have you ever been sent to a mental hospital?" Fred said to Barris.

"No," Barris said.

"Will you sign a sworn, notarized statement at the D.A.'s office," Fred continued, "regarding your evidence and information? Will you be willing to appear in court _under oath_ and--"

"He has already indicated he would," Hank interrupted.

"My evidence," Barris said, "which I mostly don't have with me today, but which I can produce, consists of tape recordings I have made of Robert Arctor's phone conversations. I mean, conversations when he didn't know I was listening."

"What is this organization?" Fred said.

"I believe it to be--" Barris began, but Hank waved him off. "It is political," Barris said, perspiring and trembling a little, but looking pleased, "and against the country. From outside. An enemy against the U.S."

Fred said, "What is Arctor's relations.h.i.+p with the source of Substance D?"

Blinking, then licking his lip and grimacing, Barris said, "It is in my--" He broke off. "When you examine all my information you will--that is, my evidence--you will undoubtedly conclude that Substance D is produced by a foreign nation determined to overthrow the U.S. and that Mr. Arctor has his hands deep within the machinery of this--"

"Can you tell us specific names of anyone else in this organization?" Hank said. "Persons Arctor has met with? You understand that giving false information to the legal authorities is a crime and if you do so you can and probably will be cited."

"I understand that," Barris said.

"Who has Arctor conferred with?" Hank said.

"A Miss Donna Hawthorne," Barris said. "On various pretexts he goes over to her place and colludes with her regularly."

Fred laughed. "_Colludes_. What do you mean?"

"I have followed him," Barris said, speaking slowly and distinctly, "in my own can. Without his knowledge."

"He goes there often?" Hank said.

"Yes, sir," Barris said. "Very often. As often as--"

"She's his girl," Fred said. Barris said, "Mr. Arctor also--"

Turning to Fred, Hank said, "You think there's any substance in this?"

"We should definitely look at his evidence," Fred said.

"Bring in your evidence," Hank instructed Barris. "All of it. Names we want most of all--names, license-plate numbers, phone numbers. Have you ever seen Arctor deeply involved in large amounts of drugs? More than a user's?"

"Certainly," Barris said.

"What types?"

"Several kinds. I have samples. I carefully took samples . . . for you to a.n.a.lyze. I can bring them in too. Quite a bit, and varied."

Hank and Fred glanced at each other. Barris, sightiessly gazing straight ahead, smiled.

"Is there anything else you want to say at this time?" Hank said to Barris. To Fred he said, "Maybe we should send an officer with him to get his evidence." Meaning, To make sure he doesn't panic and split, doesn't try to change his mind and pull out.

"There is one thing I would like to say," Barris said. "Mr. Arctor is an addict, addicted to Substance D, and his mind is deranged now. It has slowly become deranged over a period of time, and he is dangerous."

"_Dangerous_," Fred echoed.

"Yes," Barris declared. "He is already having episodes such as occur with brain damage from Substance D. The optic chiasm must be deteriorated, since a weak ipsilateral component . . . But also--" Barris cleared his throat. "Deterioration, as well, in the corpus callosum."