White Noise Part 21

"Is this why I married Babette? So she would conceal the truth from me, conceal objects from me, join in a s.e.xual conspiracy at my expense? All plots move in one direction," I told her grimly.

We held each other tightly for a long time, our bodies clenched in an embrace that included elements of love, grief, tenderness, s.e.x and struggle. How subtly we s.h.i.+fted emotions, found shadings, using the scantest movement of our arms, our loins, the slightest intake of breath, to reach agreement on our fear, to advance our compet.i.tion, to a.s.sert our root desires against the chaos in our souls.

Leaded, unleaded, super unleaded.

We lay naked after love, wet and gleaming. I pulled the covers up over us. We spoke in drowsv whispers for a while. The radio came on.

"I'm right here," I said. "Whatever you want or need, however difficult, tell me and it's done."

"A drink of water."

"Of course."

"I'll go with you," she said.

"Stay, rest."

"I don't want to be alone."

We put on our robes, went to the bathroom for water. She drank while I p.i.s.sed. On our way back to the bedroom I put my arm around her and we walked half toppling toward each other, like adolescents on a beach. I waited by the side of the bed as she rearranged the sheets neatly, put the pillows in place. She curled up immediately for sleep but there were still things I wanted to know, things I had to say.

"Precisely what was accomplished by the people at Gray Research?"

"They isolated the fear-of-death part of the brain. Dylar speeds relief to that sector."

"Incredible."

"It's not just a powerful tranquilizer. The drug specifically interacts with neurotransmitters in the brain that are related to the fear of death. Every emotion or sensation has its own neurotransmitters. Mr. Gray found fear of death and then went to worl on finding the chemicals that would induce the brain to make its own inhibitors."

"Amazing and frightening."

"Everything that goes on in your whole life is a result of molecules rus.h.i.+ng around somewhere in your brain."

"Heinrich's brain theories. They're all true. We're the sum of our chemical impulses. Don't tell me this. It's unbearable to think about."

"They can trace everything you say, do and feel to the number of molecules in a certain region."

"What happens to good and evil in this system? Pa.s.sion, envy and hate? Do they become a tangle of neurons? Are you telling me that a whole tradition of human failings is now at an end, that cowardice, sadism, molestation are meaningless terms? Are we being asked to regard these things nostalgically? What about murderous rage? A murderer used to have a certain fearsome size to him. His crime was large. What happens when we reduce it to cells and molecules? My son plays chess with a murderer. He told me all this. I didn't want to listen."

"Can I sleep now?"

"Wait. If Dylar speeds relief, why have you been so sad these past days, staring into s.p.a.ce?"

"Simple. The drug's not working."

Her voice broke when she said these words. She raised the comforter over her head. I could only stare at the hilly terrain. A man on talk radio said: "I was getting mixed messages about my s.e.xuality." I stroked her head and body over the quilted bedspread.

"Can you elaborate, Baba? I'm right here. I want to help."

"Mr. Gray gave me sixty tablets in two bottles. This would be more than enough, he said. One tablet every seventy-two hours. The discharge of medication is so gradual and precise that there's no overlapping from one pill to the next. I finished the first bottle sometime in late November, early December."

"Denise found it."

"She did?"

"She's been on your trail ever since."

"Where did I leave it?"

"In the kitchen trash."

"Why did I do that? That was careless."

"What about the second bottle?" I said.

"You found the second bottle."

"I know. I'm asking how many tablets you've taken."

"I've now taken twenty-five from that bottle. That's fifty-five all told. Five left."

"Four left. I had one a.n.a.lyzed."

"Did you tell me that?"

"Yes. And has there been any change at all in your condition.

She allowed the top of her head to emerge.

"At first I thought so. The very beginning was the most hopeful time. Since then no improvement. I've grown more and more discouraged. Let me sleep now, Jack."

"Remember we had dinner at Murray 's one night? On the way home we talked about your memory lapses. You said you weren't sure whether or not you were taking medication. You couldn't remember, you said. This was a lie, of course."

"I guess so," she said.

"But you weren't lying about memory lapses in general. Denise and I a.s.sumed your forgetfulness was a side effect of whatever drug you were taking."

The whole head emerged.

"Totally wrong," she said. "It wasn't a side effect of the drug. It was a side effect of the condition. Mr. Gray said my loss of memory is a desperate attempt to counteract my fear of death. It's like a war of neurons. I am able to forget many things but I fail when it comes to death. And now Mr. Gray has failed as well."

"Does he know that?"

"I left a message on his answering machine."

"What did; he say when he called back?"

"He sent me a tape in the mail, which I took over to the Stovers to play. He said he was literally sorry, whatever that means. He said I was not the right subject after all. He is sure it will work someday, soon, with someone, somewhere. He said he made a mistake with me. It was too random. He was too eager."

It was the middle of the night. We were both exhausted. But we'd come so far, said so much, that I knew we couldn't stop just yet. I took a deep breath. Then I lay back, staring into the ceiling. Babette leaned across my body to turn off the lamp. Then she pressed a b.u.t.ton on the radio, killing the voices. A thousand other nights had ended more or less like this. I felt her sink into the bed.

'There's something I promised myself I wouldn't tell you."

"Can it wait until morning?" she said.

"I'm tentatively scheduled to die. It won't happen tomorrow or the next day. But it is in the works."

I went on to tell her about my exposure to Nyodene D., speaking matter-of-factly, tonelessly, in short declarative sentences. I told her about the computer technician, the way he'd tapped into my history to produce a pessimistic ma.s.sive tally. We are the sum total of our data, I told her, just as we are the sum total of our chemical impulses. I tried to explain how hard I'd struggled to keep the news from her. But after her own revelations, this seemed the wrong kind of secret to be keeping.

"So -we are no longer talking about fear and floating terror," I said. "This is the hard and heavy thing, the fact itself."

Slowly she emerged from beneath the covers. She climbed on top of me, sobbing. I felt her fingers clawing at my shoulders and neck. The warm tears fell on my lips. She beat me on the chest, seized my left hand and bit the flesh between the thumb and index finger. Her sobs became a grunting sound, full of terrible desperate effort. She took my head in her hands, gently and yet fiercely, and rocked it to and fro on the pillow, an act I could not connect to anything she'd ever done, anything she seemed to be.

Later, after she'd fallen off my body and into a restless sleep, I kept on staring into the dark. The radio came on. I threw off the covers and went into the bathroom. Denise's scenic paperweights sat on a dusty shelf by the door. I ran water over my hands and wrists. I splashed cold water on my face. The only towel around was a small pink handcloth with a tic-tac-toe design. I dried myself slowly and carefully. Then I tilted the radiator cover away from the wall and stuck my hand underneath. The bottle of Dylar was gone.

27.

I had my second medical checkup since the toxic event. No startling numbers on the printout. This death was still too deep to be glimpsed. My doctor, Sundar Chakravarty, asked me about the sudden flurry of checkups. In the past I'd always been afraid to know.

1 told him I was still afraid. He smiled broadly, waiting for the punch line. I shook his hand and headed out the door.

On the way home I drove down Elm intending to make a quick stop at the supermarket. The street was full of emergency vehicles. Farther down I saw bodies scattered about. A man with an armband blew a. whistle at me and stepped in front of my car. I glimpsed other men in Mylex suits. Stretcher-bearers ran across the street. When the man with the whistle drew closer, I was able to make out the letters on his armband: SIMUVAC.

"Back it out," he said. "Street's closed."

"Are you people sure you're ready for a simulation? You may want to wait for one more ma.s.sive spill. Get your timing down."

"Move it out, get it out. You're in the exposure swath."

"What's that mean?"

"It means you're dead," he told me.

I backed out of the street and parked the car. Then I walked slowly back down Elm, trying to look as though I belonged. I kept close to storefronts, mingled with technicians and marshals, with uniformed personnel. There were buses, police cars, ambulettes. People with electronic equipment appeared to be trying to detect radiation or toxic fallout. In time I approached the volunteer victims. There were twenty or so, p.r.o.ne, supine, draped over curbstones, sitting in the street with woozy looks.

I was startled to see my daughter among them. She lay in the middle of the street, on her back, one arm flung out, her head tilted the other way. I could hardly bear to look. Is this how she thinks of herself at the age of nine-already a victim, trying to polish her skills? How natural she looked, how deeply imbued with the idea of a sweeping disaster. Is this the future she envisions?

I walked over there and squatted down.

"Steffie? Is that you?"

She opened her eyes.

"You're not supposed to be here unless you're a victim," she said.

"I just want to be sure you're okay."

"I'll get in trouble if they see you."

"It's cold. You'll get sick. Does Baba know you're here?"

"I signed up in school an hour ago."

"They at least should hand out blankets," I said.

She closed her eyes. I spoke to her a while longer but she wouldn't answer. There was no trace of irritation or dismissal in her silence. Just conscientiousness. She had a history of being devout in her victimhood.

I went back to the sidewalk. A man's amplified voice boomed across the street from somewhere inside the supermarket.

"I want to welcome all of you on behalf of Advanced Disaster Management, a private consulting firm that conceives and operates simulated evacuations. We are interfacing with twenty-two state bodies in carrying out this advanced disaster drill. The first, I trust, of many. The more we rehea.r.s.e disaster, the safer we'll be from the real thing. Life seems to work that way, doesn't it? You take your umbrella to the office seventeen straight days, not a drop of rain. The first day you leave it at home, record-breaking downpour. Never fails, does it? This is the mechanism we hope to employ, among others. O-right, on to business. When the siren sounds three long blasts, thousands of hand-picked evacuees will leave their homes and places of employment, get into their vehicles and head for well-equipped emergency shelters. Traffic directors will race to their computerized stations. Updated instructions will be issued on the SIMUVAC broadcast system. Air-sampling people will deploy along the cloud exposure swath. Dairy samplers will test milk and randomized foodstuffs over the next three days along the ingestion swath. We are not simulating a particular spillage today. This is an all-purpose leak or spill. It could be radioactive steam, chemical cloudlets, a haze of unknown origin. The important thing is movement. Get those people out of the swath. We learned a lot during the night of the billowing cloud. But there is no subst.i.tute for a planned simulation. If reality intrudes in the form of a car crash or a victim falling off a stretcher, it is important to remember that we are not here to mend broken bones or put out real fires. We are here to simulate. Interruptions can cost lives in a real emergency. If we learn to work around interruptions now, we'll be able to work around them later when it counts. O-right. When the siren sounds two melancholy wails, street captains will make house-to-house searches for those who may have been inadvertently left behind. Birds, goldfish, elderly people, handicapped people, invalids, shut-ins, whatever. Five minutes, victims. All you rescue personnel, remember this is not a blast simulation. Your victims are overcome but not traumatized. Save your tender loving care for the nuclear fireball in June. We're at four minutes and counting. Victims, go limp. And remember you're not here to scream or thrash about. We like a low-profile victim. This isn't New York or L.A. Soft moans will suffice."

I decided I didn't want to watch. I went back to the car and headed home. The sirens emitted the first three blasts as I pulled up in front of the house. Heinrich was sitting on the front steps, wearing a reflector vest and his camouflage cap. With him was an older boy. He had a powerful compact body of uncertain pigmentation. No one on our street seemed to be evacuating. Heinrich consulted a clipboard.

"What's going on?"

"I'm a street captain," he said.

"Did you know Steffie was a victim?"

"She said she might be."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"So they pick her up and put her in an ambulance. What's the problem?"

"I don't know what the problem is."

"If she wants to do it, she should do it."

"She seems so well-adjusted to the role."

"It could save her life someday," he said.

"How can pretending to be injured or dead save a person's life?"

"If she does it now, she might not have to do it later. The more you practice something, the less likely it is to actually happen."

'That's what the consultant said."

"It's a gimmick but it works."

"Who's this?"