A Scanner Darkly (30 page)

Below her, in the darkness and distribution of urban lights a police siren sounded. A police car in hot pursuit. It sounded like a deranged animal, greedy to kill. And knowing that it soon would. She shivered; the night air had become cold. It was time to go.

It isn’t the Golden Age now, she thought, with noises like that in the darkness. Do I emit that kind of greedy noise? she asked herself. Am I that thing? Closing in, or having closed in?

Having caught?

Beside her, the man stirred and moaned as she helped him up. Helped him to his feet and back to her car, step by step, helped him, helped him continue on. Below them, the noise of the police car had abruptly ceased; it had stopped its quarry. Its job was done. Holding Bob Arctor against her, she thought, Mine is done, too.

The two New-Path staff members stood surveying the thing on their floor that lay puking and shivering and fouling itself, its arms hugging itself, embracing its own body as if to stop itself, against the cold that made it tremble so violently.

“What is it?” one staff member said.

Donna said, “A person.”

“Substance D?”

She nodded.

“It ate his head. Another loser.”

She said to the two of them, “It’s easy to win. Anybody can win.” Bending down over Robert Arctor she said, silently,

Good-by.

They were putting an old army blanket over him as she left. She did not look back.

Getting into her car, she drove at once onto the closest freeway, into the thickest traffic possible. From the box of tapes on the floor of the car she took the Carole King
Tapestry
tape, her favorite of all she had, and pushed it into the tape deck; at the same time, she tugged loose the Ruger pistol magnetically mounted out of sight beneath the dashboard. In top gear she tailgated a truck carrying wooden cases of quart bottles of Coca-Cola, and as Carole King sang in stereo she emptied the clip of the Ruger at the Coke bottles a few feet ahead of her car.

While Carole King sang soothingly about people sitting down and turning into toads, Donna managed to get four
bottles before the gun’s clip was empty. Bits of glass and smears of Coke splattered the windshield of her car. She felt better.

Justice and honesty and loyalty are not properties of this world, she thought; and then, by God, she rammed her old enemy, her ancient foe, the Coca-Cola truck, which went right on going without noticing. The impact spun her small car around; her headlights dimmed out, horrible noises of fender against tire shrieked, and then she was off the freeway onto the emergency strip, facing the other direction, water pouring from her radiator, with motorists slowing down to gape.

Come back, you motherfucker, she said to herself, but the Coca-Cola truck was long gone, probably undented. Maybe a scratch. Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, her war, her taking on a symbol and a reality that outweighed her. Now my insurance rates will go up, she realized as she climbed from her car. In this world you pay for tilting with evil in cold, hard cash.

A late-model Mustang slowed and the driver, a man, called to her, “You want a ride, miss?”

She did not answer. She just kept on going. A small figure on foot facing an infinity of oncoming lights.

Magazine clipping thumbtacked to the wall of the lounge at Samarkand House, New-Path’s residence building in Santa Ana, California:

A resident had torn down the rest of the item; it ended there. Evidently it had been clipped from a professional nursing magazine; it was on slick paper.

“ What you’ll be doing here first,” George, the staff member, told him, leading him down the hall, “is the bathrooms. The floors, the basins, especially the toilets. There’re three bathrooms in this structure, one on each floor.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Here’s a mop. And a pail. You feel you know how to do this? Clean a bathroom? Start, and I’ll watch you and give you pointers.”

He carried the pail to the tub on the back porch and he poured soap into it and then ran the hot water. All he could see was the foam of water directly before him; foam and the roar.

But he could hear George’s voice, out of sight. “Not too full, because you won’t be able to lift it.”

“Okay.”

“You have a little trouble telling where you are,” George said, after a time.

“I’m at New-Path.” He set the pail down on the floor and it slopped; he stood staring down at it.

“New-Path where?”

“In Santa Ana.”

George lifted the pail up for him, showing him how to grip the wire handle and swing it along as he walked. “Later on I think we’ll transfer you to the island or one of the farms. First you have to go through the dishpan.”

“I can do that,” he said. “Dishpans.”

“Do you like animals?”

“Sure.”

“Or farming?”

“Animals.”

“We’ll see. We’ll wait until we’re acquainted with you better. Anyhow, that’ll be a while; everyone is in the dishpan for a month. Everyone who comes in the door.”

“I’d sort of like to live in the country,” he said.

“We maintain several types of facilities. We’ll determine what’s best suited. You know, you can smoke here, but it isn’t encouraged. This isn’t Synanon; they don’t let you smoke.”

He said, “I don’t have any more cigarettes.”

“We give each resident one pack a day.”

“Money?” He didn’t have any.

“It’s without cost. There’s never any cost. You paid your cost.” George took the mop, pushed it down into the pail, showed him how to mop.

“How come I don’t have any money?”

“The same reason you don’t have any wallet or any last name. It’ll be given back to you, all given back. That’s what we want to do: give you back what’s been taken away from you.”

He said, “These shoes don’t fit.”

“We depend on donations, but new ones only, from stores. Later on maybe we can measure you. Did you try all the shoes in the carton?”

“Yes,” he said.

“All right, this is the bathroom here on the basement floor; do it first. Then when that’s done, really done well, really perfect, then go upstairs—bring the mop and bucket—and I’ll show you the bathroom up there, and then after that the bathroom on the third floor. But you got to get permission to go up there to the third floor, because that’s where the chicks live, so ask one of the staff first; never go up there without permission.” He slapped him on the back. “All right, Bruce? Understand?”

“Okay,” Bruce said, mopping.

George said, “You’ll be doing this kind of work, cleaning these bathrooms, until you get so you can do a good job. It doesn’t matter what a person does; it’s that he gets so he can do it right and be proud of it.”

“Will I ever be like I was again?” Bruce asked.

“What you were brought you here. If you become what you were again then sooner or later it’d bring you here again. Next time you might not make it here, even. Isn’t that right? You’re lucky you got here; you almost didn’t get here.”

“Somebody else drove me here.”

“You’re fortunate. The next time they might not. They might dump you on the side of the freeway somewhere and say the hell with it.”

He continued mopping.

“The best way is to do the bowls first, then the tub, then the toilets, and the floor last.”

“Okay,” he said, and put the mop away.

“There’s a certain knack to it. You’ll master it.”

Concentrating, he saw before him cracks in the enamel of the basin; he dribbled cleaner down into the cracks and ran hot water. The steam rose, and he stood within it, unmoving, as the steam grew. He liked the smell.

After lunch he sat in the lounge drinking coffee. No one spoke to him, because they understood he was withdrawing. Sitting drinking from his cup, he could hear their conversation. They all knew one another.

“If you could see out from inside a dead person you could still see, but you couldn’t operate the eye muscles, so you couldn’t focus. You couldn’t turn your head or your eyeballs. All you could do would be wait until some object passed by. You’d be frozen. Just wait and wait. It’d be a terrible scene.”

He gazed down at the steam of his coffee, only that. The steam rose; he liked the smell.

“Hey.”

A hand touched him. From a woman.

“Hey.”

He looked sideways a little.

“How you doing?”

“Okay,” he said.

“Feel any better?”

“I feel okay,” he said.

He watched his coffee and the steam and did not look at her or any of them; he looked down and down at the coffee. He liked the warmth of the smell.

“You could see somebody when they passed by directly in front of you, and only then. Or whichever way you were looking, no other. If a leaf or something floated over your eye, that would be it, forever. Only the leaf. Nothing more; you couldn’t turn.”

“Okay,” he said, holding the coffee, the cup with both his hands.

“Imagine being sentient but not alive. Seeing and even knowing, but not alive. Just looking out. Recognizing but not being alive. A person can die and still go on. Sometimes what looks out at you from a person’s eyes maybe died back in childhood. What’s dead in there still looks out. It’s not just the body looking at you with nothing in it; there’s still something in there but it died and just keeps on looking and looking; it can’t stop looking.”

Another person said, “That’s what it means to die, to not be able to stop looking at whatever’s in front of you. Some darn thing placed directly there, with nothing you can do about it such as selecting anything or changing anything. You can only accept what’s put there as it is.”

“How’d you like to gaze at a beer can throughout eternity? It might not be so bad. There’d be nothing to fear.”

Before dinner, which was served to them in the dining room, they had Concept time. Several Concepts were put on the blackboard by different staff members and discussed.

He sat with his hands folded in his lap, watching the floor and listening to the big coffee urn heating up; it went
whoop-whoop,
and the sound frightened him.

“Living and unliving things are exchanging properties.”

Seated here and there on folding chairs, everyone discussed that. They seemed familiar with the Concept. Evidently these were parts of New-Path’s way of thought, perhaps even memorized and then thought about again and again.
Whoop-whoop.

“The drive of unliving things is stronger than the drive of living things.”

They talked about that.
Whoop-whoop.
The noise of the coffee urn got louder and louder and scared him more, but
he did not move or look; he sat where he was, listening. It was hard to hear what they were saying, because of the urn.

“We are incorporating too much unliving drive within us. And exchanging— Will somebody go look at that damn coffeepot to see why it’s doing that?”

There was a break while someone examined the coffee urn. He sat staring down, waiting.

“I’ll write this again. ‘We
are exchanging too much passive life for the reality outside us.’ “

They discussed that. The coffee urn became silent, and they trooped over to get coffee.

“Don’t you want some coffee?” A voice behind him, touching him. “Ned? Bruce? What’s his name—Bruce?”

“Okay.” He got up and followed them to the coffee urn. He waited his turn. They watched as he put cream and sugar into his cup. They watched him return to his chair, the same one; he made certain he found it again, to reseat himself and go on listening. The warm coffee, its steam, made him feel good.

“Activity does not necessarily mean life. Quasars are active. And a monk meditating is not inanimate.”

He sat looking at the empty cup; it was a china mug. Turning it over, he discovered printing on the bottom, and cracked glaze. The mug looked old, but it had been made in Detroit.

“Motion that is circular is the deadest form of the universe.”

Another voice said, “Time.”

He knew the answer to that. Time is round.

“Yes, we’ve got to break now, but does anyone have a fast final comment?”

“Well, following the line of least resistance, that’s the rule of survival. Following, not leading.”

Another voice, older, said, “Yes, the followers survive the leader. Like with Christ. Not vice versa.”

“We better eat, because Rick stops serving exactly at five-fifty now.”

“Talk about that in the Game, not now.”

Chairs screaked, creaked. He rose too, carried the old mug to the tray of others, and joined them in line out. He could smell cold clothes around him, good smells but cold.

It sounds like they’re saying passive life is good, he thought. But there is no such thing as passive life. That’s a contradiction.

He wondered what life was, what it meant; maybe he did not understand.

A huge bunch of donated flashy clothes had arrived. Several people stood with armfuls, and some had put shirts on, trying them out and getting approval.

“Hey, Mike. You’re a sharp dude.”

In the middle of the lounge stood a short stocky man, with curly hair and pug face; he shifted his belt, frowning. “How do you work this here? I don’t see how you get it to stay. Why doesn’t it loosen?” He had a three-inch buckleless belt with metal rings and he did not know how to cinch the rings. Glancing around, eyes twinkling, he said, “I think they gave me one nobody else could work.”

Bruce went over behind him, reached around him, and cinched the belt looped back through the rings.

“Thanks,” Mike said. He sorted through several dress shirts, lips pursed. To Bruce he said, “When I get married I’m going to wear one of these.”

“Nice,” he said.

Mike strolled toward two women at the far end of the lounge; they smiled. Holding a burgundy floral shirt up against himself, Mike said, “I’m going out on the town.”

“All right, go in and get dinner!” the house director yelled briskly, in his powerful voice. He winked at Bruce. “How you doing, fella?”