Adrift in the Noösphere (15 page)

But it isn't Jennifer Barton's doing.
Rostow is doomed by his oafishness.
I've got to keep away from her. I'd
shred myself into a million messy bits.
It is clear, though, that he cannot
cower forever in the lab with only a
canonized rabbit for company.
Enough, he tells himself. Out. The
clock shows a quarter after four.
Cyclic time is slipping away. Down the
corridor, unharassed, Jennifer Barton
is presumably finalizing her coiffure.

Rostow slams the door, running for
the stairs. As he expects, Buonacelli
and his claque are milling in the Senior
Faculty Bar. Donaldson dispenses
whiskies in their midst, jovial, exoner
ated, cautioning them all to reticence
under the rubric of security.

“A wonderful experience, Dr., uh, Rostow?” says one of the directors, a
pleasant administrator. Eddie turns
convulsively. “I'm Harrison Macin
tyre, Ford Foundation.” The man
holds out his hand. “No problems with
funding,” he smiles, “after today.”

“Oh. Thank you. Not ‘doctor,' I'm
afraid. I've never had time to write
anything up.” Stan seems to be ex
plaining how the advanced-wave project sprang fully armed from his pro
fessorial brow. Adrenalin begins a
fresh surge.

Macintyre puts liquor into his hand and asks, “I've been wondering about that. Publication, I mean.
Surely today wasn't your first trial
with the equipment?”

“No. No, Harrison. Call me Eddie.
We knew it was going to work. It's
been operational for some weeks.”
Across the russet carpet, Buonacelli is
laughing boomingly. “The Nobel Prize
for Physics, Stan,” says the senator.
“The Nobel Prize for Medicine,” adds a
beaming director. “Hot damn,” cries another “they'll make it a hat trick and
give you the Nobel Prize for Literature
when your paper comes out.”

Rostow scowls hideously. “Nor
mally we would indeed have published
by now, Harrison,” he says loudly. “But after the tachyon fiasco, Pro
fessor Donaldson developed some mis
givings about shooting his mouth off
prematurely, you see.” Faces turn.
“You must remember. Every man and his dog was hunting
faster-than-light particles. The great
physicist spied his chance at glory.”
The Ford Foundation man, scandaliz
ed, tries to hush him. Eddie drains his
glass, gestures for another. “But the professor blew it. His tachyons were
actually pickup calls from the Green
Cab Company. They snuck in through
his Faraday cage. Someone didn't
check that out until after the press con
ference did we, Stan?”

Donaldson is peering at the half-
full glass in Rostow's grasp; slowly, he allows his gaze to rise until he studies a
point somewhere near Eddie's left ear.
“Mr. Rostow,” he says from the depths of his soul, “hired hands are rarely in
vited into this room. Those who gain
that privilege generally comport them
selves with civility and a due measure
of deference. Those who have just
been fired without a reference do not
linger here under any circumstances.
Get out of my sight.”

Jennifer Barton arrives at that mo
ment, smiling, hair lustrous. At the
door she hesitates, scanning shocked
faces. Their eyes meet. Her presence—
oblivious of edited outrage, witness to new humiliation—sends Rostow into
a frenzy. He throws down his glass and
catches Donaldson by his lapels.

“I wish you wouldn't shout, Frog-
face,” he says, every sinew on fire.
“You astounding hypocrite,” he says, jouncing the man back on his heels. “What's a Nobel Prize or two between
hired hands?” he says, thumping
Donaldson heavily in the breast. Two
or three of the directors have come to their senses by now and grapple with
Rostow, dragging him away from his
gasping and empurpled victim. “It happens all the time, doesn't it?” Eddie
squirms, kicking at targets of opportu
nity. “We poor bastards break our
asses so some ludicrous discredited fig
urehead can whiz off to Stockholm to
meet the king.”

Even in his own ears, Rostow's out
burst sounds thin, thin. Where right
eousness should ring, only a stale peevishness lingers. Tears of anger and mortification star the pendant cut-glass
lamps. He breaks free and pushes
through business suits. Jennifer stares
at him, off balance. “You don't want
to stay with these vultures,” he cries,
seizing her arm. It seems that she
studies his scarlet face for minutes of
silence. With a minimal movement she
dislodges his hand.

“Eddie,” she says regretfully,
“when are you going to grow up?”

Bitch. Bitch, bitch.

And the bloody aura. He is holding
the rabbit, wrenching his head around
to check the clock. This time the shock
of recurrence is curiously attenuated,
as if lunatic hostility sits better than
misery with a physiology keyed to
fright. Rostow's heart rattles, catches
its beat; the pulse thunders in his neck
and wrists. The rabbit struggles free.
He moves with Tarquin's ravishing
stride to the console, at a pitch of emo
tion. Icily he shuts down the mirror
system. There are cracks in the concrete where the supports for the mag
netic coils are embedded. A faint reg
ular buzzing comes from the fluoros.
His skin is crawling, as if each hair on
his body is a nipple, erect and preter
naturally sensitive. Gagging, he closes t
he door and paces remorselessly down
the corridor.

Jennifer Barton stands on the bot
tom step of the carved stairs, deflecting
Senator Buonacelli's horseplay. Rostow storms past them. “Hey, boy, that was a great show,” cries the senator.
“Why don't you and this little lady
come up and join us in a drink?” Ros
tow hardly hears the man. His feet are
at the ends of his legs. Jennifer's door is
not locked. He leaves it wide for her. Staring out into the afternoon light.
Three tall blacks fake and run, dribbl
ing a ball.

“Well, Jambo!” As Eddie faces her,
Jennifer is closing the door, meeting
him with an infectious smile. “It's
taken you long enough to find my of
fice, sailor.”

“What?” he says, uncomprehend
ing. He pushes her roughly back
against the crowded desk and takes
her thigh with cruel pressure. Speech
less and instantly afraid, she repudiates
his hand. He thrusts it higher and tugs
at her underwear.

“Let's pick up where we left off,” he
informs her. An absolute chill per
vades his flesh. Nothing had prepared
him to expect this of himself.
Everything he calls himself is outraged,
shrunken in loathing at his own ac
tions.

“Stop it,” she says distantly. “You
fucking asshole.” Tactically her
posture is not favorable; when she
drives up her right knee, its bruising
force is deflected from his leg. I can
have whatever I want. The whole uni
verse is a scourge slashing at my vul
nerable back. Very well, let those be
the rules. He imagines he is laughing. I have nothing to offer but fear itself. As
she begins to scream and batter his
neck, his cheek, his temple, he clouts her savagely into semi consciousness.
Oh Jesus, you can't be blamed for what
happens during a nightmare. In the ab
sence of causality, Fyodor, all things are permitted. She is bent backward,
moving feebly. One of his hands
clamps her mouth, hard against her
teeth, the other unzips. I'm the
Primary Process Man, oh, wow. But
he is so cold. There is no blood under
his skin. Rostow batters at her thighs
with his limp flesh. He slides to his
knees. The edge of the desk furrows his
nose.

“You,” Jenny grunts. She is blank
with detestation. Tenderly, she
touches her skull. “You.”

Eddie Rostow lurches upright.
Swaying, exposed, he falls into the cor
ridor. The same young student, return
ing, regards him with astonishment
and abhorrence. The boy reaches out a
hand, changes his mind and pelts away
in search of aid. It is all a grainy picture
show, a world-sized monitor screen.
They'll fire him for this. Oh, shit, Jenny,
you don't understand, I
love
you.

In fugue, Rostow pitches down the
corridor.

The cleaver is lying where Donald
son left it on the bench, a ripple of bunny blood standing back from its
surgical edge. Rostow's self-contempt
has no bounds. As he lifts the blade, there is one final lucid thought. I'm an
animal, he tells himself. We can't be
trusted. The cleaver's handle slips in
his sweating fingers. He tightens his grip and with a kind of concentration brings the thing in a whirling silvery arc into the tilted column of his neck.
Shearing through the heavy sterno-
mastoid muscle, in one blow it slashes the carotid artery, the internal jugular and the vagus nerve, before it's stop
ped by the banded cartilage of the
trachea. He scarcely feels his flesh
open: all pain is in the intolerable im
pact. A brilliant crimson jet spears and
spatters, but Rostow fails to see it: he
collapses in shock, and the fluid pulses
out of his torpid body until he is dead.

His corpse lies cooling until half a
minute after 4:37.

A dizzying aura of bloody light spangled with pinpoints of imploding
radiance momentarily blinds him.

Rostow screams.

There is nothing banal in this
plunge upward into instantaneous re
birth. It is overwhelming. It is tran
scendental. It is a jack-hammer on Ros
tow's soul.

Like a thousand micrograms of
White Lightning, life detonates every cell of his brain and body. He has been
to hell, and died afterwards. Let me
stay dead. Let me be dead.

Catharsis purges him of every
thought. Eddie cradles the white rabbit
in his arms and sobs his heart out.

At length he is sufficiently compos
ed to reflect: I never cried when Tania
left. Everything wise within me insisted
that I should cry, but I turned my
back. He realizes that he hasn't wept
freely since he was a child. Dear Jesus,
does it take this abomination to lance
my constricted soul?

And his spirits do indeed soar.
Without denying the reality of what he
has done, his pettiness and spite and ig
nominy, he encompasses a mood of re
demptive benediction. It brings a wide,
silly grin to his mouth.

“Bunny rabbit,” he declares, lofting
the animal high over his head, laugh
ing as its big grubby hind feet thump the air, “ain't nobody been where we
wuz, baby. Let me tell you, buster, I like this side a lot better.”

Eddie feeds the rabbit a strip of let
tuce and steps through the tedious de
tails of shutdown. He meditates on his humbling and his bestiality, flinching at memory.

The frailty at his core yearns to interpret it all as a stress nightmare, an
hallucination. Denial would be not
merely futile and cowardly, it would
betray what has been offered him.
Rather piquant, eh? Holy shit. Still, it
is a point of access. Eddie Rostow confesses to his worst self that he needs all
the help he can get.

The next cycle brings swifter recov
ery. Rostow splashes tepid water from
the flask into his face, dabbing at his
reddened eyelids. Soon he must spend
some time figuring how to replicate the
loop condition after he gets off this
one. Fertile conjectures multiply; he
suppresses them for the moment.
Nerving himself, he walks edgily to the
Software Center, nodding compan
ionably to the passing student. The
directors have ascended to their solace.
His knock is tentative.